Back from LA, and ...?

I had a great visit in Irvine @ Vanessa's place. :) The whole Pau family greeted me so warmly and kindly. Auntie even prepared home-made almond tea and 85-degree bread for me! I had great Shanghainese food at Yao-fat the first night, had dumplings, noodles, sweet and sour fish stuff, had met Vanessa's two sisters: Bonnie and Regina, both brothers-in-law: Michael and Pete, Cara, Regina's uber cute three-year-old daughter, and her cousins: John and Karen. We had so much fun together at the "game night": we played Mafia, which I've not been able to play after graduating from JHU. I still sucked at the game, but whatever, :p I had fun. It was hard for me to come up with strategy to identify the Mafias and to defend myself, let alone to disguise myself as a mafia. sigh. I missed the game dearly though. We had quite some really fun ones back in Illinois, and i guess in 604: the one which I got completely cheated by Lu and Vanessa. haha.

The second day I woke up late. We had a late lunch at BJ's with Ming and Michael-zai (the deep dish Pizzas, with very thick and rich taste!) I ordered the spinach and artichoke pizza (i love artichoke!), which is an originally not-welcomed flavor by the rest party, but it turned out good ah-ha! :) We then chatted and had tea at Ming's house (major thanks to auntie) and went to the Santa Monica Beach! It was still, very pretty and touristic. I just love the little street star-shaped lights. There is an entire fair thing at the beach, with roller-coasters, merry-go-round, and fairy wheel... etc. We went onto the fairy-wheel! It was very scenic, as it went darker :) We totally overlooked the sea, and i felt like we had extra time on the wheel (YAY!) The speed of the rotation varied, which made the ride more fun! We then went to the fame walk @ Hollywood as I requested. I like the design of the chinese theater, with the gigantic dragon on it :) So this is Hollywood. Did I feel the magic? Dinner was with Ming's friend, Young, who worked for Disney at LA! Young is a very cool and energetic girl! It was fun to hang out and the Argentina food (Lalas) was tasty ( and exotic).

The third day is the most exciting. We woke up at 5 and went Skiing! I can't believe I went skiing twice in 10 days. Most of the group snowboard, making me kind of like minority. I first went on the "summit run" with others, but was totally overwhelmed by the steepness. I stared at the slope and could not put up my courage to ski down. :"( Man the run was l--o--n--g! I spent a long time struggling with it and just to know that I was not even half way down. I finally made my way to the bottom, with all my scare and sweat. I called John up and went together to the bunny slope after lunch. Bunny slope is just comfortable for me, not that challenging, but a bless. We then got caught up to the summit run again. The second time was much better. There was this steepest slope that I was still very terrified to go down. I got to see the dusk far at the mountains as I skied down, and I felt a little bit worth it to struggle with the mountains seeing that. :)

Accident did happen. I saw many people carried down by those little cars. The impaired populations grew as it went late. Scary! I fell like three times per run. Once I bumped into a snowboarder and bruise my knee. The other time I was hit by a fast snowboarder and ended up fell on-top-of the guy! He had to move my legs (alone with my ski) away from him. :( Glad that since I didn't go fast at all, the falls were all manageable. Once I fell and my ski went off. I could not put it on again because my boot probably turned icy. I tried for like 15 mins and was full of frustration. How could I go down without my ski on! Luckily, John climbed up all the way to check on me and help me put my ski back. It was very kind of him because he did it without me calling him or anything. hooo! I am glad that I get to know such a good friend! :)