Melt my heart to stone

                     

My housemate and spent hours baking sugar cookies and cupcakes and even more time decorating them. These baked goods made a huge contribution towards a good cause today. The student group that I'm part of at my university were selling all of our baked goods by donation towards a charitable organization called Operation Christmas Child. We fundraised for this charitable organization last year and basically we get a lot of shoe boxes, buy necessities for a certain age group, and wrap the present boxes up nicely so that children in Third World countries can also have the privilege that we have around the holidays.

Friday night and I'm sitting at home collecting my thoughts, but really I'm just collecting myself together. For the last couple of weeks I've been extremely drained from the amount of hours my life consisted solely at school. Every single day seems to consist of attending lectures, studying at the library for countless hours, eating, study, sleep - repeat. I love the fact that it's keeping me busy but it definitely makes me wish Summer was back again.

I miss going to the beach in the middle of the night with friends conversing, driving up north for campfires, random fishing trips in the east side of the city, getting frustrated because I'm not able to find what I want when I search from city to city for something I want from a store (yes, even the getting frustrated part), catching up with old and new friends, seeing my family everyday, having homecooked meals everyday, eating Korean food and drinking bubbletea whenever  I wanted, long drives to unknown destinations, sitting in my car waiting for the rain storm to stop, jamming to 70/80's songs with the girlfriend, dinner dates, going to new and old places, seeing friends in the most random places. Loll, I could go on for forever. I miss summer and laying low just spending quality time with the people I care about most.

A night of wonders

On our way to Nuit Blanche we stopped by a patisserie called Nadege. I think I heard of this place before so I was really excited to go in. Especially seeing all of the macarons through the window, I couldn't help but rush everybody in hahaha :) I got salt caramel and pistache. Pistache is delicious as always, but the shell of the salt caramel didn't taste that great. I'm hoping to try this place in Yorkville one day called Cafe Moroco. I've heard a lot of good things about it. At NB, we visited some galleries with exquisite paintings and displays. Some were worth well over $50, 000! Ridiculous. We got to see a small magic show, a riot/parade sort-of-thing along the main strips in the heart of Toronto, and an outdoor party. It was such a long day but overall it was well worth it.

Love like a Sunset

Lol @ the awkward man in the back.

Your typical tourist picture.

Ummm, yeah.

Breath taking.

Mango Sorbet <3

The process of me getting roasted.

Sand in between my toes (dried nasty sandy - toes).

Oh, sunshineee

Mochi balls stuffed with green tea, yummy.

Damn, we look so tired and out of it from doing absolutely nothing all day but touring and tanning.

I miss this so much.

Silly.

<3

Bolt <3

I look SO tired.

Um, yeah. *rolls eyes :)

Alcohol in CVS? Damnnnnnn.

Urban Outfitters T-shirt, Talula fedora, A&F jean shorts, sandals from downtown LA, H&M bag

Day Four

Destination – The City of Manhattan Beach, Beach, Manhattan Shopping Village, City of El Segundo

          Score. Luckily our hotel had a pretty cheap deal considering we had already spent a vast amount of money on taxis. It was a five dollar round trip on a trolley to the City of Manhattan beach. Who knew it could be so sketchy just to wait for this trolley that was located right outside the hotel? A random African-American man came up to me and said some disturbing things to me. Nasty. It was quite the experience getting on this trolley. I thought it was really cute because it gave us a different cultural feel of getting around. When we got to the city, we were quite amazed because there were so many boutiques and beautiful palm trees! When we got off, we grabbed a sushi lunch at a Japanese cuisine called Sun and Moon. To my surprise, they actually had some pho (Vietnamese rice noodle) in a Japanese restaurant. Afterwards we walked around the boutiques. I love doing this because every store you go into there was something different and unique about it. The store owners all have a different taste in style and there’s always something new. 

       In our case, after tanning for a couple hours on the beautiful fine sand and dipping our toes in azure water, we visited more boutiques and one of them made us so grateful for the rest of our trip. Ally-Woo was the name of the boutique. Tammi was her name. We conversated with this Korean woman who owned her boutique filled with modern-vintage clothing and accessories along with her puppy named Bolt. She is such a genuinely sweet and nice person. I don’t even know how to exaggerate that because she was just naturally a happy sweet lady from what we could tell. She knew about the round trip ticket we got but she told us to go to Manhattan Shopping Village to do some shopping and that she would pick us up from there and drive us back to our hotel. Seems risky doesn’t it? But she was just that sincere and sweet that we took that offer and trusted her to pick us up from the village. Manhtatten Shopping Village was a little shopping mall with not too many stores. They had your Sephora, Coach, Apple, California Pizza, CVS, banks, and other shops. Tammi said she would call us when she was there to pick us up and she really did!