I have spent the past week here in Los Angeles. When I arrived last Saturday it was simply nice to see my family. I visited my grandfather as soon as I got here, it was neat to see him.
There was also an uncle coming in from Mexico at the same time, so we played host to him.
Saturday night, after some time with my grandfather and settling in, we headed out to dinner at a Peruvian restaurant. Wow! Great/Entertaining service and food. I had a Peruvian stir-fry rice with a mixture of seafood. The evening weather was nice so we took advantage of it by walking a bit after dinner. The restaurant was located in Glendale which is only about 15 minutes from my parent's house.
Sunday we went out to breakfast in Glendale with my grandpa and uncle at a family favorite, Foxy's. We're pretty well known there. After breakfast we headed to the beautiful Our Lady of Angels Cathedral for mass. It was actually the quietest, most prayerful Spanish mass I've been to in a long time. Great music and a great homily topped it off.
Sunday afternoon we headed to Home Depot as my little sister wanted her room painted. We decided it would be our early week project. We bought the paint and supplies then headed over to my grandpa's house for dinner. We bought pizza at a new eatery in Atwater Village (about 10 minutes away). Great pizza!
While at the pizza shop, I ran into some high school friends of mine I hadn't seen since pretty much graduation (5 years!). It was neat to see them and just catch up a bit.
After dinner, we decided to burn off some calories by heading to our local park. Actually, this brand new, beautiful park opened up less than a year ago and it's great. Very active. My parents and little sister Denise all headed over. We did some jogging around the park, volleyball, and finally tennis. Quite the workout.
This past Monday and Tuesday was basically spent working on my sister's room. Not only painting, by getting rid of things, rearranging furniture, etc...
Wednesday we spent mostly at home. My sister Denise and I did head out for lunch at a great Sushi place, we made a stop at Border's and did a bit of walking. She's playing volleyball for her school team and so I also took her to pratice throughout the week.
Thursday was a long, but fun day. My former car, now my parent's, had the "check engine" light come on. So I took it in at 7:00 AM to get serviced. Well, I am glad I brought a book because I was there until just about 11:30 AM. It was actually neat to run into my cousin there and so we spent lot of time talking and catching up.
I must say the current book I am reading now is a great one. Well, at least the first 60 pages. It is titled, "Walking the Bible." It is the story of a scholar who journies through the Middle East focusing on the locations of the first 5 books of the Bible. It is such an interesting journey already, that it makes you went to read the Old Testament, it makes you want to travel to the Middle East, and I would say it even makes you desire to be Jewish! While the book focuses on the scholarly and physical journey of the author, it also lets you into his faith journey.
Anyway, so the week in L.A. continued. After my 4 plus hour stay at the car shop, I headed out to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Two of my friends and I had made plans for lunch and museum visit. An exhibition of colonial Latin American art is on display. Quite an amazing collection, plenty of religious art, my interest. We head down into the west L.A./West Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Hancock Park area for lunch at The Grove. The Grove is quite the happening place for eating, shopping, and entertainment. We had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. It was during lunch that I got a great surprise: a phone call from SMHS students. Great to hear them!
So after lunch, we headed to the museum and had a nice time there. Actually, ran into one of the Cathedral High School brothers, Br. Ricardo. Br. Ricardo invited us to dinner at the Brothers' House the following evening.
On Friday, did some early morning house cleaning just to help around the house and then took my little sister out for lunch and a movie. We headed to another happening area, The Paseo in Pasadena. We had lunch at Rubio's Mexican Grill and then headed into the movie theatre to watch The Transformers, which ended being a long, but interesting, fun movie.
After that, I came home where my friend Ryan Resurreccion would pick me up to head over to dinner at the Brothers' house. It was great to see familar faces of Brothers, including some that had recently been transfered back to Cathedral. We had a great time at dinner, got a great tour of the new gym/science building. It is quite spectacular. We stayed around chatting there with Br. Ricardo until about 9:00 PM.
Ryan and I then headed towards Eagle Rock, the next neighborhood over from mine, to meet another friend at a local bar. We had quite a nice time talking about the Church, vocations, our Lasallian mission, and well other fun stuff. We didn't get out of there until about 1:00 AM.
Saturday was just spent at home with the family. Sunday we followed our usual routine mass and breakfast. Spent the rest of Sunday at home getting ready for our trip to Cabo San Lucas.
So we take off to Cabo San Lucas tomorrow for a family vacation, which I am sure will be very enjoyable.
I must admit, I miss the activity of the beginning of the school year, miss San Miguel, but I also realize I probably won't be seeing much of this kind of time in the future, so taking advantage of it.
Well, it's getting late on this Sunday night....I'll be heading off to Cabo tomorrow for a relaxing and enjoyable time with my family....Blessings to all!
