Tuesday, December 10 - Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica!

Awesome Day in Los Angeles!

We spent a lot of time (and money!) today in some cool places.  First, we went to Hollywood.  We visisted the Madame Tussaud's wax museum, and took a lot of cool pictures with very famous stars!  (Well, their wax versions).  We even danced with Beyonce and Darlene, our bus driver, to Single Ladies, and sang with Rihanna.  We saw Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, had a fake wedding with Nicolas Cage, and one student gave an Oscar acceptance speech.  Then we walked down the Walk of Fame and saw all the famous people's stars, including Mohammed Ali, whose star is on the wall, not the ground.  Even Godzilla and Shrek have a star!  We compared hand sizes with famous people in front of the Chinese Theater, and someone had the same size hands as Ron Weasley from Harry Potter.  There's lots of great shopping in Hollywood, and we bought a lot!

Next stop: Beverly Hills.  We all had lunch in nice cafes, and walked down Rodeo Drive to see where the rich people shop.  Lots of us bought cupcakes in the very popular dessert shop, Sprinkles.  When we were talking about it on the street, a Los Angeles woman walking by commented that she loves Sprinkles cupcakes.  So, we went to a place that the locals love!  There are lots of super expensive shops there, but also a Warner Bros shop with Bugs Bunny :o)

The last LA neighborhood that we visited was Santa Monica.  We had a nice time at the beach, where we played volleyball and soccer in the sand.  The water was pretty cold, but most of us at least put our feet in.  We took a lot of pictures of us jumping in the beautiful sunset.  Now a lot of us have sand in our hair and clothes.  We did some more shopping on the 3rd Avenue Promenade, with some more cool shops like the Disney shop, H&M, Lush, and more!  Then we had dinner at Buca di Beppo, a family-style "Italian"  place.  Our Italian student said it wasn't very authentic, but it was still delicious, especially the brownie we had for dessert.  We could walk through the kitchen of the restaurant and watch them cook.

Now we are all exhausted, and going to bed early to get ready for our full day at Disneyland tomorrow!

Alua (Lulu) - Kazakhstan