The past week.
Man oh man was vacation great. In contrast to the LJ cut, I shall list the experiences in reverse chronological order.
Brad picked me up from the airport on Tuesday cause he's a good friend. The whole situation was ridiculous because we arrived in the Quad Cities 30 minutes early. When I had gotten to the gate in Minneapolis, the flight attendant was yelling at me for being late -- though I had only gotten there 5 minutes after they started boarding.
My mom and I ate BBQ and delicious desert during my 3-hour layover in Minneapolis.
I left San Diego a little sad because I missed Aaron and would not see Rebecca or Pei Chi again any time soon. Just before she dropped me of at the airport, Pei Chi and I split a hot fudge sundae from the Ghiradelli place in down town -- delicious. For lunch we had gotten Mexican food -- apt as it was Cinco de Mayo in San Diego.
Monday was easily my favorite day of vacation. Before bed, we ate ice cream in our wet swimsuits; swimsuits that were only wet because we had worn them *into* the pool, but not while *in* the pool :). I was nervous because it was my first time skinny-dipping, but the heated pool was inviting and I decided to get over myself and my insecurities.
Dinner was delicious -- we had hobo dinners, that is, the type of food where you throw everything together randomly into some tin foil and cook it over the fire. While waiting for dinner, Rebecca whipped out her guitar and the three of us started singing folk tunes, camp tunes, choir tunes (even some Christmas tunes that we knew harmonies too). Eating with Rebecca (a vegetarian) had been fine for 4 days, but I purchased hamburger along with our many veggies for our coming dinner that night. We had stopped at the store just after hiking to get groceries.
The hike back down the mountain was much easier than the way up, and I was just happy to get back to the car.
I was sad to leave the view, but time was running short and PC and her height demon wasn't doing so well.
Looking over the valley beneath the mountain, I felt so refreshed, so accomplished, so exhausted, and so happy. "Suicide Rock" was the name of our destination -- a bit of a misnomer (go GRE word!) given that most of our hike was on area steep enough to kill you, and suicide rock wasn't even an especially large drop off.
For about 1/3 of the trip I must have looked like a fish out of water the way I was gasping for air. Hiking up was especially difficult for me -- I was neither accustomed to the elevation nor the walking. I knew going into our hike that I may struggle a bit -- I warned my friends and they said they were comfortable going slow.
Sunday evening I felt like such an idiot because I got dehydration and had to skip dinner & "Slumdog Millionaire". We arrived at Rebecca's camp and immediately went swimming, much to the dismay of the three un-supervised korean children.
The morning was amazing - we went down and walked along the Pacific Ocean watching birds chase the waves and letting ourselves be enveloped by sand.
Saturday evening was filled with delicious homemade pizza and conversation. Legoland was a lot of fun -- though we were all too tall for the rides. We ate crepes at the farmer's market, and I found it funny that PC the French major had never heard of crepes before.
I woke up Saturday morning, opened the door to Pei-Chi's room, only to find Rebecca and Pei Chi sitting on the floor, eating a cake directly off the platter for breakfast.
Pei-Chi and Rebecca had gotten me an Oreo cake, and after we reached Pei-Chi's car we decided to eat it right then and their with our fingers. I had arrived in San Diego late Friday evening: excited to be there, but sad that Aaron would not be in the Quad Cities when I returned.
In other news, yesterday I locked myself out of my apartment with my cell phone contained therein. The fiasco ended with Brad and I going to Ace Hardward to rent a ladder, walk it a mile to my house, set it up, and break into my window. Solid.
Saw Star Trek. I thought it was enjoyable -- not the best movie ever, and I can understand some of the qualms that Jenna had (I had my own with the Budweiser and Nokia product placement...grrr), but still enjoyable nonetheless. There was one portion where I may have been...a bit loud with laughter. C'est la vie....that is me.