Chill Day

The day was good but it started badly. I found myself standing outside the classroom with the teacher because apparently he suddenly felt that I wasn´t respecting him and his work and apparently I was the only one not respecting him. I actually liked and respected him BEFORE he "wanted to have a word with me in privet". I admit that I was talking during the class but I can only blame the teachers for that. They were talking all the time during the class and we didn´t get to say much anything compared to the amount of their speech producing. I was so pissed but stayed calm. But inside I was transforming into Maleficent or something.

Anyway enough of that. There must be bad things on a good trip too! I mean nobody believes a story about a complete paradise. After school our plan was to go to Thousand Oaks Teen Center.  It sounded really cool until I realized we were going to walk there. From the first day in the States I remembered that a "short walk" was everything else except a short walk.  To be continued....

LACitytour | five

"And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly" 
-Ed Sheeran

Angels Fly was our next destination (not really I´ve just completely messed the order). If I remember right it was almost right opposite the Grand Market. Angels Fly is the world´s shortest railway in the world. It´s kinda weird cause it goes uphill. It wasn´t in use that moment so  we had to walk the stairs. There we met our  always happy leader Antti who possibly had already visited nearest Starbucks.

LACitytour | four

After our interesting trip to COLA we headed towards a market place which was marked on our map. Okay I´m not completely sure if we actually did everything in this very order but anyways that´s not the point.

It was actually pretty hard to find the market place but then we realized to follow the guide signs  and found the place. Now imagine the stereotypical Asian marketplace where you will most likely be robbed. It looked just like that!

The Grand Central market was located indoors and it was basically a huge room with a lot of people selling food and other things under big colorful neon-lighted signs. People were crowded on small aisles pushing each other out of their way while trying to make sure that their recently-bought blackberries (nope not the phones) won´t get squeezed.

Talking about blackberries! Me, Oona and Iida bought some of them from some old man/woman (can´t remember). At first we were thinking  that how hygienic the berries would be and would we be sick the entire trip after eating those berries... But you know, these are one of those YOLO moments so we ate the berries which tasted delicious and didn´t get sick at all.. At least I didn´t.

LAcitytour | three

After Disney Concert Hall we headed towards the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Pretty long name huh? That´s why I´m just gonna shorten it into ´COLA´ and pray for forgiveness for making up such an unholy nickname... MOVING ON NOW!

Most of us will think about a large, old, monumental building with high towers and beautiful ornaments when talking about a cathedral, and well that was something I was trying to find. Thank God (badam tsss) we had the map because even though we were literally standing next to the COLA´s back wall we didn´t recognize it. Seriously we were so close that we were actually able to touch the COLA. We  almost started to cross some bridge so we could find what we were looking for but then after having a few doubts we took the first turning to left and walked downwards the street.

And that was when we saw the cathedral! It just looked completely different that I had imagined. it was really modern... no towers were seen but it still impressed me. We had a small conversation if we should go in or not but eventually we found ourselves inside sitting on one bench and listening to cantor who was playing the organs... It made me feel a kinda good person for a while. Me Oona and Iida also dipped our fingers into the Holy Water and made the cross signs. The water burned none of us so I gotta say that there ain´t  no sinners in my squad!

After the visit in COLA we had a picnic in the church´s park which was located next to the COLA´s parking hall... guess Our Lady was a kinda car-geek. There were all kind´s animal statues in the park... a statue of a lion, snake, fish, zebra or smthng and so on. We sat on a bench and started to unpack our lunch... Then one particular statue, a fine piece of art, got our full attention. It was right in front of us and I guess it was supposed to be a beehive with bees walking on it. To us it looked like a huge pile of crap with flies all around of it. Holy shit indeed!! Otherwise the picnic was nice... eating our sandwiches and wondering who left the pile of shite in front of us. I guess you can say that this  is one of those ´Once In a Lifetime´ -experiences.

-Take Me to Church - Hozier

LAcitytour | two

random homes in LA

After getting out of the parking hall and finding our way to Iida we decided to follow the map and find these sights marked on it.

We were´t really sure about where we should head and cause we didn´t want to follow the others we turned to wrong direction a couple of times. Iida´s faith for mine and Oona´s map reading skills began to falter and at one point she announced that she´ll leave us and go follow the others. Luckily the traffic lights were red so Oona had time to think where we had to go and Iida happily followed us.

The first thing on our list was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It was a hot day and we had to walk uphill so once we saw the building we really wanted to go inside where it was a lot fresher. Of course we would have went inside anyway! I mean it must have been really finely designed from the inside by the astounding architecture of the exterior. Well what we saw inside was a kinda cramped hall with an empty front desk. Maybe the biggest disappointment of the LA city tour cause I waited to see a bit more...

Okay I remembered that the uphill climb was bigger

And this is what we saw :)

Finally there!!! 

PS. If u travel with EF once you´ll
always recognize the pink color
wherever you go!
Spotted this in Barcelona

LAcitytour | one

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, The Big Orange, La-La Land, Shaky Town, The City of Angles

All these names for only one city. The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels - LA!

Anyways let´s get on with this... Today was the day for LA City Tour. At first we were driven near Stables Center. Some American women´s soccer team had won some big championship and people were celebrating there. I didn´t really get why we went there cause we didn´t go inside the center. We just chilled outside and watched people lame-partying. All free cokes were already given away which was disappointing. 

The next stop was a hotel. When we got off the buss the leaders gave us maps printed from GoogleMaps (imagine the quality)  and we were told to walk from the place A to place B. There were certain sights on the way that were were supposed to visit and check out like Walt Disney Concert Hall and catholic cathedral: Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. We could have walked with the leaders but you know it´s more fun to walk with ur friends. Oona and Iida were my sightseeing buddies. In the beginning of that walk we were like a huge group of tourists.... which we technically were (?????). Anyway me and Oona didn´t want to walk in a huge herd of EF students so we tried our best to lag... to fall behind. There was this old man in a wheelchair who desperately tried to get in the buss and we stopped to help him.Well actually it was Oona who helped to push the wheelchair into the buss. Unbelievable that everybody, including the leaders, just walked past him and didn´t help. But we still weren´t enough left behind.

That´s why when we saw a quite long escalator going up to somewhere I decided that I want to try it. Oona came with me but Iida stayed on the pavement and looked us like "Are you fucking serious now?!". When we came to the other end of that escalator we realized that we would have to walk down (I know horrible right?) So that´s why we went to a random elevator and tried to get down with it... Instead of getting back to Iida we found ourselves from a parking hall. And up we went again deciding to walk back ´cause Parking Halls are scary and we didn´t want to get lost.  

Disneyland III

This post is gonna tell you how the wonderful day in Disneyland ended not so wonderfully.

It started to get dark and we were already a bit tired and some of the rides were already closing because it was late. We were advised to get these pineapple soft-ice creams and when we finally found the place where they sell this so-called amazing ice cream, it was obvious that a few other people had also found it.  The queue was  huge!  Eventually after ages of waiting this delicacy it was our (us = me, Sini, Siiri and Amanda) turn to order. I guess all of us ordered that soft ice in a way that it´s floating in pineapple juice cause it looked cool. Now was the time to taste it! I have a perfect word to describe the experience: DISAPPOINTMENT. I like pineapple nut that was seriously too pineapple-ish. I guess people praise that painapple ice cream only because it´s horribly high price.


And that´s enough talking about ice creams! Moving on to lunch (I´m not telling this in a chronological order so u just gotta suffer... sorry not sorry.)! As people tend to do we got hungry as the time passed. We had to find something to eat and quite quickly we found this food bar (?) near Indiana Jones ride. Me and Sini chose to take chicken skewers! I was excited cause the smell was good and I really needed to eat. I made my order and they quickly gave me my coke and the skewer. It´s a shame that I hadn´t yet bought eyeglasses because now was the time when I really would have needed them. That freaking "skewer" was only about 6 inches long! Yess I have heard about economic depression and cuts but how am I supposed the get full from that... I mean there was more coke (which sadly wasn´t cherry a.k.a kerry coke) than actual food. Well we only laughed about this whole thing and in fact they tasted great.

Now it was really dark. You´ve probably heard that parades in Disneyland are amazing. Well I don´t know about the parades during the day but the parade I saw in the evening was amazing! All the bright lights and just wow! The famous firework show was about to start and the Disneyland crew was guiding people to walk closer to the center of the park so after the fireworks they would be able to get everyone out. Of course we didn´t want to follow their orders so we went to a shop and walked where we wanted through shops. I bought a Mickey Mouse necklace for my sis from one of the shops. I hate buying souvenirs.

AND NOW IT WAS TIME FOR THE FIREWORK SHOW!!!!!! Each one of the visitors were gathered around the central something in front of this castle. We waited and waited. And waited. The we heard this announcement: "Due to technical problems the firework spectacle is cancelled." Our reaction was that it must be a joke.. Like of course and soon it would start. But no... It really was cancelled. I was pissed off. And that led to a situation where I ended up angrily and very slowly eating a chocolate muffin and drinking kerry outside the school buss on a parking area. Now you are wondering why the hell I didn´t go inside the bus. Well, my loves, I was there at first until I was told to go outside or stop eating cause it was prohibited in our buss. All other drivers allowed it but not ours. So I was like "OK then. You won´t go anywhere until I´ve eaten this muffin and drank all my coke. Just to remind you I ate only that tiny skewer and painapple ice cream.

All in all the trip was amazing though and you should definitely go there!