Place: My room, (Wattle Park)
Weather: Cold
Mood: Reminiscent
I came back from the United States a couple of weeks ago.
I was there for a month to visit Levon and meet his family. I had the time of my life.
His parents were so friendly to me. I felt like I was part of the family straight away!
Their home was beautiful. They lived on top of a hill at Pismo beach that overlooks both the mountains and the beach.
The time that Levon and I had was fun and very revealing with the fact that we are both definitely in love and compatible.
We had serious talks about how to progress our relationship. There's no doubt the next few years will be hard still being apart but we can see the end of the long distance relationship now. We're going to make it work.
USA is a pretty awesome country (but I've only been in California and Washington). However, Australia wins hands down for being a better country to live in.
I'll go through what I did in the States.
His parents took me to some of their favourite places to dine. My first impression on American food was they were overwhelmingly huge! Take away...or should I say "food to go" was a constant term used in post-dining out experiences.
Went skydiving with Levon and his mother. There's really nothing to be afraid of with Skydiving. It was the most amazing thing ever and the view was absolutely stunning! I'd definitely do it again and highly recommend it with EVERYONE!
Levon and I flew up to Washington to meet his extended family and friends. Washington is amazingly beautiful and green. I met his family up in Lacey and his friends in Olympia and Tumwater. I fell in love with his cousin, Daniel's Border Collie x Australian Shepherd named Mika. I spoke Cantonese to his aunt Maggie and his grandmother. It was a riveting experience. We watched a baseball game in Tacoma and went up the Space Needle and Pikes Markets in Seattle. It was a very inviting and laid back place. Besides the dismall weather, it was a wonderful place to be.
San Francisco is a colourful city in every sense of the word. It has colourful buildings, colourful culture, and the language they used was also colourful.
Yosemite Valley was more beautiful than I could imagine. We had an awesome tour guide named Karen who was genuinely very friendly and excited to be our tour guide. She knew what she was doing and she really wanted us to have a good time. It was nice meeting the other campers too. There were two Kiwis, a British family, and a fellow Australian. I took about 700 photos in the valley. The views were breath-taking. The hikes were hard but we did ourselves proud at the end (even though we were unable to walk without wincing in pain for a couple of days after).
Monterey & Carmel was probably beautiful if it wasn't for the appalling weather and tour guide. The tour guide loved the sound of his own voice and spoke of nothing of interest. He even described toilets...or should I say "restrooms".
We headed back to Pismo Beach just to relax from all the touring we did. I met a lot of his parents' friends for 4th of July and witnessed spectacular fireworks and the patriotism of American residents.
The last leg of my journey involved going back down to the LA area. We first went to Disneyland for 14 hours trying to do as much as we can. It was undoubtedly fun even though I didn't really have an interest to go in the first place. All the rides, shops, costumes were very finely done with an uncanny, exceptional attention to detail.
I met up with my friend Catherine who was an exchange student a couple of years ago. It was good to catch up with her. She showed me around Huntington Beach and the South Coast Shopping mall. We chatted and reminisced about Australia.
The last day involved seeing the Hollywood sign, walking the star walk down Hollywood Boulevard, and killing time in a bowling alley before my flight.
Levon and I held each other for an hour crying at the airport...
I stopped by in Melbourne before heading home to spend time with Rebecca and her family. It was good to see William all grown up. The last time I saw him (besides before going to the US) was about a year ago when he was just a few days old! It was so nice to spend time with the Colliers and just do fun things with them like baking, watching movies, playing Munchkin and going out to nice places for food.
I'm pretty sad to be back. Back to reality. Back to depressing Adelaide, and university.
If possible, I'd turn back time and re-live my month in the USA to be with Levon in a heartbeat...it sucks suddenly being alone and without him again...
I have the future to look forward to though, and now I just have pleasant memories and a couple of thousand photos. One thing is for certain...he is in my future and we love each other. I guess that's all that matters.
Time finished: 01:17
Mood: Content
