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Published: November 17th 2016
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#Week 9
This week has been one of the most fun weeks I’ve had since I’ve been here. I have experienced a holiday that I have never celebrated before, and I absolutely loved it. But later more about that. This week could not have a better start, since me and two other girls were dropped off in LA on Friday!
LA is a city that I could never imagine I would go to. Of course I have seen a lot of movies that included images or scenes of the city, but I had never really imagined what it would look like. LA is so much bigger than I could have ever imagined! First Crystal drove us up to the observatory in the hills by the Hollywood sign. From this point we had a view over all of LA and we could even see the Hollywood sign from a distance! At first I was already taking pictures of the city I thought was huge, but then I walked on to the stairs by the observatory and discovered that there was even another part of the city I had not even realised was there yet! The first thought that popped into
my head was: “How am I ever going to see all of the city in one day?”.
We started our LA-day in the place I wanted to go to for a long time, Hollywood boulevard! I had never realised the walk of fame was this long, and that I did not by far know all the people who had a star on the walk of fame. When Crystal dropped us off here, me and the girls were immediately overwhelmed by the crowded streets and lights and everthing going on on the streets. A city like this is of course very overwhelming for three Ranch-girls. So to calm down for a few seconds, we decided to start off by going into a very cute and quiet café to have a coffee and a blueberry muffin. After having a nice talk and a good cup of coffee, we were ready to conquer Los Angeles. Us being just typical girls, wanted to explore all of the popular shops we could find on Hollywood boulevard, such as Forever 21, H&M, Victoria’s secret and many more.
After seeing enough of the walk of fame, we decided to buy metro tickets and see a
little more of Downtown LA. To be brutally honest, I did not enjoy downtown as much as I had hoped. For me, it was just like walking by huge buildings, small shops and a lot of homeless people who were asking me for money. This made me feel very uncomfortable, since I want to give everybody something, but this is just not possible. I have seen so many things that shocked me, people putting needles in their arms just in front of the metro station where everybody could see it, or people coming into my personal space and asking for money. After having seen enough of downtown, we would like to do some more shopping and asked a nice police officer for directions to the nearest mall. She strongly adviced us to get out of downtown before night falls. She told us that for three young girls, this place was absolutely not safe after dark. So we changed our plans and took the first train to Santa Monica to see the beach and what else there was to do in Santa Monica. After walking along the beach and seeing some really cool street artists by the boulevard, we went to
get dinner at MacDonalds, how American! Us just enjoying our nice and quiet fastfood meal did not last very long. First, two homeless women decided to sit next to us and make a lot of noise by telling each other stories about the weird stuff they had been doing all day. When the women had finally left and we had decided to get a McFlurry for dessert, a couple with a young kid sat down next to us. They seemed like an ordinary family at first, but I was very wrong about that. Out of nowhere the man and women got into a conversation with us and they were acting very strangely. They were super hyperactive and their eyes seemed red-ish. The little girl was just sitting there in silence, and the man kind of scared me. He talked to the woman in a very disrespectful manner and all of a sudden they started telling us all about their lives and their journeys. I may be wrong, but to me, it seemed like these people were on some kind of drugs, and I couldn’t help feeling really bad for their kid. After a while I had enough and made up
some excuse about being late for something so we could get out of that uncomfortable situation.
To end the day in this huge city, we walked on the promenade in Santa Monica, where street artists were performing and a lot was to see on the streets, Crystal picked us up there and she showed us some more in the car on our way back. We drove through a part of Cinatown and saw the Baseball stadium of Los Angeles.
Another highlight this week was the day that I’ve always properly wanted to celebrate, HALLOWEEN! This Halloween we had two parties. My Halloween weekend already started a few days before where we started getting the ranch ready for the Halloween games for the kids on Saturday. But before the party could start, we first needed costumes! After going over a thousand ideas and going through a few costume shops, we finally found a shop that worked. The complete costumes were a little too expensive for me, but it was still fun to try the crazy ones on! After dressing up as a way too sexy police officer and Harley Quinn from suicide squad, I found a really cheap and
easy costume. I found a pair of glittery cat ears and some black make-up so I could dress up as a black cat for halloween!
After a few days of hard work before the Halloween games, the day was finally there! Kids and parents dressed up and they could even dress their horses up for the games. Everybody enjoyed the games a lot and after we all had some food together. Everybody had brought something so we could share. After everybody had left, we found out that we still had about 70 Halloween-cupcakes we forgot to bring down for everybody to eat, so in the next two weeks I had a lot of cupcakes!
After the Halloween games at the ranch, it was also time for me and the other workers on the ranch to have a Halloween party at the Stampede in Temecula. Apart from a lot of line dancing, there was also a costume contest and Kiersti and Gareth were determined to win this one! They were dressed up as Mario and Princess Peach from the Super Mario Bros. Unfortunately they did not win, but they looked awesome! Throughout the night I have seen so many
awesome costumes, from stormtroopers till guys dressed as girls. It had been an amazing night full of crazy and amazing costumes and a lot of dancing and laughing with my friends. I could not have wished for a better first Halloween than with these amazing people!
Apart from doing a lot of fun things this week, I’ve also had to say goodbye to my friend Lara, who now continues her journey up the coast to see city’s like LA, Santa Barara and San Francisco. But for her last night with the family, we went out to see one of the movies I have been wanting to see for so long! The movie is called Inferno, starring Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones. The movie is the third part of the Da Vinci Code series. After seeing The Da Vinci Code and the second movie Angels and Demons, I was super excited for this one! Luckily, the movie did absolutely not let me down, because I loved every second of it.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog, I will be writing my last blog about this amazing journey next week!
Love, Anouk
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