my last day in so. cal

i can't believe i'm leaving tomorrow! these 2.5 weeks have flown.. and dragged as well. weird. southern california is really pretty.. there are ghetto areas but overall its nice (ignore the smog). streets are wide and houses are pretty. motorists drive crazy but they'll stop in the middle of the street for j-walking pedestrians. everything's so cheap - real roxy shirts for $11, 10 pack of pepsi for $3, boba for $1. the weather is so nice and the beaches are within half an hour from where i'm staying. they use styrofoam way too much and i don't think they recycle. having to tip sucks but it means wait staff are nicer to you. oh and i hate that nothing includes tax so unless you can work out 8% of something fast, you never know how much its going to cost at the counter. and i really have to start remembering that "lemonade" here doesn't mean sprite or 7up like it does at home.. it seriously means LEMONade like what we used to get at boston market. i always get a shock when i take my first sip. i'm slowly getting used to all this coinage but really, who has time to count out 73c at the counter? i'm also used to the roads now, and the fact that when we make a wide left turn it doesn't mean we're heading into oncoming traffic. i still have to get used to veering right instead of left on a busy sidewalk though.

i went to laguna beach yesterday. is that really meant to be "the real OC"? coz its not that pretty i'm sorry. the water was dirty and the sand was sticky. and the size of the beach kinda reminded me of waikiki. i don't think i'd go there again. the area was nice though.. pretty houses. the stores (i have to say "the store" rather than "the shops" now haha) sort of looked like bondi in a way.

i also went to san juan capistrano mission. that was interesting... but i wish i knew a little more about it before we went coz i kinda didn't really know what it was all about while we were walking around. i'll go read up on it in my lonely planet book later. on the way home we got some tacos and i swear my stomach is still feeling the effects.

today we went boating at laguna. that was FUN! it was the first time my uncle took his boat out so he and my other uncles were a bit eager and we went crashing over a few waves a bit too fast. us girls were sitting on the front of the boat hanging on for dear life, my auntie yelling "enough na! enough na!!". boys and their toys. don't worry that your wife and children are practically falling off. then they wanted to get their fish tracker system working so i was reading the manual trying to work it out for them and i got real seasick. i went down and forced myself to sleep till we got back to the dock coz i was so ready to throw up. sometimes when i sit still i can still feel the boat bobbing up and down. we were meant to go to san diego tonight but everyone's wiped out from boating so i think it'll be a quiet one.

i can't believe by this time tomorrow i'll be in hawaii! yay i'm so excited.