so, we drove down to Ventura on Thursday. Believe it or not, our car broke down on I-5 right in the middle of nowhere… the closest town, about 10 miles away, was Lost Hills. Go figure! All of a sudden, we had this warning noise indicating that our engine was on the edge of overheating. It was strange, because we had driven the car under normal conditions… we made it to the next exit and parked the car. Jon popped open the hood and realized that one of the belts had come lose.
I was so glad we had our cell phone. Jon called “AAA†and they sent out a tow truck to help us out. It took about 30 minutes until the guy with the tow truck arrived.
He put our car on the back of his truck and drove us to the next car shop in Lost Hills (which was basically an old metal sheet building run by Hispanic guys who were constantly talking Spanish with each other). Fortunately, it seemed like they knew what they were doing, because they fixed the car within 20 minutes :) I was so relieved, because I had already seen us stuck in Lost Hills.
We made it to Ventura at around 8 p.m. and we had a quick dinner at “Marie Callendar’s†– I had french onion soup with caesar salad and garlic bread *yummy*
The next morning, we had some breakfast with Jon’s Mom and in the afternoon Jon and I drove down to Los Angeles to meet up with Dhevan.
We went out to a very nice Indian Restaurant for dinner and afterwards hung out at Dhevan’s place for a while and watched “The Wizard of Oz†overlayed with some Pink Floyd Music (apparently, someone found out that one of Pink Floyd’s albums had some funny musical coincidences with the plot of the movie).
At around 10 p.m., we decided to go out to a bar called “Maloney’s†which was about a 5 minute walk from Dhevan’s apartment and have some drinks. It was a pretty nice place with a wooden bar and lots of TV screens (it was one of these “sport barâ€Â-type places). The funny thing was that they played a real weird mix of music… like songs from every genre and time… first “Bloody Sunday†by U2, followed by “Miami†by Will Smith, then some country song followed by the Dire Straits. Seriously, who picked out the DJ for that night??? It was funny though.
We went back to Dhevan’s apartment later, had some beer and mike’s hard lemonade and watched “Alice in Wonderlandâ€Â… oh, that movie is so lovely :) I hadn’t seen it in a long time and really enjoyed it. In the meantime, the guys were falling asleep on the floor and I finished the movie and then had the privilege to sleep on Dhevan’s bed [he has this tiny little studio apartment and the only couch he has is really small].
Saturday morning, we went out for breakfast at “Headlines!†– a very typical American breakfast place- which apparently was really popular with students, because it was packed. We were lucky and got three seats at the counter.
Afterwards, Jon went to a Barber Shop to get a nice haircut [as some of you have noticed from the last photos, he had grown out his hair lately, but he really needed a haircut now]. It looks so nice :)
Since Jon and Aaron are planning to move down to Westwood/West LA in about a month, we decided to start looking for some apartment complexes in the area. I had looked up some places on the Internet at Dhevan’s place and then we went there to check them out. Even though the websites said that manager offices would be open till 5 p.m. on Saturdays, we had no luck and most of the manager offices were closed. At least we could have a look at the apartments from the outside.
It is insane what they charge for a 1-Bedroom apartment in L.A. :( We have a very nice 2-Bedroom apartment in Sacramento right now and we pay $800 per month for it. In LA you have to expect almost twice as much for a 1-Bedroom aparment (and some of them not even very nice). I really hope we’ll be able to find something nice that will be affordable.
Since we couldn’t really do much more on Saturday regarding the apartment hunt, we decided to drive back to Ventura around 4 p.m. and went to see Jon’s friend Ian.
We went out for some Mexican food for dinner and then rented a movie and hung out at his place.
Sunday we went to the beach for a while, because the weather was just gorgeous. Nice and sunny (a little windy maybe) and I know that I am going to make you jealous with this ;)
We also visited “the old folksâ€Â, as Jon’s Mom likes to put it ;) Jon’s Grandad and his great-aunt and -uncle live in the same assisted living place in Ventura. His Great-aunt and -uncle just moved there recently from Long Beach, since it was getting harder and harder for Jon’s parents to take care of them down there (Long Beach is -depending on the traffic – a 2-3 hour-drive from Ventura). It’s so much better now to have them close by and hey were so happy to see us :) It’s amazing how you can makes someone’s day by just paying them a short visit!
Jon and I went to the beach again in the late afternoon to enjoy the sunset. It was beautiful!
We had a nice dinner with Jon’s parents last night and hung out and talked. We started talking about some arrangements for the wedding in Germany in May… Jon’s parents are both looking forward to going to Europe and having this wedding so much :) It’s going to be great!
I am not quite sure what Jon and I will be doing today. We had planned to drive down to LA again and look for aparmtents, but then we realized that it is “Martin Luther King’s Day†today and the management offices won’t be open :( Oh well, I guess that means we “have to spend†a lazy day in Southern California and maybe even go to the beach again *lol* I know, life is hard! ;)