(What) They Wanted
WHAT THEY WANTED
What makes love so complicated in a world where there are few
restrictions and much freedom? Based on the years around 33, just
before you're crucified, this peace is about the fear and longing in
the process of choosing (one) love.
Julia and Jake are friends. They see each other several times a
week or not at all for a few months. It depends how much energy
they have. Their friendship is exhausting. When they do meet the
official reason is usually to borrow a movie. Because she is with
someone else since forever and he is a free-spirited musician,
eternally. They both have great ideas about free will and living
your dream. But the particular dream about them being together,
neither one of them wants to spoil by exposing it to reality. So they
keep playing their game, hurting each other along the way. Their
relationship has now reached a deadlock and neither one of them
seems capable of solving it, making it an impotent situation. And
that's when things start to happen.
Read more...
A Spontanious Visit to the Theatre
Every Friday I get a weekly newsletter from SACC (Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce) where I find both news from home and here, advertising for events and other information. This Friday they had an ad concerning a play written by a Swede. It was Saturday night, 10 dollars and seemed to be an enjoying story and pretty close to my place. Caught my interest.
Then Emma and all her friends were in Vegas, Evelina & Hanna in OC, Ida working, Ari with some Mexican friends I tried to reach the new Swedish girl Jennifer. Anyways I didn't get her number in time and decided to go by myself and I'm soo happy I did.After that I walked all they way up to West Hollywood I was welcomed so nicely. Before they play I had already talked to an old reporter who had been travelling all around the world and another nice "younger" man. The old reporter thought even the women in his age was so beautiful in. He told me that he wished he was 60 years younger so he could marry me :-) The play was great, the actor and actress were both very proffesional and the whole relationship it was about felt familiar to me. Afterwards I drank wine and chatted with both the audience, the actor & actress, the owner for the theatre, the writer and the SACC. Oh I didn't want to leave! Although I was (like always where I go) youngest I didn't feel that way. The opposite, they felt a kind of the same age group as me. I got so much compliments and got to hear what a good hand shake I had - over and over again. Made me feel so happy! With all these men who were there I became that charmy little princess I love to be. Sometimes I feel like I don't belong my age group (confirmed by Emma today). I think I don't but it's easier now than it has been for years now. I'm a kind of adult now, people look at me that way and even people in my age are catching up :-)
When I after all decided to leave I went to the bus stop where I got in to a drama between three random guys. Guess this is what people here call dangerous. Not dangerous at all. More fun and I felt very relaxed. The first guy (African-American) is sitting and complaining about his knee, the other guy (white) thinks he's president Bush and can change the drinking law to 17 so I can drink (and he was very upset about the black guys attitude) and the third guy (Indie background) is listening to music at the same time his spitting on the ground and telling us that the land is his. A lovely interesting night I didn't want to end (so I went to Coffebean and Tea leaf for making it last longer and think about the play....)
Morning with D
Love you D!
Latest shopping
Swedish
Karjalan piirakkoja and Old fashioned rollerskating
Also Emma came by while I was making them and we decided to order som Indian food for pick-up. As sweet as Emma is she went and picked it up while I was working on the pirouges. (Just a little input. S, the oldest girl has her springbreak this week so I drove her to her swimming practice in between and filled the car with gas, the gas price is now approximately 1 dollar/litre...expensive here - cheap home)
The same night I was up to an exciting au-pair meeting. Old fashioned rollerskating. First when we got the e-mail about it I was like. What - can you really do it? Then, that must be a piece of cake. Big skates with four wheels on each. Was it easy? No way. I felt like Bambi on slippery ice. It was so much fun though and a good exercise since I was cramping all of my leg and my ass. Feel like the au-pair meetings are getting more enjoyable and more people are attending. I really like my group now and I'm already looking forward for the next two meetings. The April one is by my wishes. Thai food at Bangkok Café just talking (once in a while) and the May one is an "all au-pair families" picnic :-)
Afterwards Tammy and I went to In-n'-out burger where I ate my very first hamburger in US (first one in almost one year) and my first milkshake in about two years. Not to forget, I got such a cute Lindt chocolate Easter bunny from Emma. So delicious - gold worth :-) I'm looking so much forward to Tijuana and Gand canyon - of course also Hawaii!
A photograph says more than thousand words
See what I found in my cameras internal memory
Pix-mix
Hot hot hot
Isn't it crazy that I've been away from home for almost eight months? It will be very interesting, fun and hard to come home. Everything at the same time! I'm lucky that I have Hanna close by at least. We can meet up and dream back to sunny, lovely California...
News concerning H&M
1. They've bought Cheap Monday
2. They will launch a cooperation with Marimekko (worldwide release April 10)
The first one is for me just an announcement. Other hand the second one has an importance for me then I'm both Swedish and Finnish citizen. Something I will buy for sure - I promise :-) Like TeliaSonera... Give me more Swe-Fin mixes!
LACMA
Hanna and I slept in today and spent a way more calm day on Los Angeles County Museaum of Art. We listened to a lecture, followed a guide, discussed the art with each other and wandered among Japanese art, German, Southern Asian, Islamistic and contemporary art. Must say the last mentioned was my favorite for the day - mostly because the atmosphere. I will for sure go back there - it's a great place full of great spectacular arts including famous artists like Picasso and Monet.
We ended up the day with some salad from Whole foods watching all the Mexicans celebrating Easter on the grass in Pan Pacific.
Evelina, Irene, Pad Thai, Robertson, Surpriseparty & Naan
Altough our weakness we went to Robertson (then all mentioning from the Living LA team about it) we had to check it out. It was really cute and they had a become-happy-just-by-looking store called Kitson all over the street. I wanted to buy a whole bounch of stuff like an gigantic calculator (how cool wouldn't it be to bring that around), a to-go-menu organizer (one of my biggest hobbies here) or different kinds of checklists. My purchase came out to be a never-ending soup book I think I can have use of. Another thing we particularly saw was the Dalahorse in the WESC store (I can't tell how much I like when Swedish companies proudly give out that they're Swedish, can't understand why H&M are so anonymous about it).
Anyways, after coming home totally dizzy, we helped out with the preparings for Sarah's b-party and folded the three loads of laundry I had in a enormous pile on my bed, saw Sarah's totally surprised face and realized that we had to leave the house. We were just too absent to feel comfortable in the party so to avoid awkwardness we spent the night at Electric Karma (an Indian restaurant), came home to a loud house, went to bed and slept soundly the whole night through, even though the volume was so turned up...
Natural History Museum, JOOM Bangkok Café & Little Ethiopia
When I recieved the information from Hanna that she was late I decided to spend some time at the Thai restaurant ,where I'm a regular now, chatting with the owner, the staff, the owner for Deano's at Farmers market and having a ginger chicken with jasmine tea. I really love to go to that place and the food is excellent.
After coming home again, Hanna comes after a while and I pull her straight out from the house and we ride the bicycles to Little Ethiopia for a special dinner. Because I've tried it before without a good impression I tried to warn Hanna and also try to be positive. After comparing the places offered we picked the first one in the row, sat down on our "horses/camels" and ordered a combination plate to our special colorful basket/hat-like tables. The food was overall okey but the consistency and taste of the pancake like "picking-up the food thing" called Injera wasn't really our favorite. Then we didn't have any cutlery we were stranded to eat with it. The positive thing is that it's iron-rich (about 2-3 times more than wheat and barley) and has both other minerals and calcium. So you guys back home can, if you're curious, try Abyssina on Ringvägen - it's pretty similiar and I've tried it before. You won't die.
Afterwards we went on Wilshire and I got some more ideas of restaurants to try (an Indian and another eastern African) until we decided to share a "not-to-rich" cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory. So we went there, got to wait for a table and then enjoyed our cake on the balcony the lovely, warm night...
Griffith Observatory and a Tunisian experience
Okey, so then it was time to celebrate Sarah's 16th Birthday (her real one was on Monday). After a few different reservations the place came out to be a Tunisian restaurant. So we (her family, grandpa, her best friends and I) got to start with washing our hand under water the waitress poured from a pitcher. Next we got a great experience of eating all together from the same plate, all different kind of things (with just our hands) by flipping, pinching and dipping. While eating we also got entertained by a belly-dancer (it's amazing how they can control different parts of their body). Very interesting - you guys should try. Just remember that it is a lot more fun if you are a pretty big group and want to spend lots of time then the pace is distinguish for Tunisian dining.
MI concert
After "feeding" D Wednesday night I brought my bicycle on the bus to Hollywood for meeting up Ari @ Ce fiora Italian Frozen Yoghurt (such nice staff). Then her hostmum messed up and couldn't get there on time I had my Chocolate one all by myself (or the guy who was working there gave me some company). Anyways afterwards (when Ari still hadn't show up) I decided to go to the Musicians Institute (MI) where I was invited for a artist development concert hosted by for bands belonged to MI. First up was Sofia Draco, a Swedish girl who introduced me to Jamie Meyer (who also showed up this night, back from Sweden) and brought me to his concerts. She did great and the following bands too. Maybe they will be the real artists one day :-) They're at least in the right city right now. Somewhere around the beginning of all the plays Ari finally got there.
So afterwards we chatted some more with a nice Mexican guy I'd talked to when I first arrived to MI and he pushed us in to this "meeting" where some record company members/managers gave critism (Idol like). Pretty cool to observe. It's a really tough bransch though. Around tenish' we decided to leave and I got my bus ride for free (a marijuana smoking man gave me a day pass) and I got home... (something which is frequent on the buses is that I get to hear how beautiful I am and the question if I can be the person who's asking's nanny, I get all kind of business cards and get the question if I'm a model or an actress - tons of compliments)...
The Huntington Gardens
Okey so this is how we got there:
At my very first au-pair meeting I met Tammy (a German girl) and I felt that, she's a girl I want to hang out with. Then she lives in Pasadena we never really got a chance to do it. Anyways au-pair meetings passed and we always said that we have to get together til she called me about the Death Valley thing and we finally could hook up. At that time we found out that our host girls are the same age and should get together some day. So now when they had their springbreaks at the same week I was anxious about carrying it out. My plan came out to be The Huntington gardens. Then my hostdad earlier had suggested me going there, I decided to give it a try. After a suspicious mum, complexity about if Tammy was working and shyness between the two girls (when we finally got to their house) the ice broke. I drove us all in the big van and we spent about four hours over there.The day with Tammy, all her three host kids (the girl and her brother, 3 and brother, 9) and D, we all had such a terrific day. I guess Tammy and I didn't even have time to talk to each other then we were amazed of how stimulated the kids were. They were running and laughing all day and like I can say soo many times IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! Like another world. There was both a Children's garden, a "Green house", Japanese garden, Chinese garden, Jungle, Desert and much, much more - really worth a visit.
Afterwards D and I had a very nice discussion in the car and some of the things she said was.
S: I think these kids had an even more special time than you - because they don't as much activities as you and don't have so many friends they can have playdates with. You are so lucky D.
D: I know, but it was special for me to. It was the best play date in the whole wide world. I don't want to go home. Sofia, this is why I never want to go to places - I like it so badly that I don't want to go home.
Such an interesting comment from a six-year old which made my heart so warm - she appreciates everything so much compared to so many American kids which are raised differently. This playdate was also special for her then she got friends her mum doesn't know about, who are Christian and has special memories with.
D: I want to be the German au-pair
S: Says hmm, why, how come?
D: It's just that I want to be other people like mum, Sarah, you....and she lists up some more
S: Yeah, and sometimes I want to be you (and really mean it and I feel that she knows what I mean)
D: (Here my confirmation comes) I know. I know that I'm lucky, I have a lot many other don't have (and with a careful and thinkful voice she lists up) I'm talented, I have an easy time at school etc etc and she says everything so wise. Not like I have a doll and parents.
Oh I love this girl!
LACMA
Then LACMA (Los Angeles County Art Museum) has a gallery for kids (Boones/Construction) I thought that would be a great place to have a playdate. So on Tuesday D and I went there for meeting up a two sisters and their mum. Such a great place - it's for free and has all these stuff you need when doing arts and crafts. Pipe cleaners, stickers, construction paper, paste, pensels, crayons, markers, glitter, beads, yarn - you name it. They also had an area where you could do your own architecture. All au-pairs! Bring your kids there! After that the day was gone and I went to Arianna's house from where we went to LA Fitness for some boxing and mat pilates :-)
Busy busy week
Then D is the most wonderful mix between thousands of talents and wisedom she can also come up with feelings which is more typical for a thirty-year old than a six-year old. In these circumstances we're talking about rest. She always makes it clear that she does Not want to do anything when she is having her weekend/time off. That means No playdates, No Birthday parties and especially she doesn't want to leave the house. Kind of true but isn't it also the time you have The time to do things like that? Shouln't you as a child become restless by not having activities?
We (My hostmum and I) understands her feelings and try to respect them but sometimes we also just have to ignore her. That's because her social skills are such great that she always enjoys the activities once she leaves the door. So anyways I started the week with a day which was a pleasure for both of us. She played independently all Monday while I was doing other meaningful stuff. I did also spend a couple of hours sitting with her playing "Mathblaster" when I helped her to understand the easiest way to count the elementary additions and substractions. I also introduced this little kindergardener to multiplikation and by trying my best pedagogically she understood the basics. Some extra points for me! :-) She has to skip first grade - there's not enough stimulations for her there. Would be such a waste with her capacity.
...you'll see the rest of my week in next upcoming posts.
Some dreams really come true
When I was little travelling was something abstract - I couldn't feel it, it was like on another planet. Places like America, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Hawaii was just places which existed in books, movies and posters.
Like you guys know I'm there, I'm here, Right NOW - in those illusions. That I now booked and payed a trip to Hawaii reminds me, once again, that travel dreams can come true. Even though I've seen so many places it's just a tiny percentage of the world. I guess I've been addicted to this hobby just like Annika. Now I want to explore the whole planet. I want to see all these places, cities, countries in South America, Canada, a little bit of all US with my darling (Linn) in August when we are going all around, I want to see Australia and New Zealand, I can't wait until January next year when I'm going to Asia (Thailand and the countries close by), I want to see Japan, Korea and China. Go hiking and see the different kind of living in Northern Asia (all those countries I know plenty of my friends never even heard the name of), try all the Indian food in India, go to middle east to get my own view of the circumstances, see the rest of Europe and help out in Africa.
It's no longer a possibility - it's something I will do but I just don't now in what way, when, where, with who or what order.
Peace - and Please God, make my life last forever
Death Valley pix
