Merry Christmas!

Slightly crap picture. But note the (melting) ice shards in the window.

Dinner. I think my favourite part was the orange juice.

First view of LA from the plane! Look at how noughts-and-crosses the city is sprawled out!

Lunch.Who serves dried fish with coleslaw-type salad? and just look at that grey-ish chicken. And pickled radish in the packet. Yummo.

It's still Christmas in LA :) Sydney is 19 hours in the future. I'm at a Yum Cha restaurant in L.A right now. A cool restaurant with an awesome view that has free wi-fi. Yup, you heard right. I came all the way from china only to eat chinese food again. I met up with my mums cousin and my great uncle, still in LA becausewe stopped on the way for lunch. I'm bit jetlagged because technically it's like 3 am in the morning right now in shanghai and I got no sleep on the plane too so yeah...customs in shanghai went relatively smoothly (I had to take off my shoes for them to scan, but it wasn't too bad). It was a 10 and half hour flight instead of 12 and a half hours because it's a nice clear day today. I love the weather here. It's at least 25 degrees and the sky is a gorgeous blue. I've included a picture of the view from the restaurant. To be honest, so far LA is like Sydney, not much of cultural difference. I really want a shower, so hopefully we'll head home soon. I'm full from Yum Cha and a bit dazed from lack of sleep I think.

By the way, I know Juliet and Georgia had negative experiences at the LA airport but mine wasn't too bad. They're really patriotic. huge sign with 'welcome to america' and obama's picture underneath. I was just thinking if there was one in Australia with Julia guillard's picture, it'd probably get egged or something. Anyways, as I said, America security was surprisingly...untight for me. I guess when you have an Australian passport amongst a sea of Chinese passports whose owners are more likely to bring stuff like herbal medicine or something, it decreases suspicion. It was pretty awesome though, I brought in food (pickled radish from dinner, chips and more) and everything without declaring it. My uncle was right, they never checked when I ticked 'no food' on the declaration card. Saves time. But the customs card was confusing to fill in when they asked you the value of the goods you're bringing. I just wrote something like 50 dollars, but thankfully they didn't think me an illegal hobo. The worst thing was I had to line up forever at the immigration counter. They were soooo slow.

I didn't get a person to escort me this time for some reason,so I didn't get to jump the queues through the 'express lane' and my seat was lame-ish. Still a window seat, but I had a middle-aged (but non creepy) guy next to me. Food was even worse than last time, boo. I watched half of 'Just Go With It' (that crap movie we watched about the plastic surgeon in Hawaii, remember?) and half of 'The Secret Life of Bees'. I had to squint to make out the tiny TV's they have at the front of the plane, so it was no fun.

Now I'm at the house. My mum's cousin's house is amazing. It is like, totally HUGE. Huger than any house I've been to in my entire life. My grandpa was definitely exaggerating, though. They definitely have 4 bedrooms, not 8. I am sharing the master bedroom with my mum's cousin (I ignored her at the airport, haha because I didn't think it was her, I expected her to look older. She looks in her 20s and she's really cool and awesome, I think she went to high school in LA or something. Her two kids are easygoing too). She can understand Shanghainese but doesn't speak it. So it's really weird speaking to a relative in English. The bedroom I am staying in is huge, though. Like, giant walk-in closet,cool balcony,study area, and the ensuite bathroom thing is like, bigger than my bedroom at home. It's got a huge spa bath, a waterfall shower and a separate room for the toilet.Believe me, after my Uncle's shower where the water is smaller than the trickle of water from my kitchen tap, I deserve to rave about this bathroom! The piano is a bit lame though, but not too bad.Not as bad as the one in China for sure! I think there's a thing with America and big houses. Technically, I'm not in LA right now, more like Moorpark which is a little town on the outskirts of LA. The internet here is AWESOME. It's faster than my Uncle's, even. And it's wi-fi! But it might have a usage limit.Yay, I can access blogger from firefox again!

Annoyingly odd American english differences:
-It's forever cellphone this, cellphone that. CALL IT A MOBILE, for God's sakes!
-I was waving around an empty bottle and said something like, 'where's the bin' and my mum's cousin stares at me blankly and then she's like, 'oh, you can throw that in the trashcan'. So yeah, trashcan instead of bin. Got to remember that.

 

View from the restaurant