Living in Los Angeles

The things I LOVE about living in LA.

• We go to Church at the LA temple! Our building is directly behind it. Shea gets to see the temple and Moroni every Sunday.
  
• There is always an ocean breeze.
• Missionary opportunities! We have already picked a family from the next building over that we can't wait to share the gospel with.
  
• The magnolia trees and the bamboo. They are both everywhere!
  
• My gas stove. (finally!!)
• My laundry never takes me more than an hour and a half no matter how many loads I have. No more rotating and folding laundry every weekend, all weekend.
• There is a playground/park directly below our house!!!! Just outside our door!!!!
• My adorable, apartment.
• The weather! Today, the end of a heat wave, it was 80 and the forecast is sunny in the mid 70s for the rest of... the year.
  
• Chuck and Daniel. (The custodian and maintenance man for our set of buildings. Two of the nicest men I have ever met in my entire life!)
  
• Having said amazingly sweet guys come fix anything I want fixed within a matter of days.
  
• Walking 1 minute across the street to the grocery store.
• The beach.
• Trader Joe's. Aaahh. I finally live somewhere where I can get French cheeses, French yogurt, real baguettes, creme fraiche, pate, Orangina and Australian licorice just around the corner.
• Our new friends.
  
• Tons of restaurants, grocery stores and fast food, a copy/mail place, a nail salon, etc. etc. etc. all within a 3 minutes maximum walk. (El Pollo Loco nachos at 11pm without moving the car from that coveted spot closer to the house anyone?)
• The UCLA ward. Within four days of moving in we had four different families bring us food, lend us something we need or just come over and introduce themselves. Then we had the RS pres and the Elders quorum come over. And it hasn't let up. We get pop-ins all the time, people here are SOOO nice!! We've already had a dinner party!!! Wow.
• Our ward is entirely composed of UCLA grad students, so... they're smart. Church is fun and in Sunday School, the comments are actually insightful and pertinent! I have yet to hear the usual, "My mission president said that an apostle once told him..." or tearful Oprah-monies or inaccurate quotations from so-called LDS scholars.
  

The things I'll have to get used to while living in LA.

• It takes 15 minutes at 10pm to get home from IKEA and 45 minutes at 4pm to get there. Traffic is the great unknown. You can never just ask someone how far away something is, the answer is always prefaced by, well, in traffic...
• My uber tiny kitchen.
• Although doing laundry is super quick, I have to cart all my clothes downstairs and across the courtyard to the laundry room where I pay $1.75/load. Ugh.
• While the park just downstairs is amazing, it is also quite a distraction with a 2 yr old as we have to pass through it to get to our car or walk anywhere.
• Married student housing carpet.
  
• Everyone here is either a med student, dental student, law student, post-doc or getting a PhD. With only two degrees to my credit, I'm the dumb one!
• While walking just a short distance for almost everything we need is great, you then have to carry all those bags back home. And when we make an IKEA or Target trip? The only parking is very far from our front door so we have to make trip after tiring trip carrying all that up. I already miss the open the car door, walk a few steps and into the back door.