Our new life in Los Angeles

Wow is it November already? I guess that means I've managed to put off blogging for two and a half months... good job. Well, as per the previous occasions when I'd abandoned the blog for an extended period of time, I'm putting stuff into digestive chunks so you can skim through it as you wish so here we go:

Weather 
I can't help but start with the weather because we are in SoCal and it is November and there are places in Canada that are covered in three feet of snow. Here, the weather has been freakin' perfect every day. I am talking 25 degrees (still don't know Fahrenheit), sunshine and blue skies, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

About a month in, I finally began to understand the lyrics to that  Loudon Wainwright III song, "Grey in L.A." (it goes: "When it's grey in L.A. / I sure like it that way / there's just too much sunshine around here / I don't know about you I get so sick of blue skies / whenever they always appear"), and then I slap myself and try to remember what it was like to feel your bones freeze and how your face hurt when it thawed. To be fair, sometimes in the evenings it can get pretty chilly here.... like, 19 degrees.

Westwood: this is where we live
Here's a map to get you better oriented. The red star is us and the yellow patch is Westwood which is about 4 miles or a 10-minute drive east of Santa Monica beach. Downtown L.A. is another 15 miles and a half-hour drive east (if you're lucky given L.A. traffic).

Apart from the UCLA campus and hospitals (one of the top 5 in the states), Westwood is also home to a few vintage theaters including the Fox Theater (a popular venue for Hollywood movie premieres), the Hammer Museum, a quiet little cemetery which is the final resting place for some pretty big names (Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Roy Orbison, and both Grumpy Old Men), three grocery stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Ralph's), 800 Degrees (arguably the best pizza joint in the world where your pizza is made to order right in front of you, just like Subway--but with pizza), an In-n-Out Burger, and the famous $1.75 Diddy Riese ice cream sandwich. Just on the other side of the freeway on top of a hill is the Getty Center, a gorgeous museum complex we visited back in April.

And even though our mailing address says we live in Los Angeles, Westwood is really its own little bubble, quite separate from the Beverly Hills & Hollywoodness of it all. Having said that, lots of graduate students call neighbouring Brentwood home, as do the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Duhamel & Fergie, Jennifer Garner, and Ewan McGregor. Oh, and the Playboy Mansion is apparently also nearby in Holmby Hills...

Our apartment
Apartment hunting was a breeze. We landed in L.A. on a Saturday night, walked around looking at places all day Sunday and Monday, signed our contract Tuesday, went furniture shopping at IKEA on Wednesday, moved in Thursday. I thought it would be fun to look at apartments together--it wasn't, it was exhausting. After 20 viewings, we found the 1-bedroom apartment which we now call home (at least for the next 9-12 months anyway). We are in a residential area full of low-rise apartment buildings (and lots of trees), a 3-minute walk from the nearest grocery store, a 15-minute walk to Westwood Village, and another 15 minutes to the heart of the UCLA campus.

Student life at UCLA

Out of three thousand some applicants, 360 people got in to the 2-year full-time MBA program at the Anderson School of Management. The students in the Class of 2014 range from 23-39 in age (although most are between 27-30), a quarter of which are married and a third of which are international. They come from all sorts of backgrounds and are all very bright, well-rounded, motivated people (read: keeners, which by the way is a word only Canadians use apparently?). They spent most of September together in orientation which was basically two and a half weeks of meet-and-greet.

And now we're going into Week 6 which is somehow already half-way through the quarter. Mike is taking five classes--all the fun stuff: finance, economics, statistics, accounting, communications--on top of which there are always extra workshops, networking activities, social events, and a whole bunch of what-are-you-going-to-do-with-your-life questions piled under the "career" heading. It's all really good for him of course, so he's trying not to let the sleep deprivation and stressfulness of it all get to him.

As for me, I've been taking on the whole supportive housewife role and keeping the place tidy and packing lunches and making dinners and all that (did I mention I wasn't allowed to work on my spouse visa?). In the beginning I may have had a breakdown or two when I realized I actually wasn't going to see my husband at all for the next two years, but then I was okay. I've always been very good at finding things to do and I can't really complain about being basically retired for two years.

So, I decided to go back to school too! Except while Mike's education is costing him, oh, about $120,000--mine is free. This quarter I am auditing 6 classes at UCLA: a few Art/Design Histories (always loved art/design), Intro Psyc (takes me back to undergrad), History of the Beatles (awesome), and Calligraphy (really neat--check out the first two fonts I learned on the right!). It's amazing how much more fun school is when it's something you want to do rather than something you have to do. Plus I don't have to do any of the readings or write the exams, so that's pretty great too. The only thing is, I'm almost a bit too busy now because I've been putting off all these things I'm meant to be doing during this "sabbatical" of mine... Oh well, I'll get to them eventually.

We've really been rather spoiled with where we've gone to school. Anyone who's been to Kingston can tell you that Queen's University, with all its old limestone buildings, is easily one of the most beautiful campuses in Canada (and that's without counting its Herstmonceux Castle campus in England). And now here is where we spend our days:

Fun stuff
Actually in the midst of all of Mike's heavy workload for school, there's been some pretty fun stuff too. Anderson's really great with making sure the wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends (they call us Sig-O's which is short for Significant Others) don't feel left out and go to as many events as possible. We've gone out for happy hours, house parties, BBQ's, beach days, and that sort of thing. For Thanksgiving we even managed to get together a group of Canadians to have a proper turkey lunch at a Quebecois restaurant (literally around the corner from us and they have poutine!). Here's a picture of us from Halloween:

Happy Halloween from John & Yoko

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
We've done a few "Explore L.A." things here and there which we hope to do a lot more of once things settle down a bit with school next year and once we get a car (we were hoping not to have to get one, but everybody drives in L.A., and it's the only way to see California really).

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a field trip to "LACMA" with my Art History class. It was really neat to see a few of the things we'd been talking about in class, like the stone panels that once adorned the palace in the ancient kingdom of Assyria and a tiny piece of Persepolis, the Persian Empire. These were the kind of things I normally would've just quickly rushed through, but now that I know a bit about their history, I stop and think what might have been.

I also didn't expect to see so many of the great works at a museum just a 15-minute bus ride away (though later I learned it was an encyclopedic museum so it made sense that it had such a wide range of stuff). There were some great pieces ranging from Monet & Degas to Mondrian & Warhol, but the ones that really caught my eye were Picasso's "Weeping Woman with Handkerchief", Diego Rivera's "Dia de Flores", and finally and most surprisingly, Rene Magritte's "La trahision des images [Ceci n'est pas une pipe]". I've always loved Magritte's paintings but I'm pretty sure this was the first time I've seen one in real life (the vast majority of his work are at the Magritte Museum in Brussels which only opened in 2009 and which I dream to visit one day).

After walking around the museum, I walked a few blocks over to the Farmers Market and had some tacos for lunch then strolled through The Grove, an upscale outdoor shopping mall right next to the market. I'm waiting to go back next time with Mike to check out the La Brea tar pit, an actual tar pit that has been around for tens of thousands of years where they have found (and continue to find) remains of Ice Age animals like sabre-tooth cats, dire wolves and mammoths, and that's pretty cool.

Santa Monica & Venice
We've only made it to the beach a few times so far but you can't help but become a little bit complacent when every day is a good beach day. The first time we went out we swam in the ocean for ages and realized how easy it was to be buoyant in salt water. I love swimming at the cottage but treading water was hard work!

The second time we went out was for our first-ever surfing lesson and it sucked. I've never been quick to pick up sports but a tiny part of me was hoping that I would somehow just be a natural at surfing. Nope. The waves kicked my ass basically for two hours, it was brutal. I cried. But one day, once I build up the courage again (and renew my health insurance), I will give it another go. Second time's a charm?

The third time was when Kyle came to visit for a weekend. We walked through the Venice canals and then along the boardwalk and Muscle Beach (where Arnold used to work out!). Venice is a pretty unique place, lots of interesting people/sights, so I'm sure we'll be back down there one day (probably for First Fridays, where they line a whole street with food trucks for a night)!

Alright well, I think that brings us up to date pretty much so I'll stop here. I'll try to keep the postings shorter and more regular so that you aren't having to read a novel every time (but who's actually reading all this anyways). I'll leave you with this photo of us from our first-ever college football game and tailgate--Go Bruins! :o) By the way, next quarter I'm planning on only taking one class--History of Rock n' Roll, hard to pass that one up--so start planning your visits, we would love to see you!