vacation: days 3-5 - san fran & fremont

day 3 - san fran (saturday april 28 2007)

Saturday morning began bright and early - we headed up from San Jose to Fremont to catch the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from Fremont at 8:30ish. We grabbed some bagels along the way, clambered on the train, and headed into the city. We decided to hit up the shops in Chinatown first. We were scheduled to meet with some of my online friends from a forum at 11:00, so we meandered around for the time leading up to it. My friends were a bit late (about an hour because of construction and traffic issues), but showed up and we went to dim sum at a Chinese place with them. I think Salad will have to meta-post on this in the comments for a more in-depth or American look at Chinatown, because I grew up visiting my mom's family in the Chinatown in Brooklyn (I'm half Chinese). It was fun and reminiscent of other times, but mostly unremarkable to me. A bit touristy (read: very touristy). After dim sum we went intoa few more shops, then ran off to catch a bus. In the ensuing hulabaloo, my online friends got ditched, leaving me in a bit of a sour mood, and we headed off to Ghirardelli Square. We got the free chocolate, then walked down to Fisherman's Wharf, walked along the water area to Pier 39 where we saw a dock full of sea lions (which I brilliantly called mountain lions while bragging to Bob about being in the middle of San Fran), and took a rail thing over to Union Square. We hit up another Rasputin (Hidden was bent on getting that last DVD of an anime he liked), then caught the BART back to Fremont and the car. Dinner was Panera (mmm Panera), we went shoe shopping for Vanessa, and headed down to the third (and final) Rasputin (where Hidden still failed to find the last DVD). Then off to bed again.

day 4 - fremont (sunday april 29 2007)

Sunday was amazing for me. Probably a little bit less so for Salad, but it might have been my favorite day of the vacation. Salad and I left early to get to church in Fremont. We made it in record time (I didn't know how much Sunday morning traffic to account for) and ended up at the chapel about 50 minutes early for the 9:00 sacrament meeting. We roamed the halls and I showed the wonders of huge California chapels to Salad (2 chapels, 1.5 gyms, 2 kitchens, 2 relief society rooms, an elevator to the 2nd floor with about 40 classrooms, 2 libraries, etc.). People started showing up, and I got some really classic double-takes. Now, I spent 15 months total in this ward. I was part of the ward. I loved the people there, and had gotten to know many of them on a fairly personal level. That said, I didn't expect too many people to remember me very vividly. It had been over a year, after all. Much to my surprise, pretty much everyone remembered me, and the outpouring of love was huge. I don't want to come across as prideful or conceited, but I was a dang good missionary in that ward, and the members knew it. Anyway, everyone would ask Salad if she sang before they'd ask anything else. I sang in Sacrament meeting in that ward probably no less than 13 times. The bishop even asked if I would be singing anything in the meetings, but we hadn't planned ahead for it, so I said no. As luck would have it (of course), the girl who was supposed to do the musical number ran in semi-frantic, saying that she couldn't play the song because she hadn't finished learning it. The first counselor turned to me (5 minutes before the start of church, mind you) and asked if I would be willing to sing. Who am I to turn down a coincidence in church? So I sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" almost straight from the hymnbook, and it was awesome.

The best part of sacrament meeting, though, was the involvement of some key individuals. One of my converts, who I baptized when he was 11, was preparing the sacrament. Another of my converts was passing the sacrament. One of the kids that I did new member discussions for and kept active was passing the sacament as well. And another kid that I did new member discussions for and that we kept very involved got his mission call that week. A bunch of my converts were there and strong, and most of my favorite members were there as well. One of my favorite converts made the trip up to Fremont specifically to see me, despite having moved to another area. It was amazing, the Spirit was so strong, and I was nearly moved to tears many times.

The rest of the meetings were fairly nondescript. We went to the Chinese Sunday school and I translated everything for Salad. Priesthood was surprisingly good (I forgot what good Priesthood meetings were like), even if I had to conduct the music for opening exercises (they have a sense of humor in Fremont). After church, the Chinese group put together a potluck dinner at one of the member's houses, so we headed over there and got to eat a sampling of much of the best Chinese food you can get. I got to sit down and talk to a lot of the people I missed so much, and even got to horse around with all the little kids that were off limits as a missionary.

After the potluck we hung out with some of the people and eventually took a nap on the couch. When dinnertime rolled around we went down to Cupertino, the other area I served in, to eat with the former branch mission leader. Apparently the little branch in which I started my mission, which had averaged about 30-35 members at sacrament meeting when I got there and had 45-50 when I left was averaging over 70 people a week, and they were considering moving it to another building and breaking its dependence on the English ward. Going back to my old stomping grounds was a huge booster for me - to see that the work had continued forward and that the people that I had worked so hard with were still strong was amazing to me.

day 5 - fremont revisited (monday april 30 2007)

Monday was probably really boring for Salad. For the late morning/early afternoon, we perused Asian stores, bought and ate Chinese pastries and a boba drink, had In-N-Out again, and kept ourselves busy. Around 2:00 we headed off to my favorite member's house for the rest of the day. I had done a lot of music with her and had baptized her three kids. We did a bunch of music (she played, I sang), I showed her a bunch of the recordings I'd done over the past 2 years, and she made my absolute favorite dinner, chinese beef noodles. It was just as good as I remembered. She also had some authentic Taiwanese pastries (brought from Taiwan that weekend by her husband) and some other Asian desserts and such. When we left that night, she sent us off with a box full of treats. From there we headed into San Jose to pick Hidden up from dinner, and we drove back to Utah. It was a very long drive back, but we got back in one piece and without incident.

It was a tiring trip, but so good for me. I loved it, and had a great time, and hope to be able to do something like it again next year. That's about it.

~drex

vacation: days 1&2 - driving & monterey

day 1 - driving (thursday 26 april 2007)

We started out as soon as Hidden was done with his last final. We left Provo at around 8:00PM (causing me to miss all of the 2-hour special of American Idol, grr). The drive was fairly uneventful. We cycled through drivers throughout the night/morning. I drove until we crossed the Nevada line, then passed out because I'm extremely adept at sleeping in moving vehicles. We made it through much of Nevada to Reno before I took my turn again, and I drove almost all the way through California before Hidden took over for the last 20 minutes or so (which I also slept through :P). After arriving in San Jose at Hidden's uncle's place (at around 7:00, if I remember correctly), we crashed on their air mattresses and floor and took naps for the rest of the morning. Although before we actually fell asleep, Salad had planted herself downstairs and was reading when Hidden and I heard raucous laughter coming from her direction. Salad, in her lack of sleep, had completely misread a word in her book: underfed. If you read "under-fed," give yourself a gold star. What she read was the past tense of "underf," meaning (now), to misread or mishear something. We were up again at around 12:30. One item of note at this time is that after awakening, Hidden and I were talking in the living room when a bird flew into the living room window. Bonk and a flurry of feathers later, we look out the window and don't see the bird until another bird flies in and starts feverishly pecking at it - it was stuck in the crosshatches of a chair on the porch. So here I am thinking that I'm seeing bird cannibalism before my very eyes, when the trapped bird gets free and I realize that was the point the entire time. Smart birds.

After that we went to In-N-Out for lunch (mmm...), went to Rasputin (a fantastic used CD etc store) and picked up some music and the first season of Duck Tales (woo woo!) on DVD (woohoo!), then headed to the Great Mall to try to find orange sunglasses and orange Converse hi-tops for Hidden (they had neither). We headed into downtown San Jose to pick up Salad's friend Vanessa and went out to Thai food for dinner (amazing). Then we rushed back to Hidden's cousins' high school to see their production of The Wiz. It wasn't bad, but didn't match up to Utah high school standards (I saw Orem High's production of Les Mis a few years back, and it was amazing). We did have a fun time trying to figure out if Hidden's cousin is straight (we don't think so) and making fun of some of the acting, though. After the play, we dropped Salad and Vanessa off (I think Salad was walking dead at that point) and Hidden and I visited one of his old friends from the mission. Hidden procured a car for Sunday and Monday so we could split up, and we went back to his uncle's house to sleep.

day 2 - monterey (friday 27 april 2007)

While we had originally planned to leave at around 6:30 to pick Salad up and head down to Monterey, Hidden's uncle talked us out of it, and we headed off at around 9:00 instead. We had a fairly uneventful trip down to Monterey, driving through some of Hidden's old stomping grounds and seeing all manner of fields of garlic, artichokes, and strawberries. Once in Monterey proper, we parked down aways from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row, then took a walk along the sidewalk for a while. Because Hidden and I had previously been to the Aquarium and hadn't been horribly impressed (either by the things to see or by the exhorbitant price), we skipped out on that. We ended up taking a few minutes at the small beach there, wetting our feet in the extremely cold Pacific and taking a bunch of pictures. Hidden almost had his flip-flops stolen by the ocean, Salad got freezing cold saltwater on freshly shaven legs, and I was mostly boring. At one point Hidden was writing Salad loves Drex in the sand, but the water came and washed it away. Glaring, Hidden spouted off "Boo, you whore!" at the ocean. We laughed. A lot.

We finished up there, picked up some sunscreen so Salad wouldn't burn too bad (haha yeah right) and headed off to 17-mile drive. The drive itself is beautiful enough, but we were also able to see some of the notable things along the way. We went through most of the stuff there, then spit ourselves out at Carmel. In Carmel we grabbed some food to go from a diner, then planted ourselves down along the beach. Two plus hours later we headed back to the car and up to visit one of Hidden's convert families for an authentic Mexican dinner. We also slowly began to realize the power of the California sun, as Hidden got some sweet tan lines, Salad burned all over (we told the family that she was radioactive), and I got the worst sunburn I've ever had on my legs (I don't burn often or easily, but I guess my legs got the brunt of it this time - by now they're finally fading into a tan). Dinner was fantastic (tacos like what), and we headed back to San Jose for boba drinks (smoothies with giant tapioca pearls - they're an Asian thing that's been big in Cali and elsewhere with Asian populations but that are picking up other places, too) with Vanessa. Then we headed off to sleep and prep for the next day: San Fran.

EDIT: Flickr Pictures! http://www.flickr.com/photos/8151244@N05/ (I think that's how it works)

vacation: day 0

So I've been swamped with papers, finals, work, moving apartments, cleaning the apartment, and now vacationing in California. I've been having a blast in Cali, but there's so much to talk about that I'm just giving a rough outline: 10-12 hour car ride, In-n-Out, Rasputin, trip to Monterey and sunburning on the beach in Carmel, carousing on the streets of San Fran, and whatever the heck I'm going to get accomplished between now and the end of the trip. It's been fantastic and very therapetuic, and tomorrow I get to go to church in the ward that I served 15 months of my mission in, and see a bunch of the people I worked with. I'm really really excited for that.

Sorry I'm going to leave it at that - I figured I ought to let everyone know what the heck was going on, and clue everyone into the fact that I have minimal time to get blogging done. :P Yay California!

~drex