First Impressions

I’ve now been in California for two whole weeks. I was surprised when I looked at the calendar and discovered it’s ONLY been two weeks.

I left on the 6th with my parents for a three day road trip to get the rest of our stuff and our other car out here. My first experience of California was the 100° heat of  the desert and lots of traffic. LOTS of traffic. I feel confident in saying I have now seen more traffic in my two weeks here than in my 30 years in Illinois.

We left the heat and desert behind, luckily. The weather here is GORGEOUS, since we’re close to the ocean. We don’t run the a/c in our apartment and it can get pretty warm in here before I even notice because NO HUMIDITY. No humidity is my new best friend.

Speaking of best friends, I have none! Okay, not really, but you’re all in Illinois and I’m sitting here by myself in our apartment all day while Mark is at work. I should probably be out exploring, but remember that traffic I mentioned?

We’re in temporary housing right now, provided by Mark’s employer, so we could have time to look for something. Unfortunately our apartment isn’t very close to his job OR where our condo will be, so I have a nasty drive in the traffic on the 405 to explore our new stomping grounds. I pinky swear that I’ll explore (and report on it!) once we move.

Speaking of moving, we DID find a new place. It’s a condo in a great area with an easy commute (car or bike) for Mark and a pool for me! We move in July 1st.

Rental prices out here are INSANE compared to Peoria, but everything else has been within my expectations for price. Gas is definitely more, which I knew in advance. Groceries are slightly more expensive, and restaurants are about the same or slightly more.

Some of you guys may have heard me say once or twice (or more…) that I was going to live on tacos when we got here. I may have exaggerated slightly, but we DO have a taco place within walking distance and have been a few times already. I also made it a whole week without having In-N-Out, but we stopped there for lunch after church last Sunday. It was pretty good, but not life changing.

Other impressions…hmm. People wear a lot less clothing than I would expect. It’s not that hot yet, but everyone is wearing tanks and shorts. It makes me cold just looking at everyone in shorts inside stores with the a/c blasting! Brrrr. On the other hand, people were wearing heavy jackets out on the beach when it was 60°. Weird.

Everything is outside and I love it! Barely any bugs or humidity means that sitting out on the patio to eat is awesome. All the shopping malls I have seen so far are outdoor, and it’s nice. We leave the door to our patio open all the time for extra breezes, even though there’s no screen. Every once in a while a fly will wander in, but that’s it. It’s weird not to have a cloud of bugs around the patio light at night.

So that’s everything you missed in my life for the last two weeks! I’ll leave you with a photo from our gorgeous (temporary) apartment courtyard that I took just now because I haven’t been taking enough photos for blog posts.