Well, I’ve been back since Monday, like at 7 PM, but I was too tired and lazy to go straight online. I was also watching a whole bunch of movies yesterday and such. And cleaning up.

So here’s my basic review of my trip.

So on Saturday morning, we woke up at 5 something AM (horrible!) to get ready to go. I was deep asleep when someone turned on the lights and I bolted straight up and went “what the hell?!?!”… haha, I had 2 more minutes until my alarm went off.

The company was Chinese, but was affiliated with the Viet people, which is where my parents signed up, so they picked up the few Viet people at our station and went on to LA to pick up the rest of the people (huge majority of Chinese)… man, I always have the strangest tour guides. The one from Thailand was pervy, the one from Las Vegas/Grand Canyon always smacked his lips before each sentence. This one not only has really bad english (so I barely understood ANYTHING that came out of his mouth), but he repeats the ends of each sentence. Ex: “We are leaving at 2 o’clock 2 o’clock to go to the city hall city hall. It was so weird. Me and my sister kept laughing.

So anyway, we went to Solvang first, which is a town of 2 streets (which I think the tour guide said). It was designed after Denmark, so there were windmills and carriages. Also LOTS of souvenir stores. I only got one (overpriced) thing. Geez, my dad kept pressuring us to use the restrooms, so we had to go even when we didn’t need to.

Then a long trip to Hearst Castle. (Now owned by the state, but previously owned by William R. Hearst…) and GEEZ, it was huge and nice. The outside lawns and patio places were designed like ancient Rome and Greece, and the main building was like this gothic church, infused with medieval England and other stuff. The HUGE inside had Renaissance designs…not to mention an indoor pool. The only thing was that my parents kept going “it looks so old” in a bad way. Well of course it’s old! Like a hundred years at least! Antique stuff! Also, our tour guide there, a woman, was bitchy. Well, enough about that.

So we got to Fresno by dinnertime. Me and my sister ate Red Robin, but to make ourselves seem less tourist-y, we kept speaking in English really loudly, because sometimes I forget that we look like all of the other non-native tourists (asian). We were in the middle of eating in the “mall” (really different from ours. I don’t even think it’s considered a mall. Very small, not many stores, bad architecture) when they turned the lights off on us. Ugh… so we just stopped eating, though we didn’t finish (4 people can’t finish 2 meals). We got to our motel by nighttime. It was nyeh… the toilet didn’t work for a while, so we were all pissed. I’m always uncomfortable in foreign bathrooms.

The next day, we woke up at 4 AM (are you kidding me?!?!) and left to go to Yosemite. Geez, I slept on the bus so much that I missed probably the first 20 minutes of the ride through the park. Oh, just to give you a visual image of how the bus rides go: 2-3 hours from one place to another. Surrounded by strangers speaking Chinese. SO tired, and sleeping. Chair does not recline (sitting in almost 90 degree angle). Bus bumping around and swerving through hills. (especially at Yosemite). Head rolling, hitting the window, or falling into the aisle. People smell weird. Mouth opens while sleeping and you don’t know… just the gist.

So anyway, Yosemite is so beautiful. A lot of people slept through the whole thing (like my parents), but I stayed up to spot the huge Sequoias. There were creeks and cliffs and waterfalls. Nice… We went out twice. One was to hike. There were a whole bunch of squirrels, and who did I immediately think of? Well I took pictures of them. They were so cute! (which reminds me, on the way there, we passed a billboard that said something about saving or not killing the squirrels. ahem).

I was pissed there though, because instead of enjoying the gorgeous scenery, my family would rather spend their time posing for pictures. I mean, I understand that you want to make memories, but why would you waste all that time staring into the camera lens when instead you could look around at nature. It pisses me off so much! I was staring at the waterfall, checking out the creeks, and then I get interrupted to take pictures. Stupid!

So after that, we had a long ride to San Francisco. On the way, we stopped at a McDonalds to eat lunch. I feel so sorry for the native folks there, because here, a whole bunch of tourists were gonna make this huge line to order. Yeah…I tried to speak a lot of English then too. After that was done, we spent like hours in the bus and got to San Francisco!

A beautiful place. Very artsy and busy. We went to the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf (where I almost stepped in someone’s puke…gross). Then we took a tour around the city. Oh! if you watched the news, you’d see that it was Gay Pride Weekend there. Like 2-3 whole streets were FILLED with people. Loud rave-like music was blaring. It was awesome! My sister and I thought it looked so fun. (Other people on the bus seemed…less enthusiastic). So it got extremely cold (to me) by evening time. Fog covered the whole city. Then we traveled out of the city to stay at a hotel (so it was cheaper). That place was NICE! I slept so well. 

The next morning, Monday, we went back into San Francisco and visited Lombard St. (curviest street. Not to mention on a hill. We had to hike up. It was painful. I was also pissed there, because my family was lagging around, and by the time I got halfway up, they stopped way behind me, so I had to walk all the way down back to them. Good exercise). Then we went to Chinatown. It freaks me out, because our bus people are mainly Chinese, so it’s like nothing for them, but for us, we felt so left out. I mean, people in stores would speak Chinese to us and we had to respond back in English. 

Then we were done. Our drive back included a stop to eat lunch, so we ate at Taco Bell, but the funniest part was when we went outside and heard creepy horror movie music. Like murder music from Nightmare on Elm Street. It was so weird! It wasn’t only me, my sister heard it too. Do they play that kind of music on the radio? Is it being played omnisciently? We’ll never know.

So that was it. Very long…