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!

DISNEYLAND II -rides

So now I´m gonna tell something about the other rides I rode! And I gotta add here that if you are thinking whether you should pay for this trip or not just pay! I don´t know how much this trip is gonna cost after this year but at least my trip was worth it (only with a little exception but I´m gonna talk about it later)

Mickey Mouse -roller coaster! Okay it´s not really called a Mickey Mouse roller-coaster but its located near a huge Ferris wheel with Mickey´s head. It  was one of the first rides we did and I really loved it! It went quite fast and had this kind of frill where you go upside down for a while. We had to wait quite long in the queue and it wasn´t fun. It was really hot day and some crazy/scary girl wearing a cap with Mickey Mouse ears was looking at me all the time (Not talking about Sini here). Oh and now I think I remembered the name of that ride!! I think it was called Paradise Pier.

After that we went to a shop and Sini and Amanda bought the same kinds of hats which that scary queue-girl had. Sini demanded that next we should ride this chain-carousel kind of thing (ketjukaruselli?????) It didn´t go really fast and was probably meant for small(er) kids than us but we gave up to Sini and queued for that carousel. But little did we know how fierce it actually was! You see after a while going around Sini´s new fabulous Mickey -cap was caught by a gust! It flew near the fake lake and we had to climb over fences to get it back! That´s what you get for forcing your friends to kids ride Sini!! Naaah not really it was ok and we got a good reason to laugh at Sini :)

We rode a Starwars ride, which was similar to the ´Linnunrata´ ride in Linnanmäki, and Buzz Lightyear ride where you were supposed to shoot targets with toy lazer guns. There was obviously something wrong with my gun as I got the least points! One of those really cool rides was Indiana Jones -ride! The queue went through a jungle camp and a entered an ancient temple. The decor of that place was fantastic! The ride itself was a bit scary tho... I mean I wasn´t like scared but well it´s hard to explain. The most scariest thing was when the car suddenly stopped and the place looked like dead end. And suddenly you notice this huge round rock rolling towards you! It was so cool!!!!

It started to get late and eventually because of that dark. That´s why we decided to visit the Haunted Mansion.The queue was really long and we weren´t able to get fastpasses there so we just had to wait. Finally we got inside and waited there about 5 minutes. Then we got to another room where we waited for at least the same 5 minutes. Then we were told that due some technical problems the haunted mansion was closed and we had to  leave... You can imagine that we weren´t really happy. The only thing we got to see inside the house wasn´t even scary! It was this gay couple dancing in one corner... Awwwws. Most likely the scariest thing there was me. You see I noticed a  big chandelier hanging from ceiling and started singing "IIIIII wanna swiiing from the chandelieeer, from the chandelieeer!" Oh God I guess everyone who reads this is getting a really weird image of me.

-Chandelier - Sia

DISNEYLAND I

One of the extra curricular activities was a trip to Disneyland and California Adventure park.I was really hoping that we would go there with coaches but instead of that we found ourselves sitting in those yellow school buses... Don´t get me wrong now! They are really awesome but if you have sat there every morning for now about 1.5 weeks you slowly start to realize that those buses are not the leaders of travel facilities!

Anyway those who had paid for that trip (´bout $200) were soon sitting in the bus on the way to our destination. We were really excited to see the place and especially the famous firework show!! I was absolutely jazzed up when I saw these "Disneyland 60 years" adverts while driving through the gates... Wait nobody says like that.... let´s just strike through that: jazzed up. Anyway you got the point I think! The 60th birthday of Disneyland, California.

We were told to go always to right when we we walking from the parking area to cars that drove us inside the park. Me, Sini, Siiri and Amanda were a group. Or well there weren´t actually any formal groups... We just moved together. The only thing we had to remember was the "Buddy Buddy rule". Which means that you can´t move alone and if you see somebody walking alone you have to take them with you. And when I say ´somebody´ I mean someone familiar of course.

We chose to go first in the California Adventure park -area because it seemed like all the others chose Disneyland -area first. I don´t  really remember anymore which rides were at Disneyland´s side and which of them were at Cali Advntr. side of the park but anyway all the rides we rode were AMAZING tho I didn´t go to SixFlags Magic Mountain so I can´t compare it to Disneyland. We were able to get fast passes over the queues when we showed the code in our tickets to this machine. It was really great but you could use them only after certain amount of time had passed after the last time you used the fast pass. For example if I used it with one ride I was able to get another fast pass again lets say after 20 minutes.

There were several cool rides I really enjoyed! You just can´t experience things like them in Linnanmäki amusement park, Helsinki. One of my absolute favorites was a "Californian landscape ride". it was a huge 4D experience. You were lifted up a few meters while sitting in your seat in rows of 5. Basically the idea of that ride was that you felt like flying  over California. First you were above the clouds and and then suddenly you can see the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so amazing! There were also added some scents in that experience. For example when flying over a forest the smell of fresh wood and rain  was spread all around. It was so cool!

The 4th of July -part 2

The Party in the I-Can´t-Remember-The-Name-Of  park!

We all got in that huge car of my HF´s and headed to this park. By "we" I mean Tim, Josh, Casey, Pierre and me. We got inside the area by showing this ´volunteer´ -card so we didn´t have to pay. People had these little stands where thy were selling different kind of things. Mainly food. Me, Josh and Pierre wandered around the area and ended up buying this kind of waffle dessert with strawberry jam and cream topping! It was absolutely delicious! It was so big that we ate it from the same plate. That was maybe the most romantic moment during my whole stay in the US.... Sad life... but yummy waffles!

In my great wisdom I decided not to take a jacket with me cause Hey! I´m in California so why the heck would I need a jacket !?!?!??! Well I couldn´t have been more wrong! In the evening I was already freezing and shaking like a snowman (okay snowmen don´t shake I dunno why I said that). Some people were really sympathetic towards me. One guy said like "Someone give him a jacket! I would do it if I just had one with me! I´ll start feeling cold even when I just look at him" and some people just laughed at asked how it is possible to feel cold when I´m from Finland. The next thing we did was a walk to an ice cream kiosk! Much to everybody´s (including my) surprise I wasn´t feeling any warmer after eating that ice cream.

Me and Pierre were told that we could get almost any girl due to our accents! Well maybe yes with a French accent but if you are speaking with the original, honest and real Finnish accent every creature near you will run away screaming in horror! So boys and girls remember to use the Finnish accent if you want to be completely alone.

Before the fireworks we were throwing a football with one of Josh´s twin cousins. It was cool! And finally it was time for the firework show! The fireworks were maybe the best I´ve ever seen! They bet even the Christmas and New year fireworks of Lohja City!!!! I was taking videos of them on Snapchat when the other of the twins suddenly said like "Jacko look! Put your phone away". And I realized that he was right... Why am I using my phone when I can memorize that firework show.

After the show we tryed to clean the area with boy scouts and goofed around. Messing around with trash picking sticks, climbing in trees, noticing that climbing in trees is forbidden, running around aimlessly. Sounds like perfectly normal things to do. Before we drove home I talked to some woman and her little daughter near the Boy Scouts tent and she asked me things about Finland and she also asked me to speak a bit Finnish. I said something like "Moi! Mun nimi on Jaakko ja asun Suomessa ja oon seittämäntoista vuotta vanha". I might have said it a bit faster than ppl usually talk in Finland but anyway when the woman asked her daughter how did it sound, she answered that it sounded like Spanish. We laughed and the girl was asked if she knew which language is spoken in Finland and she shyly answered Spanish. Her mom laughed and said "Noo it´s called Finnish" and then she looked at me like "it´s called Finnish right????" 

-Guerriero - Marco Mengoni