So. It's 12 30 am on Tuesday morning in LA. Or 7 30 pm on Tuesday night in NZ. At 3 30 am on monday morning I was up and at em to get to the airport by 4, and haven't slept since. I've been awake for 40 hours!
Here's a little taste of whats been going down over the last 40 hours..
So.
Flights:
Woke up with the family at a little motel in Mangere, 5 min away from the airport. Went and checked in then we all sat up in the food court. Drank my last flat white and played some MD with nick. We all had a great time laughing at ben after his performance at my 21st!! Then said goodbye and got in the plane to Brisbane, customs in NZ is mean because its quick as. Flight was all good, rickety old plane with no entertainment, you had to pay for water haha! had a few hours in Brisbane so changed some money for lunch. After the 4 dollar fee to change my money, my 20 NZ dollars got me 10 dollars and fifty five cents australian! just enough for a chicken sub and some internet time :) Then straight onto LA. Got ticketed in a exit row seat which was BAD. ASS. Heaps of leg room, and 3 seats between me and this hippy dude from melbourne on his way to the burning man festival. Didn't sleep on the plane. Watched a crap ton of sit-coms on the pull out computer and before I knew it was 6 am in LA and we were touching down!!
American Customs:
Myself and about 300 other travelers all came to the customs desks at the same time. I don't know why but there was like 3 customs officers taking about 5 min per person to process all of us. You could see a group of maybe 7 or 8 other customs officers all on smoke-o. SO TOKEN. I'm pretty sure they were eating doughnuts ahahaha! Anyway they eventually got to work. I don't know how but I ended up being one of the last to process, and when I got to the counter they said I needed to fill out another form, so I had to go fill it out, meanwhile another 300 travelers came out to go through customs and I ended up right at the back of the line AGAIN. Long story short two hours later I was walking out of there with a smile on my face! To be greeted by my friend Cody!
LA:
Cody and I got straight into catching up where we'd left off about a year and a half ago when he left NZ, we hit traffic on the way into LA because it was 9 o'clock by the time we got on the freeway. First thing I noticed was the heat! It felt like Tauranga in Febuary. Such a perfect sunny day. First thing I did when we got to the car was walk straight up to the drivers door thinking it was the passenger side ahaha stuck in my kiwi ways. After about an hour of navigating our way through LA we made to Hollywood to Cody's friend Bianca's apartment. We came in and crashed the living room with all my stuff, and a little later Bianca woke up for introductions. Bianca is a bubbly girl (she reminds me a lot of Layce) from Phoenix originally, living in LA and working at the disney studio doing something I don't really understand. After driving round in her car all day I assume its probably just hanging out with demi and miley because it was all we listened to haha she played us some of her friends songs and one of her songs which was really really great! One of her friends Chase is a talented producer who records these EPIC pop tunes in his bedroom. SO professional! It puts our garageband demos to shame in a big way haha!
We left her apartment and went up this hill where we got this epic view of the Hollywood sign and as much of LA as you could see. It was a beautiful clear day but there was so much pollution that the city was covered in this sort of haze. LA is HUGE! We took some photos and then cruised to this cafe called 'Aroma'. I told the barista at the cafe how to make a flat white and ordered a taco. Check out the photo. You know your in america when you order a taco and they bring you a giant mixing bowl sized taco filled to the brim with mexican!! And a coffee 3 times the size of one from NZ. After lunch we headed out to this guy Chases's house where Cody was gonna play mandolin on a recording for chases uncle mike. This beautiful country song, Cody slayed the mando parts! I'll put up a link to the song when its finished.
From there we cruised to this frozen yoghurt place called yoghurt land, all these crazy different flavours and extra toppings. They had a taro flavor!!! for all the bros haha. they even had a pistachio nut flavour.. weird. And you pay by the weight of it. pretty tasty! Then we hit up the hollywood strip which was pretty cool, I couldn't really find any of the stars I wanted to see like john lennon or bob dylan.. i did get some photos with chuck norris's one, david bowies one, and with the everly brothers one.. there was this dude there who was posing as michael jackson and he looked freakishly like him! super plastic face aha. And a dude dressed up as a transformer!?!? so weird. He didn't transform when I asked him to. Then we hit up in and out burger. They have 3 burgers, ham, cheese and double cheese. The small drink was the size of a large one back home. and its like under 5 bucks for a combo! So sick.
We went from there back to Chases house for a jam, we played a mumford and sons song with all four of us singing, me, cody, chase and bianca. Raddest harmonies! So sick.. Then just came back here to the apartment. I really hit a wall today at about 3 o'clock. Felt SO tired. So I had this little energy drink about the size of one of those V pocket rockets.. It was called 5 hour energy. Flip it worked! As soon as i took a sip I felt so energised, it started messing with my brain too, I think I went a bit crazy. So anyways that's partly to blame for me still being awake.
Heres some photos from the day!
