Independence

Leaving Los Angeles was probably the most independent thing I had done in my adult life. But I can't state that I was truly independent and on my own since I moved in with my sister in San Jose. This summer will be the last time I will have people to regularly talk with. This will be my last month where I will enjoy having the luxury of living with people.

Yesterday, I received a call stating that my rental application was accepted, and that I finally had a place to call "home" for the upcoming school year. In addition to that, I accepted the position of Urban Forestry Specialist with Our City Forest, a non-profit AmeriCorps group that is dedicated to planting trees and educating people on the benefits and maintenance of trees. My best friend says I'm a hippie, but really I am not. I love the environment, but I also care a lot about social equity, which is seemingly left out of the equation of "quality of life" in planning.

Anyway, my new apartment will be in Japantown, in San Jose. It's only a half of a mile walk to my work place with AmeriCorps, and a mile from school. I will end up biking to school since my classes are late, but it's pretty exciting I guess. It is a little daunting to be living on my own, especially since I'm female. Hoepfully I will be okay. You are all welcome to stay with me, but I can't guarantee you that my schedule won't be crazy :)

Leaving Los Angeles

Sometimes when I think about home, I do think about Los Angeles. There is this stereotype that, most likely based on some truth, Angelenos hate living in their own city, fueled by negative press, events, and traffic. I have spent my entire life here in Los Angeles. At some point in my life, I did resent living in L.A. because I never cared much for the night life, the glamor of Hollywood, the suburbs that fill every crevice here. I was much too cynical to have the desire to go out and party. To this day I still haven't really been to a club, and I prefer dive bars any time over a fancy bar like... well see this is the problem, I don't know any of the fancy bars. But I love the City, despite the awful traffic congestion. I run into former residents who complain about the lack of trails here, the lack of cycling opportunities. Those two complaints can be easily rebuffed.

When I move to San Jose I will miss hiking in the chaparral environment, I will miss the towering San Gabriel Mountains and the close proximity to the beach. It will be strange to move back to suburban America since I have spent the last four years fixated in the West Los Angeles region. I might be closer to the ski slopes, but I will miss the proximity of going to a good hiking trail that will challenge me. I will miss going to the Farmers market in Brentwood and Santa Monica every Sunday. Most of all, I will miss cycling along the Pacific Coast Highway and conquering the Pepperdine hill in Malibu. There will be new and numerous recreational opportunities for me in San Jose. I just wanted it to be known that I don't hate L.A. and that I actually love the sprawling city. I call L.A. home, despite everything I have witnessed first hand, studied, and been affected by. And I've met some of the most wonderful and amazing people in my life because of this city. Those are the most cherished memories for me. Not to mention that I went to the best damn University in California: UCLA ;)

Fiasco

Yesterday I ran into a few complications at the Philadelphia airport: my connecting flight in Chicago was canceled. Now, my friend Kim (who so kindly housed me during my trip) told me that Philadelphia was notoriously known for bad customer service. I must admit that this is true, and was perhaps the only thing that I disliked regarding the city's people.

Anyway, I actually received decent help from the woman at the counter of Southwest airlines. She wanted to try to find me a "direct" flight from Philly to Los Angeles, with one stop either at Phoenix or Las Vegas. But due to inclement weather (and the few direct flights from Philly to LA), all the flights were either booked full or had to go through Chicago. See the problem was that a snow/ice storm came through the mid-west, delaying or canceling all the flights in and out of Chicago. Fine, there's nothing I can do to control the weather. After about five minutes of the woman trying to help me, I started stressing out a lot. I honestly didn't care about having two connecting flights because I wanted to get out of Philly as soon as possible, especially when the weather reports stated that there would be possible snow fall later in the day (and having more flights delayed). Yet the woman at the check-in counter kept trying to insist that I have a direct out of Philly at 2:00 pm. I politely declined. First, I know that Southwest is notorious for being late. Second, I was not going to stay an additional five and a half hours to get a direct flight home. Third, seeing how the flight was leaving at 2:00 in the afternoon, I did not want to end up with the possibility of being stuck in Philly. So finally after twenty minutes, she found a flight for me to go into Houston, and from Houston to Los Angeles. Of course, with my luck so far yesterday, Houston was experiencing delays as well due to Thunderstorms. Just my luck right? Right.

Here was the list of my alternative flights:
Philadelphia to Orlando, Orlando to Los Angeles.
Philadelphia to Nashville, Nashville to Kansas City, Kansas City to Los Angeles
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to Los Angeles

The departure times ranged everywhere and anywhere between 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. It just didn't matter at that point because I was just going to have to face the awful weather sweeping the midwest and southwest and even the gulf coast states. And I didn't want to "arrive" in Los Angeles at 7:00 p.m. (this is if there were no delays what-so-ever). In the end I opted to fly into Texas because my "arrival time" was at 4:00 pm. I figured that I could give myself about 2.5 - 3 hours worth of delay time, and still be back in the City of Angels for a decent dinner hour.

And so my trip to Philly ended up stressful the very last day, but I am alive and well, albeit a bit tired.