First stop, California!

Amber and I stayed with my cousin Denise and her husband Jeffery in LA for 4 days and 3 nights. Their place was exceedingly comfortable and their hospitality terrific! The weather wasn't so fantastic though with storms keeping the temperature at around 45 degrees fahrenheit. We did many cool things.

Staying at Denise' meant we could afford a rental(Toyota Matrix) for the time we were there. On day 1 we went to 'The Grove' which was a typical America outdoor mall which I would have enjoyed way more if it wasn't so wet and chilly. It had great outdoor jazz music as part of the shopping experience. We were to later buy our Macbook Pro from one of its outlets here. Bodhi Tree bookshop was on my 'must see' list so this was our next stop-over. It was a small shop and I was amazed at how many books could fit in there. Prices were cheap, and I loved all the books, but it was all also very overwhelming as the aisles were narrow, it was busy, and my stomach was grumbling. So we left after about half and hour but I was satisfied that I had actually come to see it. I had first heard of this bookshop when i was checking out Oprah's online class 'A New Earth' with Eckhard Tolle. That's a tick in the box of one of my 'must-sees' in LA.

Day 2. Denise makes us scrambled eggs on toast, and we're off to Universal Studios.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it felt like a completely place than the Universal Studios I had

visited when I was a teenager.

The start of day 3 was literally a spiritual experience. On the top of my priority list was to visit Agape Spiritual Centre who is led by Michael Beckwith(a co-author in the book 'The Secret'). He's the cool dude with the dreadlocks. Anyway, I was drawn to this church and Michael when I saw him on a youtube video talking about his practice of Vipassana, and I thought it was very interesting that he preached in church and practiced meditation. On top of that, Sheri, my older cousin drove in from Irvine the day before and decided to come with us to "worship". She's a 7th day adventist, and I was a little concerned how she would feel about paintings of buddha and other 'new age' images up on the walls of this church and the 30minute silent meditation that preceded the service. I think she thoroughly enjoyed it as did I. I was so great as we never could have imagined being in church together at 630am on sunday. This is my first real experience of being with Sheri, and truly one of my best moments in LA.

We decide to spend the last day of our stay at Venice beach, buying our Merrell 'adventure' shoes and our Macbook Pro. We must have spent close to 5 hours just on the road figuring our way to the beach and back. Traffic is crazy in LA and I don't miss it one bit. I couldn't see myself living there spending so much time in a car just doesn't make any sense. Here are some pictures on the Venice and Santa Monica beach which I PROMISE is much nicer during the summer.

So that BRIEFLY sums up our 4 days in LA. I feel our time was well spent with the main purpose of spending time with my cousins. I am disappointed we didn't get to meet Hasian up in San Francisco even though I was tempted to make that drive up for a day or so. There will be a next time. Looking forward to it Hasy!

We leave Denise and Jeffrey's at 9pm on a monday evening after cooking dinner for them to catch our flight to San Jose via Panama City. We head eagerly for the airport to arrive at a rather unfriendly COPA Airways check-in desk.