Sunshine, Food Trucks, and Drives

Today I was chatting with a guy sitting next to me in class right before discussion started and I was talking about the weather [haha I'm lame but nice weather is an actual conversation!]. Anyway, I was just telling him about how I really wanted to just be outside and have summer already because sunshine is such a tease! Anyway, at that moment, he looked at my TA and asked if we could have discussion outside. My TA looked around at the room [only half of us were in attendance] and then said "we'll have discussion outside if five more people show up." After a few minutes, five people randomly trickled in. YAY! So we had discussion out on the grass outside. I think this has made my week. I guess simple things really make me happy...sitting on the grass in the sunshine + banh mi = a lovely date :)

A recap of random things in my life since my last post...

I went to my first food truck in LA!!! I was actually intending on finding a truck called Phamish because I was craving Vietnamese food SOOO badly, but they weren't there near USC like their website said they would be =/ No worries, I ended up eating at Bull Kogi, and just had a bowl. It was just okay...I want to try the original Kogi truck though!

Hehe so Asian...they had plastic trash cans [more like buckets] flipped upside down for you to sit on right where the lunch truck was.

Last weekend I got picked up by a friend to go eat dinner in Westwood, and I was telling him a fairly lengthy dramatic story. The next thing I know, I look around and think "wait...I don't recognize this...this isn't how you get to Westwood..." Well, I guess he wasn't paying attention to driving cause of my story and we ended up taking the 10 all the way to Santa Monica, and then ended up on the 1. After a few miles going on the 1, I was like "we should turn back!" but there were no places to make a legal u-turn so I suggested that we turn right onto a small street and then turn around. We ended up randomly turning onto Topanga [Canyon Rd.] which is basically a winding mountain road that was rather dangerous and not exactly ideal to u-turn, especially with cars tailgating us due to the lack of horsepower in the hybrid we were in which was struggling to drive up the mountain. Anyway, using the fabulous technology of 3G, I used my phone to figure out where we were and decided to just keep going through Topanga state park.

I'm so glad we decided to drive through Topanga State Park. Some of you may have already heard me bitch [excuse my language] about how much I hate LA [well I don't hate it, but the Bay Area is just better on an infinite number of levels. hella.]. But seriously, I concluded on my flight back to LA at the end of winter break that Los Angeles is just a desolate flattened grid of grey poured concrete and steel. At the sight below me with 7 minutes till landing, I finally saw this massive patch of green. I got superrr excited and was like "Wow a large park!!! I need to find this place!" We flew lower and lower and finally flew over it and I realized it was actually a cemetery and I could actually see a funeral going on. -_________- shattered dreams much?

Anyway, back to driving through Topanga. It's a little north of Santa Monica, and I never realized I could escape the city. I was so happy! We stopped by a liquor store [for a snack] and the owner of the store was telling us about how about 200 feet up the road, we could make a left onto a street called Fernwood[?] and at the first and only stop sign, make a right and go up around 8 miles. At the top, supposedly, is the best view of just the city and the ocean...we didn't go because a hybrid car would die, but I will be checking that out once I have a car in the next few years! :) We kept driving through and passed through a small town called Topanga. It was really cute!!! Ah, to live up there is like the perfect retirement...huge nice houses and secluded from the city.

Proof that we were in Topanga! haha

Okay, so I saw this RANDOM flying pig just on the side of the road and I demanded that we pull over so that I could take a picture. Haha :)

Eventually we made it to the other side of the mountain and you can take a slight right to a vista point and it was absolutely fantastic. The view of the city lights is just incredible and Priya's Hill pales in comparison. Hmmm, but I've never been to Hunter's point back home so I can't compare it to Hunter's.

So we took a 2 hour detour and made it back to Westwood around 10? 11? and had a very late dinner. The End!