Balboa Park Part 1

Yes! Finally an outfit post and update! Last Saturday I went to Balboa Park with Jon and my brother. We were there for a few hours and only saw about 1/4 of the park - it's huge! To give you an idea of how big it is think about how it houses a zoo, about 10 museums, a golf course, a cactus garden...and the list goes on. This Sunday we're going to try to catch one of the the free outdoor organ concerts.





I went a little camera crazy while I was there, so I'm breaking this into 2 posts. This first one is for outfit pictures and the 2nd one will be of all the amazing vegetation and architecture that we came across. In these pictures I'm wearing my vintage Gunne Sax skirt and a short sleeved sweater from h&m. To be honest I've never really understood short sleeved sweaters. I like this one, but I don't wear it often because when I'm cold I want my arms covered and when I'm hot I don't want to wear a sweater. It just doesn't make any sense.





One of the places in the park is a puppet theatre! I asked about employment opportunities and unfortunately it's all run by volunteers. However, you can become a member of the puppet guild and work on actually building the puppets. Membership is $20 for the year. I think once I get my first pay check I may have to get involved. How awesome would that be? Of course getting a paid job is my number one priority right now so we'll see how that goes once I start finding out my hours.

I did transfer to another art house theatre and my first day of work is tomorrow. I'm super excited! Unfortunately as I've learned over the past five years - art house theatres don't pay the bills very well. So the majority of my time since I've gotten here has been mega job searching. It's all I do from morning till night. I have a few interviews next week, so wish me luck!



You can expect that I'll be taking a lot of outfit pictures in the park (so get used to it!). There are just so many great places where the sun hits just right. Also sunsets last forever here! I'm so used to a 10 minute sunset and then pure darkness. Here the sunsets seem to last as long as a summer afternoon - lazy, warm, and beautiful.










The Breakdown:

Outfit:
Bow Sweater: H&M
Skirt: Gunne Sax, Vintage
Flats: Filene's Basement

Accessories:
Sunglasses: Meijer
Necklace: Forever 21
Bracelet: Gift

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No I Have Not Been Sold Into The Mexican Sex Trade

Fear not, I'm still here! I was hoping to have an update by now, but I just haven't had the time! Every day from morning to night all we've been doing is applying for jobs. Also, we may be able to move into our apartment by Monday which means next week will be hectic as well. I'm starting my job at the art house theatre over here on Sunday. There's just so much going on! I'm loving it here though! I've been taking outfit pictures almost daily, so once I have more time I'll have a lot of updates to make! Until that free time makes its way into my schedule though things may be a little slow around here. Hopefully I'll have time to share everything with you soon!

Out West Day 3: Blood Thirsty Arizona & Spooky San Diego

Day 3...the final day of our trip. What a horribly stressful and spooky halloween we had. Jon and I woke up early Halloween morning and put on our "on-the-road" halloween costumes. He wore a rainbow clown wig and I wore a halloween tee along with black and green striped tights. Probably our lamest costumes ever, but hey at least we tried, right?







Here's an inside shot of all of Jon's hard work:



Everything had its place, even all of the cats.

Leaving New Mexico wasn't so bad as most of roads in the mountains were straight - no big deal. I loved all of the turquoise details along the roads, it was so pretty and calming. This is where the landscape really started getting interesting as we saw giant plateaus and little mountain side houses.















Arizona is where everything took a turn for the worse. Instead of going straight the mountains became curved and twisted. We found ourselves zooming around sharp turns at 75 miles an hour (and still being passed up by huge trucks). The roads were not very reassuring either with names like (and I'm completely serious here) "Blood Basin Road" and "Deadman Street". There were even run off roads to drive onto if you lost control of your car. It was really stressful and it was still day light!

Once we finally got through all of the mountains we passed "Carefree Highway" and my personal favorite, "Exit 11 - Surprise!". Arizona definitely wins the award for most creative road names.





Unfortunately I only got these two photos of Arizona before we lost the digital camera in the car. We didn't locate it until we were unpacking the van the next day. The rest of the drive through Arizona was still mountain-y, but not awful.

After another really long driving day we were so happy to finally pass through the California border. After 40 some hours of driving we had made it! What we weren't expecting was to be stopped at border patrol 3 times before making it to San Diego! The first two, although unexpected made sense because we were so close to Mexico at that point. They asked us where we were headed and confiscated our Michigan apples. The carrots were okay...but the apples...nope, couldn't bring them into California. After those unexpected interactions we found ourselves once more deep into the mountains and it seemed like we were heading up forever...up and up and up....and a third border patrol inspection! This one really threw both of us off as we were so exhausted by that point. The guy asking questions had a thick german accent and asked us what country we were in. Our exhaustion and his thick accent caused us both to hesitate and becuase of this we were asked to pull over so they could inspect our van. My worst fear had come true - they were about to make us unpack our entire van that took Jon 12 hours to pack! The car next to us was being searched by dogs. It wasn't looking good. We answered the basic questions of where we're from, why we're in California, what we had in our van. Then the guy went to inspect the van and of course things are falling out from him opening the door. I think when he looked inside he realized how long it would take them to go through our stuff, so he closed the door and let us carry on. Phew! I was sooo glad we didn't have to tak everything out. That would have been a nightmare. Well, finally we started our decent down the mountain and into civilization.

It took about another hour for us to hit San Diego. As soon as we hit the city limit we were met with a deep fog as thick as jelly brains! No, thicker! (Nightmare Before Christmas reference anyone?) Seriously, we couldn't see an inch ahead of us in any direction. We couldn't see traffic lights or car lights. It was insane. Thanks San Diego for deciding to be spooky for Halloween. By some miracle we navigated through the fog safely and made it to my brother's place by about 1 AM. We were so happy to be there and out of the car and to be able to let the kitties out!

It was a crazy car ride, but I'm glad we went by car. The drive made me feel more connected to the trip and had me appreciating the distance and how vast the land is in the south.

The past few days we've been getting things settled with our job transfers, trying to figure out how to put together our crappy ikea sofa bed, and exploring Balboa Park. So far I LOVE it here! Next post I'll tell you guys all about how amazing it is here and share some proper outfit photos!!




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Out West Day 2: Quirky in Albuquerque

Onto day 2 of our trip! On Sunday of last week we drove through the rest of Oklahoma and on to New Mexico where we stopped in Albuquerque for the night. It was the shortest leg of the trip and ended up being about 10-11 hours. States traveled during this part were Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

When we reached the bottom part of Oklahoma we started seeing these super cute old time-y signs all over the road:



When we reached Texas the scenery really started to change as the desert started taking over in place of the green and gold landscapes. There were these bundles of hay at the gas station, which was different. Also, it felt strange being the minority with our midwestern twangs. Everyone in Texas spoke with a deep southern accent and it was obvious we were out of place, haha.



Of course I also had to take a picture of these Texas sunflowers:



We also saw these cool windmills in Texas:



By the time we reached Albuquerque it was dark, so we couldn't really see much, but coming into the city we could tell we were in the mountains. This was the first part of our stressful mountain driving experience...



Check back soon for day 3 - Albuquerque to San Diego!



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