The last two days have been really fun. Elsa arrived in the afternoon Monday, after driving in a huge circle because she thought she was going the wrong way, asked me what to do, and I, without making sure that she was actually lost, told her to turn around and caused her to go back. Eek! Whoops! She texted me, "I think I'm going the wrong way. Any ideas?"
And I just assumed she was right and said, "Turn around??"
Sigh!! Bad Elaine!

Anyway, she texted me that she was getting off the freeway, at which point I quickly signed off AIM, threw my stuff in a bag, and made for my mom's house. As I turned onto Chino Hills Parkway, I ended up behind this car that wouldn't drive through a yellow light, drove below the speed limit, and made a full stop at every stop sign. I knew it had to be Elsa. See! People who don't drive in California all day have safer driving habits! (Until Elsa meets the freeway and traffic, but more on that later.. *shudder*) I pulled onto my driveway and looked back to see if this mysterious white car (what Elsa refers to as "crappy piece of plastic") would pull up after me. It WAS Elsa, and in my excitement, I dropped my keys on my car seat, ran out of my car, slammed the door that I had already locked shut, and greeted her. I was going to park somewhere else so she could park on the driveway, but then realized my idiocy and had to climb into the van from the back. And then realized that the other door was unlocked. Silly me. She was laughing at me the whole time. BUT YAY!! ELSA WAS FINALLY HERE!!!!

We went into the house, where my mom greeted her most exuberantly. My mom loves Elsa, and Elsa, as she often informs me, "loves her!!" Oy. Elsa met Mickey, whom she loved, and we sat down on the couch and started talking. Every few comments or so, my mother would most unnecessarily interject with something from the kitchen, and as I was showing Elsa pictures of my dorm, my mom came over and was like, "LET ME SEE!"
"MOM! You've been there! Why do you have to see the pictures?"
"So? I still want to see!"
Geez. She's like a five-year-old that has to have everything that you touch. Grr. And she thinks she knows everything that happens in the dorm just because she came to visit me and stayed for two days and refused to go back to her hotel room and ended up laying on bed for like five hours. RAWR.

We decided, after great agony and indecision, to go to Chipotle, which Elsa had never had before, for dinner. I'll miss Chipotle!! And then, since it's Elsa, and Chipotle's at the Shoppes, we spent like an hour in Forever 21, where I spent too much money and saw Ben Shih from junior high. He had always teased me about my height, ever since the sixth grade, Elsa was looking at this shirt, and she motioned me over, and right as I touched the shirt, some male voice says, "God. Don't you just hate tall Asian people?" And I was about to get offended and I looked to my left, and it was Ben!!
It was like a sauna in that store and the lines seriously took twenty minutes. I don't understand why they can't just turn on the air conditioning. Elsa's hilarious. She has self-diagnosed ADD, because she'll be saying, "Look at that!" and then completely look at the shiny sign in the opposite direction. And she HATES lines. We were waiting in line for the dressing rooms and I swear to god, she wouldn't stop twitching, playing with her phone, playing with whatever was nearby, and just bouncing. It was so funny. I hate sales. They force you to spend money (appealing to the Asian-ness inside of me that tells me to save money but spending money). Grr. I bought a pretty shirt and jeans there.

Then we went into Bath and Body Works, which has a huge sale going on. I went in there and seized every black raspberry lotion I could find, which wasn't many, sadly. It reminded me of the days in Calc BC with Kathleen. Every single day, about halfway through the period, either I would ask or Kathleen would offer, her black raspberry lotion to me, and we would make the class smell nice, and hopefully, awaken some poor souls from Mr. Koci's wrath. A couple of times, Matt Tims, who sat behind me (Kathleen sat next to me) would sometimes ask us for the lotion because he wanted to smell lovely too. And then Mr. Koci would ask us what the smell was!

ANYWAY, TANGENT ASIDE, we finally got back from too much money spending capitalism, and I introduced her and my mom to... LES CHORISTES!! PIERRE!! They loved it, and then Lane comes downstairs at the very last scene and starts asking, "Wait! What's happening? Why is he going away? Why was he fired? Does he have money? What's going on?"
"LANE! WATCH THE MOVIE!!"
Haha. Then we put in Phantom, of course, and started singing away! Whee! We went to my room afterwards, around 12:30 at night, and ended up talking till 4 AM. It was crazy. I told her the epic story of my life these past few months, how Brian happened, how Amherst is, etc. She told me about her life, about living on her own (not in a dorm), working four jobs (CRAZY), school, boys, and her future plans. It's crazy to see how radically different her life is from mine. She didn't want to deal with dorm life, which I love (and have to live in regardless). I don't work, but she works at Panera, at a school job, as a quasi-secretary, and as an on-call caterer. It's crazy. East Tennessee is definitely different than Western Massachusetts in every way. Their school newspaper consists of letters to the editor about religion, of all things, and all the articles just go on and on about religion. I couldn't deal with that. I'd go insane. Secularism, please! We also argued over politics. Grah. Elsa referred to the former Republican presidential candidate as "John" and shook his hand as part of the Straight-Talk Express. Goodness gracious. SHE CALLED OBAMA THE NEXT HITLER!! But anyway, crazies! Other than the political misguidance, I really look up to Elsa in a lot of ways. She seems really independent, confident, and she knows exactly what she wants and how to hopefully get there. After graduating from college, she plans to join the Air Force and finally fly (yay!) before going into politics.

This morning, I woke up later than Elsa because I'm not crazy and spend an hour fixing my appearance (just kidding! You look lovely dear!) and we set off to pick up Brian and then go to the Puente Hills Mall, Elsa driving because my car was blocked by Lane's Prius. BAD IDEA. BAD MOVE. Not only does Elsa literally, rock out, like fake microphone, dance moves, air guitar, etc, while driving, she also gets really frustrated in traffic, and also doesn't like to BRAKE EARLY. And after listening to me screech every time I felt like we were going to run into the car ahead of us, she started braking really fast sporadically just to freak me out. RAWR!! It's really hilarious listening to her though. She flips out at the other drivers. For example, this huge tractor trailer turned into our lane in front of us, and she was flipping out, "What! What do you think you're doing? What is going on here?" and then right when she goes to change lanes, the tractor trailer changes lanes as well. "OH. So that's what you're doing. Fine. Fine. Whatever!!"

We finally picked Brian up and headed straight for Starbucks, where Elsa's drink took FOREVER. Then we went across the street (driving instead of walking because apparently my suggestion failed because there wasn't any crosswalk) and into the mall we go! We walked into the men's department at Macy's, where the first thing we saw was an unnecessarily unclothed David Beckham picture. Grr. Poor Brian put up with like... looking at every single piece of clothing in the mall, and I bought two more tanktops. STUPID SALES. Four for $10-- I couldn't help myself!! I resisted buying the polos though! They had two for $10, but I only wanted one and Elsa refused to buy the other one.
But anyway, after lots of shopping, including a massive colour-coded store that dazzled us (and I refused to enter the pink section), a Japanese store that astounded Elsa, and a futile attempt to get Elsa away from the Hollister store, we sat down in the food court, where Elsa used the facilities. Brian seemed to get along with Elsa pretty well. He started making the typical, difficult comments right away, like when we were trying to find the Starbucks, the two of us saw it, but Elsa, who was driving, didn't, so she was like, "WAIT! WHERE IS IT? I don't like being lied to! Don't lie to me!"
"It's on the right!!!" I kept telling her. "Right there!"
And Brian felt the need to add, "You know that sign that says 'Starbucks Coffee?' Yeah. That's Starbucks Coffee."

But we didn't even end up eating in the mall, driving to In-N-Out, and after an epic search for parking and a long wait for Elsa's fries that took forever (just like her Starbucks), we sat outside, eating the Californian burger and basking in the absolutely gorgeous weather. Sitting there, I really fully appreciated just how lovely California is. Regardless of the traffic that takes forever and all the people, I really do love California. There's no place like home, if I may, and I don't know how I'll feel when I have to leave again in a few weeks to go back to the cold. I mean, I love Amherst, for the people and for my life there, don't get me wrong, but it made me seriously think about where I want to live after college and how much I've taken for granted. But that is all still in the distant future, even with the new year rolling in, and I shall worry about that later. Europe still awaits me, anyway!

Elsa and I dropped Brian off at a basketball court where he was going to play with his friends, we headed back for my house, singing "Wicked." I confiscated Elsa's phone because she kept texting William while driving, and I really didn't want to die. She left soon after we got back, which saddened me, but it was really lovely to see her again! I really do love her, even if she admires Sarah Palin. *shudder*