It Never Rains in Southern California...Unless It Does

For reference about the title.

So work shipped me out to Los Angeles for our Student Convention, which kinda made me feel like a big deal. Also, they told me I was going to go back in August but no one mentioned it again until like January, so I wasn't really sure if that was the truth or not.

We have a national convention in June that's a really big deal.  This convention is smaller, and much newer--this was only the second year. So it was cool to watch it all happen and help out a little with the planning.

I flew out Friday morning from the airport that's only one metro stop away.  It was way more convenient than when I came home in October and flew through Baltimore.  The flight was pretty whatever. No food and no movie. But I guess that's standard these days?

Then, when we got to LA we had to start working IMMEDIATELY. I was in charge of helping the students get on the shuttle to UCLA's law school. It seemed like a shitty job because I just had to wait at the hotel and miss all the actual events. I definitely had my crabby pants on when they told me that but it turns out it was kinda fun! I got to talk to a lot of law students and it was pretty stress free. Definitely exhausting though.

So by the time I showed up to dinner I was tired. We ate with some law students. They were all a little confused what I actually do at ACS, which makes sense. We finished up around 8:00ish and headed back to the hotel and all grabbed a drink together. It was a crazy long day. I was up from 6:00am to 12:30am without many breaks--I mean I guess besides flying. And we had to be dressed and pretty in the lobby by 7:00am. So I slept like a rock in my king size bed. I realized this was the first time I stayed in my own hotel room!

After work selfie

The next day I ran the shuttle in the morning and showed up mostly on time to the event.  We had ordered an absurd amount of breakfast so I ate a ton of that. I spent most of the day Friday being hungry so I tried to fill up when possible.

This time though I got to sit in on a lot of panels too! Most of them were about Brown v. Board of Education which I don't know a ton about, but was interesting nonetheless. 

This is my boss, the President, giving a speech.

Then after lunch we did "break out trainings" that all revolved around an immigration case.  This is the Singh Family and the father's fight against deportation.  The father is the one in the back row in the striped sweater and when he told the convention about his family's issue, he started to cry and eventually had most of the auditorium in tears. It was really emotional especially because his children were sitting in the front row and his wife is right next to him.

Then the Convention wrapped up and we cleaned up and went out to dinner. Well all the important people went to fancy dinner. Me, James, and Samantha went out and did our own thing. Then we came back to the hotel and had a few drinks. I had two big glasses of wine and felt pretty tipsy. We also had to be up at 9:00 to leave for the airport/go get our rental car.

The rental car thing went really well! I guess maybe I'm just cynical but I was expecting the rental car company to try and screw us over because we're young and relatively clueless but the whole thing worked out!

Then Sam and I went off to the Getty Center. We stopped first to have weird brunch at this really empty restaurant. The Getty looks like this:

And you get to go up this cool little tram thing. I think it was partially because Sam was trying to rush through it, but I don't think the Getty had like a lot of stuff I hadn't see before? Like between the DIA, Greenfield Village, and all the fancy French museums I've been to, it takes a little more than some photographs and dressers to impress me! Here are some highlights:

After the museum we decided to go find our hotel. It was a little far away from the museum. And everything in LA is like annoying to get to. Either you have to wait for forever on the highway, or you have to take a kajillion back roads. We went the backroads way because it's more scenic.

We found our hotel. It was Japanese themed. So...that was...nice, I guess? We also had the weirdest room set up ever.  We were sharing a bed because that's way cheaper and the hotel apparently thought that our bed needed to be on this weird platform in the center of the room. Also the hotel was close to the highway and kinda loud. But...when you're cheap like we were, you don't get to complain much. After we relaxed a little we decided to go to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).


LACMA was cool. It was definitely a "hipper place to be" with a lot of big exhibits. This was this cool imaginary city thing made out of like grown up legos or something!

They had a soccer exhibit Zack would have liked. I don't know soccer well enough to be crazy pumped, but there was a lot of mixed media cool pictures. And I think I like that better than random old paintings. Maybe if someone cultured me more I'd appreciate art museums more.

Samantha pretending to be a model

Then we wandered into the Diane Von Furstenberg exhibition about the wrap dress. I didn't know it/she was such a big thing! It was a really cool exhibit with tons of mannequins wearing dresses and her face EVERYWHERE. Lots of patterns, lots of everything.



Then outside there's a bunch of cafes and light posts. We took pictures there. I guess it's from No Strings Attached, a movie I haven't seen. But I guess that's cool. Maybe I'll watch it and just know that I've seen the

If I'm honest, I'm probably the boy and Samantha is probably the girl.

Then we were crazy hungry because all we'd had that day was chocolate chip pancakes. So we went back the hotel and walked to this kinda sketchy burrito place. So I was pretty happy about that, but it upset Samantha's tummy. The burrito life definitely isn't for everyone, but it's definitely for me.

We decided to go to this fancy restaurant that Samantha's boss recommended for us. It's up really high so you can see the entire LA skyline from there! We were too excited about it to remember to take pictures, so you'll just have to trust me, I guess. Also, getting there required we pretty much drive right through the Oscars, so that was fun, but a little nerve wracking.

Then we went to bed super early because we were pretty beat from all the long days at convention.

In the morning we got up and had the hotel restaurant's interpretation of "American breakfast."  It was really just mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs with sausage links. It was free though so I guess you don't get to complain too much.

Can you see the tiny hollywood sign? No?

Then we went hiking! Wooo! It was a pretty steep climb, but not too long so it was mostly good. Only got out of breath a few times. And it was really pretty going up:

HERE IT IS!

 Also, there were all these crazy people RUNNING up the hills. Like it was a hard hill to just walk up, let alone run. Also, this was at like 10:00am on a Monday. Don't you work?! But I guess people say that about California...

 Then we got to the top. There's an observatory. It's closed on Monday, but I don't know that I would really like an observatory anyway? I didn't take astronomy like some members of CART who are now experts. It made for pretty pictures at least!

Hollywood Hills selfie! 

When we got down the car again we decided to go to Hollywood. I'd been trying to tell Samantha nicely that Hollywood kind of sucks. I don't want to be a spoilsport because no one likes that, but Hollywood got me real down the last time I went and I wanted to warn her.  Luckily she agreed after walking around a little. Here are some pictures of stars I took. I mean...there's not much else to say about them...and you kind of get numb to them after a few blocks...

MY NEIGHBOR

When we got to the end we realized the Oscar statue was still up from the night before! Again, I didn't get a picture of it, so you'll just have to trust me.  Also, the saddest part of Hollywood Boulevard is when you get to the characters that don't quite look like the people they're impersonating but are begging you to pay them for pictures. Think this:

We had been walking a long time so we drove to the Venice Beach to hang out and look for some food. Venice beach is funky. A little dirty. A little sketchy. But pretty cool. It's like a super long board walk with like 4 medical marijuana clinics, lots of those stores that sell those drug rags, and some weird people.

We stopped to get pizza, french fries, and milkshakes because we were super hungry and pretty much felt like we deserved it after that hike and the walk around Hollywood. Pretty much all of that sucked. I've never had a bad milkshake before and didn't think it was possible. But, it was definitely a bad milkshake that was mostly milk. Whatever. I guess there's a first for everything.

Then we walked and Samantha realized that she hadn't actually ever put her feet in the Pacific Ocean. It wasn't actually that nice of a day and I was wearing tennis shoes and socks so I let her do that solo and took this picture of her so she can commemorate the experience.

Venice beach is about ten minutes from Santa Monica so we decided to drive over there too while we were at it.  They have this pier thing that has a hundred roller coasters and amusement park games crammed onto one tiny pier.  My boss said she really likes it there so I kind of wanted to go in case she asked me about it.

We didn't ride the ferris wheel, but we probably should have. We were kinda tired at this point and just wandered through the pier pretty quickly before heading to the actual beach. Of course no one was swimming so we just wandered down and saw all the seaweed and collected a couple seashells.

Also Cirque du Soleil was there! Too bad we didn't know ahead of time/too bad tickets to that are crazy expensive. So we just settled on a beach selfie and went home. It took a long time to get home. LA sucks that way--you have to drive, you have to wait in traffic, and you have to pay for parking. That's like all the benefits of the city gone!

So the plan was to just rest for a little bit and then get dinner. Except...Samantha fell asleep at like 7:30. So I felt awkward and waited around for her to wake up. And she just didn't...and i was getting really hungry. So I did something I haven't done since I went to Geneva--I went and sat at a restaurant alone! I forgot how different it is. It's kinda fun, but it's a little scary. Good thing nobody in the restaurant was cool. I would've felt lamer.

The food itself was pretty whatever. But, I guess you can't complain too much about a hotel restaurant, you know?

In the morning we woke up, fought LA traffic, returned our rental car, and got on the plane!

Conclusions from this trip:

• Most law students seem pretty nice--no one too stressed or too pretentious
• LA doesn't usually seem to worth it. All the benefits like the entertainment business is lost of on me.
• A 3 hour time change is a lot! It's hard to talk to people on the East Coast when you're out there!
• I like king size beds. I want to have one when I'm a grown up.