California is like heaven... with traffic jams

Wow I'm behind on blogging. It's time for me to chronicle a road trip Ben and I took to California in June.


It all started when Ben applied for an ORCA grant to do a documentary for school and go it! Woo hoo! At least that's what we thought initially. Now the feelings are mixed. An analogy: it's like winning a sweet new SUV then having to pay out the nose for car insurance and gas. We won money, but now we have to spend money to fully utilize the money we won.

So part of said spending was a trip to Los Angeles to interview people for the film. Ben's documentary is about a group of people we both taught on our missions called the Garifuna. They are black people who live in Central America and speak Spanish, but many have immigrated to the US and integrated into black culture. So as stage one of his project, we cruised to SoCal (don't I sound so legit?) for a few days. I was just the production assistant, but I was glad to tag along. The agenda was as follows:

1. Film interviews
2. Film more interviews
3. Film a Garifuna school
4. Film a Garifuna concert
5. More interviews
6. Relax in Laguna Beach for less than 24 hours

Yes, as a reward for being a great production assistant I made Ben take me to Laguna Beach for a night. We got a great rate at a hotel and spent the morning on the beach. And that was about it. I barely got any pictures of the interviews or filming, but I did get a bunch at the beach. Really though, who can pass up taking pictures at the beach?

We made a sweet sandcastle and although many of the people on the
beach chuckled at two adults furiously digging and packing sand, I think they
ultimately admired our amazing design :)

Ben models the castle

One day I'll own a beach house like this. Or maybe I'll redeem my ward choir
points (see earlier post) for a mansion in heaven like this one.

The City of Los Angeles was quite an experience- Ben and I spent most of our time in a area we dubbed "Little Central America". We were there filming for 4 days and saw only two other white people- both homeless men. One day we had a few extra minutes so we decided to stop by Ross and get Ben some clothes. When we walked in everyone looked at us like we were from the moon. We looked around and realized we were the only white people in the whole store- everyone else was Latin. The same thing happened in the grocery store. At times I thought, "Am I still in America?" But it was a great opportunity to practice our Spanish and be the minority for a bit. I think that's a healthy experience to have every once in awhile.

Last funny story: Ben and I decided to go to church in Spanish on Sunday. We programmed the address in the GPS and followed the directions. When it said, "Your destination is ahead of you" I pulled into a church parking lot and we parked on the side of the building. Since we'd arrived early, we sat and waited for other people to arrive. One man got out of a truck that had a big "LOVE JESUS" sticker on the back, which we thought was strange, but we didn't get suspicious until a lady walked in the side door with a black lace veil on. Ben then asked, "Is this the right church?" So we walked around to the front and saw this:

We were about to attend an Evangelical church called "La Iglesia de Jesucristo" or "The Church of Jesus Christ". Pretty close, but very different. It was complete with neon sign and multiple days you can attend.

We then turned around and directly across the street we saw this:

The Mormon Church! I'd just turned into the wrong church parking lot. We got a good laugh out of it. I told Ben the neon flashing sign was hard to resist, but the Elders greeting people in front of the other church got me in the end.