weeks one and two in Los Angeles

It's hard to believe that we've already been here for two weeks! In some aspects it seems like it's been no time at all, but in other ways it feels like forever. We've mostly settled down into a good rhythm and have figured out how things work around here, so we're beginning to enjoy our time more than just being in survival mode.

Most work days we arrive at work at about 9am and head home between 5:30 and 6pm. I've been running on the bike trail along the beach about every other day. It's both enjoyable and frustrating to run where you see the finish line the whole time! There is a jetty right at the place we're staying that has an American flag on the end, so the entire time I'm running back I can see that flag and how slowly I'm moving towards it. But overall the running's really nice. No traffic (except bikes) to worry about, so I can listen to music, and there are always interesting things to see. Yesterday was especially nice because it had been raining to the south of us for a little bit so the smog had cleared out and I could see the mountains to our south clearly when I was running that direction.

While I run, Patrick has been reading books on the beach or flying kites. We bought him a new kite this weekend; we'll have to take some pictures of it. It's always windy here so it's perfect kite-flying weather. Besides the wind, the weather is still mostly temperate. Every morning it looks like it's going to rain, but that's just the "May gray" and the "June gloom" that passes by lunchtime (though the haze over the city is persistent). I actually miss the rain a little bit.

Anyhow. I think what we're enjoying the most about this summer is no homework! This means we have our evenings and weekends free. Our weeknights have been pretty low key. The dishwasher here is broken, so by the time we cook dinner and clean it's usually pretty late. But we brought our PS2 with us, and we found a store called Cali Games that sells games for cheap, so we've been playing games for a little bit almost every night. Right now we're playing through Lego Star Wars. Coincidentally, last weekend, I watched a Star Wars movie for the first time! (It was on TV, and I have been relentlessly mocked for the past eight years or so for being a computer scientist but not having seen it.)

Our weekends have actually been pretty low-key too. We want to plan some big trips but so far we've just been exploring the area we live in. Last weekend we went to Santa Monica area. We found an amazing, hole in the wall Korean restaurant around there called BBQ Garden. The food was delicious and cheap, and the couple running the restaurant were so sweet. They kept bringing me more soup and kimchi as I ate what was on my plate.

Here's Patrick at Santa Monica Beach:

You can see the pier there in the background. We just walked around on it. It was very crowded but worth going to. Santa Monica is the official end of Route 66, so there were lots of signs and souvenirs for that. Patrick ate a churro (a very popular street snack around here). I wasn't hungry, but if I was, I would have got something from the fruit cart. You could pay $7 or so for a quart of fruit made up of whatever combination you wanted of melons, pineapple, jicama, and berries. It looked so delicious.

We also walked some on the beach south of the pier. On the beach there is all this giant "playground equpiment" for adults to work out on. Some folks had set up some slacklines, so Patrick tried it out. (He was not very successful, but at least he can say he tried!) Other than that, it was just really good people watching. It really does feel like the movies in some parts around here, because you think to yourself, is this really happening; do people like this really exist?

(sidebar: here's a picture of the most interesting shoes we've seen so far)

The next day we visited Del Rey Church, which we've decided to make our church home for the summer. They share some affiliations with our church back in Clemson, and we've enjoyed the teaching so far. (This past Sunday we also visited a Bible study/small group that we think we'll stick with. It's funny because it's a lot like our small group back home, only fast-forward five years or so because the children are older!) The church itself is a smaller church, and we like that for this particular time, since we don't have that long to be able to get to know people.

After church, we decided to try out a tandem bike that the lady we're renting from said we could use. It was a little scary at first but actually turned out to be fun! I liked it because all I had to do was pedal while Patrick steered. That evening, we celebrated our dear friend Evan's birthday with dinner at Waterloo & City.

For Memorial Day, we mostly stayed in and rested. We did go outside and fly our kites for a while though.

This past weekend we decided to go to the California Science Center, which is a free museum type thing. For one day only, the Deepsea Challenger was on display:

I wish I knew what all this stuff actually does...

That little white pod is where James Cameron curled up and descended into the lowest known point on earth:

And, equally (or more?) impressive, the science center houses the Endeavor space shuttle!

It doesn't look like that big of a deal in photos but this thing is incredible. Learning about how it was assembled, how it works, and how many flights it survived was really interesting. I think the coolest fact I remember is that each of the tiles on the shuttle are specifically made for that point on the ship and its unique heat distribution. Each of those thousands of tiles costs up to $2000 to make. The tiles are extremely heat resistant, but very brittle--the exhibit said you can crush them in your hands.

The museum also featured an exhibit on how the shuttle got there. They flew the shuttle to LAX and then transported through the streets, raising power lines and trimming trees to do so. That would have been an incredible sight to see!

Some of the other exhibits were enjoyable as well. Here is Patrick wearing airplane wings in front of a giant fan to feel the lift effect:

They had some ecosystems and aquariums stuff that was also pretty cool. I also learned something about smog in LA. It's true that the car traffic causes a lot of it, but it's largely visible because of the landforms. The entire city is surrounded by mountains (except for the west side), and the ocean breeze just continually pushes the air inland, where it is trapped by the mountains. 

The museum is in a place called Exposition Park, which has some neat history behind it as well. There are beautiful rose gardens in the middle of it.

There is also a giant dinosaur statue (accompanying the neighboring natural history museum):

After this we drove into Beverly Hills to run some errands, just because we could. We didn't make it to the really fancy parts. But at this mall, everyone was carrying their little dogs around in purses, bags, and the baby seats in shopping carts. (Again, I didn't know places and people like this really existed.)

On Sunday we went to church and small group then visited Redondo Pier, which is on a beach about six miles south from where we're living. There was an old-fashioned arcade where we found an ancient relic:

There was also a fish market--lots of dungeness crabs for sale. We didn't eat or buy any of the seafood but it sure looked and smelled tasty! We did buy an egg roll (one of the best we've ever had) from a Chinese food stand, and a caramel apple. There were lots of other neat shops and stands to see on the pier, and it was neat to watch the ocean crash against the giant rocks along the bottom of the pier.

There's a lot of random street art. Here's a mosaic on a local Wells Fargo:

So that's the fun stuff! I'll save the work update for another post, maybe tomorrow night. But things are going well at work and we're learning a whole bunch. Hopefully I'll have time to post some pictures tomorrow!