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Published: July 21st 2010
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We got up (late) and I called the front desk to see if we could get a late check-out. Having bought us an extra hour, we sat down to have breakfast and read the paper one more time. We had done most of the packing the night before, so we loaded up our cooler with the free ice we had been making all week and checked out. On the way out of town we stopped and went bowling.
In the sovereign Indian nation of Morongo, you get a free game of bowling with every gas purchase of $5 or more! I put $10 in on my credit card and got a receipt. Zack finished filling up and got his own receipt. I should mention, that when I went inside to prepay, the gas station doubled as a casino-there were at least 25 slot machines in there, positioned around displays of slimjims and windshield washer fluid.
The bowling alley was wayyyyyyyyy nicer than we expected! We paid the $2 shoe rental fee and went bowling before noon. Zack bowled a 135 and I bowled a 103. It was a pretty normal game of bowling, other than Zack rolling a turkey
on his last 3 rolls!
We headed west to LA, leaving behind the 112 degree heat and didn’t stop until Ikea. We pulled off the highway and wandered around through the store. We saw a lot of cool lamps and furniture and decided that we would go to the one in Atlanta when we got back to Nashville, and I got a job, and we got a house. We did get some lunch at the café—swedish meatballs for the lady and a monte cristo for the gentleman. It was alright, about as good as bargain Swedish food can be. Again we hit the road to LA.
Traffic was picking up and the roads were making less and less sense. The original plan was to find the place that we are staying tonight, then continue exploring. However, we had enough stress trying to complete step one, that we pulled over, sat on the side of the road and called for directions. A 25 minute trip around the same few blocks led us to our hosts apartment-THANKFULLY!
We got out of the car and Jimin’s (our mutual friend and girlfriend of Kevin’s) roommate Luke was waiting on the porch
to welcome us in. He, Jimin, and Zack (the other roommate) had all graduated from Belmont in 2009—and are now living in L.A. together. We got a quick tour of the AMAZING apartment, and settled in. This is a 3 bedroom “French Chateau” located in Koreatown—a really beautiful apartment in a beautiful neighborhood. We picked a Netflix instant to watch—“The A-Team” was my first choice. We watched the pilot episode…almost too much awesome to handle! Jenn and I then helped Luke load his drumset for his gig with a country singer that night. After Luke left, we watched “Sandlot” while waiting for Jimin to get off work. When she arrived, we got the official tour of the apartment, and it was even more amazing than we had originally thought. They have their own laundry room! Jimin got ready to leave, and we headed to a Korean restaurant called “Elephant Snack”—although it was all in Korean, as is most of the signage in this part of town. We’re learning the basics of Korean pretty quickly—all syllables are spaced, with the consonants always placed with a vowel in a neatly stacked, boxy form. I had the Korean omelette—an omelette with rice, peas, carrots, green beans, lima beans, and mushrooms in it. Jenn had the , which was basically lettuce with; a fried egg, shredded carrot, onion, beef, rice, seaweed paper, radish, some types of root, and so on. She was served an empty bowl alongside a plate of all of those goodies. She was advised to dump them all in the bowl, and mix them with the spicy sauce and sesame oil—it was a pretty delicious dish. Jimin had the “cold noodle” dish—which was served in a bowl, into which the waitress dove a pair of scissors in to chop it up in front of us. The sides were a type of Korean miso soup, a ton of different radish types (pickled in different forms).
From there we went to Trader Joe’s to get a bottle of cheap wine. We ran in the door at 2 minutes to close. The manager waved his hand no, but Jimin with her charm, convinced him to let us in. We finished the night with a trip to Hollywood. We walked the Walk of Fame and looked at all the famous hand and footprints outside of the Chinese Theater. It was exciting to be there, but we got tired fast. We headed back early and called it a night.
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