Day 2/3 (Part 2)

(Hmmm...."Suddenly I See")

Anyway, the next morning, we had breakfast at 9:00, and our orientation business ended at 11:00. Then, we went to the Manhattan beach. (Just as a side note, I think I'm looking down on Beijing right now!) Anyway, we went window shopping, pet puppies at the pet store, went to the boardwalk and the aquarium there. I was very excited for a few reasons, but one was the fact that I was in a group with a girl who caught my attention when we did the eye-contact activity. She brought a guitar with her on the trip. Her name is Julia. She's going for a full year as well. She is hilarious, just wild, but also very thoughtful. I remarked on her playing the guitar (upon which her roommate told me that Julia has a CD of her own original music that she plays and sings), and she asked me if I played. I told her I played a little, and she said, "Aw, see! I knew you were cool. I looked at you and was like, this girl's cool." She's also very pretty - she's very thin, and her light brown hair is about chin-length if it isn't pulled back. Not too thin, mind, but much more so than I. We played a game of 'dare you to lick...' and she climbed up a sign post to lick the street name, and I even licked the lid of a trash can, and my hands after playing with the puppies. Then, after some smoothies and things, Meagen (her roommate) and I went down to the beach, hopped some waves while the boys swam and Julia met with friends she has in L.A. After a while, Meagen and I Decided to build a sand castle, but it came out looking like a PokéBall! : ) I hung out a little bit with a striking girl named Autumn as well, and we talked about music mainly.

Eventually, we made it back to the hotel. There, we had at least an hour before dinner, and Julia, Meagen, Autumn, Maria, Jackie (one of the first people I made friends with) and I played cards in the lobby. We played BS, and then Killer (Basilisk), and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It was so wonderful. Making friends with these people so quickly is incredible. At one point, I laughed so hard that I snorted, and blushed scarlet with embarrassment. Still, Julia said she thought it was cute, which made the situation much brighter.