Karaoke and Shades

Arizona is a lot different than California.... I have no good reason for not trying to summarize what I have been up to here, and since it's been a while I might not be able to do a day by day like I did in SF... I will try to remember highlights though...

I arrived on Monday night, and Annastajia the master baker had made this chocolate/key lime/Oreo cheesecake that I immediately gorged on :) She is a fantastic cook! They had picked me up at the airport which was also extremely awesome.

Tuesday I accidentally slept in an obscene amount partially due to the time difference, and partially due to me being tired from traveling all day then staying up late... so most of the day was gone, but I still went outside briefly to see how hot it actually is here:

it's hot. Like 27 degrees in February hot. It goes up to 45-50 in the summer apparently, so I am glad I'm here with all the migrating old people in the winter lol.

My sunglasses got squished in my bag on the plane, so I went to the mall with them and bought a new cheap pair. I learned that A&W's in the states have a cheese fries option. It was... not cheese.

A large difference between the situation in Cali vs. Arizona is the lack of local knowledge. Annie and Josh moved here fairly recently, and work from home. A result of this is that they don't know anyone here, or where to go. We are also in a suburb of a suburb similar to being in Langley. Luckily Annie has a car! You need one here.

We have been trying to search the internet for things to do or places to go around here, with difficulty. It's really hard to realize what's interesting in a place with no human reference. Everything recommended on the internet has the potential to have been recommended simply because that place had paid for it. We looked at Yelp, and Tribe.net, couchsurfing, the city's website... and paid for it lol.

I found a "castle" that looked interesting. Wednesday we decided to try and check it out. Annie has a GPS thing called a Tom Tom to navigate the foreign city with, but even with that we managed to go to the wrong place. It sent us to an industrial gas/oil thing. We had put in the wrong street. We still found it after, but it WASN'T OPEN! The stupid thing was supposed to be done late 2008, the signs beside it AND internet said it was, but it was behind on restoration.

So the internet failed, but at least we had a nice long drive and saw some of the sights of phoenix.

We bought a movie that night, and had a little home theatre night. We watched "Swing Vote". The main character drove me nuts, but I liked the ending :)

Annie and I went to get pedicures on Thursday... this was the second one I've ever had, and I had "nail art" for the first time. She drew a little design on my big toes.

I didn't think I would like it this much! I have not been able to stop staring at my feet! I have been taking tons of pictures of my toes hahaha, but not many I am satisfied with... feet are not photogenic...

I also found an "art walk" in Scottsdale, which might have been interesting... but it was galleries being open (for old people lol) not art on the street. It was also very fancy looking, not somewhere for two young girls with an elf jacket and tattoos. Oh well. I drove the car out with Annie, which was interesting. I hadn't driven a car in almost a month, and it wasn't a car I was used to.


On the way back from the walk, we tried to find the city centre of Scottsdale, but once again the Tom Tom decided to take us into the middle of nowhere. FAIL.

We got home and managed to get out to a local bar for a couple drinks. Little did we know that it was Karaoke night!!! I was so happy!!!!

This karaoke was weird though, because there was no stage! People would just pass the mic around and often the person would just sit hiding at their table singing, so you really had to search where it was coming from every time. Nothing like the karaoke from last weekend!

We ate, had a few beers, threw some darts (fun!), and I took a couple pictures... funny how the camera comes out so much faster when there is alcohol involved! if you look closely you can see the karaoke words in the corner




Friday was slightly more chill. I can't really remember what we did for the day... I think we got the mail?! We worked out in the living room for 20 minutes... ummmmmmm well the night consisted of renting a game for the Wii about Rabbits. I was hooked so fast... They had a hula hoop function on the Wii fit too that I tried right after hula hooping in the backyard. Annie videotaped Josh trying it because it looked so ridiculous... oh yes and Annie showed me a new drink named Lynchberg Lemonade: very yummy :)

I have photos for Saturday, so I think I will make then on a separate post!

Love you all so much!

Leanne