First official day in Irvine

I got up this morning at around 10ish. Some relatives came over along with my 4th aunt, so I sat around and talked to them for a bit and had a bit of fruit. We then went out to dim sum at a place nearby called Crystal Jade. Here is what happened when we walked in.......

Red Flag #1

We were greeted in english asking us how many

Red Flag #2

I saw latinos working behind a bar. Non-chinese people working in a Chinese restaurant? That never happens!

Red Flag #3

A bar? I repeat. A Bar?

Red Flag #4

I proceeded to walk into the restaurant. The restaurant was decked out in fake plants to give it I dunno, an ambiance? Chinese people don't care about ambiance! What kind of world is this?! 

Red Flag #5

Then... the biggest red flag of them ALL.... white people, TONS of white people. So we're in a Chinese restaurant and not very many Chinese people in sight. There has got to be something wrong with this place (it did fill up later on with more Asians). 

Anyway, in the end the food was alright. Better than Golden Unicorn, but then again, what place isn't better than Golden Unicorn? 

Ok, one complaint was that everything was super salty. I was warned by Nadia before the trip that everything here is really high in sodium, reason being that 'it's America'. Well I've only ate out once so far but it proved to be correct. Unnecessary amount of salt and most likely MSG, but I guess that goes hand in hand with restaurant Chinese food.

After dim sum we attempted to walk around the mall but that didn't last for very long because my grandma and 4th aunt were tired. This is what happens when you travel with old people. They get tired after 1 hour. Sigh. What can you do? We came home and I got ready to head out to the Quail Hill gym. It's about 3-4 blocks away from the house. Californians are definitely not fat like they are down in Florida. I worked out in the gym for an hour then headed back home and did Ab Jam. On the way there, I saw a hummingbird a foot away from me. I've never seen a hummingbird before. At around 5pm I went with Nina to the open house of her future middle school. Middle school here is only grade 7-8. I felt a little offended when Nina's mom said the school here was better than Vancouver's because there's really no way to judge that. What can I say, I'm a proud Vancouverite. The school only has 2 grades but it has around 1000 students. That's ALOT. It works like high school where you have a teacher for math, a teacher for english etc etc. It was tremendously boring. We basically just walked around the school and looked at student's work. We went with my aunt's friend and her son. They used to live in Vancouver and I've seen them before but I don't really remember them anymore. Nina went missing for about an hour and we didn't end up leaving until 7:30pm. We came home, ate dinner and that was my day. I borrowed Twilight from Nina. She said it's really good and she wants me to read 500+ pages in 2 days. Haha. Yea right. Tomorrow we're gonna get breakfast at Laguna beach and probably walk around there until the old people get tired (I give it 1 hour tops)

PS. Last night on the highway back home, I saw a sign that said Cherry Ave/Spring St. I miss NYC. I wanna go there again. 

Verdict of California: Haven't seen enough of it to judge, but roughly what I expected. Nice weather, lots of green, typical Californians. I'll wait until I go to LA. 

Oh yea, there was a taco/burrito truck at the school's open house. I was tempted to get a bean burrito, but I didn't. 

Arrival in Irvine, California

I'm a little late to blog because I originally wasn't planning on starting another blog this time, but then I thought hey what the heck. I might as well. I've become one of those people that brings their laptop with them everywhere. Might as well make good use of it and be able to look back on my trips later on down the road. I've been traveling quite a bit for the past 2 years and it's always nice to look back on them and read about the crazy things that I get to see. So here goes.....

First of all, I'll just say that I booked my flight online. I thought I was booking for Air Canada but right after I paid for it, it said that the flight was operated by United Express/Sky West airlines. F! I don't want to fly a small plane. My traumatic experience with a small plane to Singapore 2 years ago has made me hate small jets. Because my grandma holds a Taiwan passport we had to fill out extra paperwork for her to enter the US. She also had to have her fingerprints scanned. So strict. Sky West airlines flew us in the smallest little plane ever. 2 rows of 2 seats, 1 aisle, maybe 15 rows or something. Super duper small. It wasn't so bad this time considering there wasn't any lightning bolts looking like they were hitting our wing (which happened on the way to Singapore). The flight was 2-3 hours long. Not bad. It seemed long but definitely less tiring than flying halfway around the world. Oh yea, we got charged $15 for each check in luggage. I should've figured. My uncle came to pick us up at LAX airport. It looks old and small. It took us an hour to get home. Nina's family lives in an area called Quail Hills in Irvine, California. It's a town home area but way cooler than any of our town homes. It's more like a vacation villa. My uncle took me around for a walk after we got home and there's a huge ass soccer field, basketball court, 3 swimming pools, jacuzzi, parks, tons of bbqs, and every section of this 'villa' looks different. They are all built differently. Some are built into apartments, some more like town homes, some of them have their own court yard with water fountains and lots of pretty flowers. Makes you want to sit there for afternoon tea. Last but not least, get this.... there is a gym here! It's only maybe 5 minutes away and I can use it for free because it's a part of the facilities! Hehe. Granted the gym they have is really puny with only a few weight machines, 3 treadmills, 2 ellipticals, and a stationary bike, but it's better than nothing! Their home is a decent size and cozy :) Quail Hills is pretty big. It's a nice quaint neighbourhood. Really safe and quiet. Only people that live in here or visitors come in here, so it really reminds me of the villas when I went to Orlando except they are actual residences instead of timeshares.