They Never Said It Would Be Easy

Spring 2015

It was hard to go back to school after the long winter break, but I was ready to see all of my water polo friends and get back into the groove of things. Unlike a lot of universities, University of California schools (UCs) are broken up into quarters instead of semesters, so that meant that I had two quarters left (winter and spring), amounting to about 20 weeks of school until summer, instead of one spring semester. The classes moved pretty quickly, so I needed to make sure that I stayed on top of my studies so that Colin could visit me and I could travel to visit some of my friends on the weekends. During winter quarter alone, Colin would be coming down to visit me, finally, and the girls were going to fly to Colorado to visit Aria.

When the weekend came around for Colin to come visit I got really excited. At this point in the school year I had made a solid amount of friends and I couldn't wait to introduce Colin to them. I had also made my way around LA quite a bit, so I was excited to take him to a few of my favorite places.

Around 4:00 I went to pick him up from the airport. He got in the car, gave me a quick kiss, and then we headed back to the dorm so he could put his stuff away and take a quick shower. While he was doing that, I was planning our weekend. Since he got here on a Friday and was leaving on a Sunday, we had to squeeze everything into two days. I decided that Friday night I would take him to one of the houses that girls from the water polo team lived in. A lot of them had started dating guys on the boys team so I thought that Colin would feel right at home with them. We could drink a bit and have a fun night without needing to go to a crazy party. Saturday we would explore LA a bit, including Little Tokyo (my favorite), and maybe go to a few museums. Then we could try a new restaurant in the area and head back to my dorm to end the night with a movie.

When Colin got out of the shower and got dressed, we went to get a quick bite to eat and made our way towards the water polo house. Once we got inside, I introduced Colin to my friends and their boyfriends. We spent the night drinking, playing some games, and chatting a bit about water polo. It turns out that Colin had played against a few of the guys in one of their tournaments. Everyone got along well and we stayed until about one in the morning and then went back to my dorm. When we got back, I remembered that my roommate was visiting her boyfriend for the weekend, so Colin and I had some much needed alone time.

The next morning we got up around 10 and got ready to explore the city. Our first stop was Little Tokyo, my favorite spot in LA. They had the best shops, full of delicious food, incredible books/manga, and merchandise from some of my favorite shows. After walking into a majority of the shops, we sat down to eat a few dumplings and drink tea.

"This is incredible Gigi! I can't believe that I have lived an hour south of here my whole life and I've never been here!"

"I told you! Being able to feed my Sailor Moon addiction while simultaneously eating one of my favorite foods is the recipe for a perfect day," I exclaimed, clearly intrigued by everything around me.

"And it is just the beginning. Let's finish looking in all of the shops and then figure out what museums we want to visit," Colin suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

After we finished shopping at Little Tokyo, we went to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Our favorite piece was Chris Burden's Urban Light, which consists of a bunch of restored street lamps from around LA, all closely gathered together. I'm not exactly sure why I loved it so much, but the idea of restored light made me think that even if life gets dark and it seems as if nothing is going right, there is a way to reinvent oneself and make things better, make life bright again.

After LACMA, we made our way to the Getty Center. I loved the antique art that the mansion was filled with, but nothing could beat the city view, especially at night with downtown buildings lighting up the city. The only thing that made the view better was being able to enjoy it with Colin. I was so happy to be able to show him around the city while simultaneously finding a reason to love it myself. It was hard to adjust from a suburb to a city and although LA could be a pain, considering traffic and all the crime that occurs there, the Getty gave me a newfound love and respect for the city I was now living in.