How I Spent My (Indian) Summer Vacation, part deux

We arrived late in the afternoon at LAX.  Little AC fell asleep before the plane even took off, which was nice.  But due to a miscommunication (*cough BIGAC cough*) our ride didn't know we were landing around 4:30, so we had time to peruse the Int'l terminal.  After being picked up, we got stuck in LA traffic (of course) but managed to have dinner with friends that I hadn't seen in several years before arriving at our final destination, big AC's sister's house.

In SoCal, we toured by public transportation because big AC was too scared to rent a car for fear of another accident.  Luckily, LA has made great strides in that area.

USC-season-ticket-holding friends gave us their tickets for the game against Arizona; little AC decided she wanted to stay with her cousins so big AC and I had a date of sorts.  We arrived early, and had planned to leave early so we could make it in time to our niece's 3rd birthday party, but due to construction and bad schedules it took us TWO HOURS to get across L.A. via bus...all so big AC could have some free food at the party.  (Taco truck.)

The rest of the trip: we went to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History...

...Chinatown's Phoenix Bakery, Plaza Olvera, and Little Tokyo (the pics must be on my phone!), where we scored more Hello Kitty stuff and my favorite tea, Genmaicha by Yamamamoto, on sale at Nijiya...

...the Los Angeles Zoo, where my little one finally saw elephants (the zoos out here don't have elephants!)...

(this sure made me wanna buy a Rep-Tile!)

...and ate as much yummy food as we could.  I also had a phone interview with Stanford, which went okay. (Despite the woman telling me that she'd let me know either way where I stood within two weeks, I still haven't heard anything, and the position is still posted on the website.  Also, if you are interviewing someone on speakerphone, you might not want to keep zipping and unzipping your agenda or whatever near the mouthpiece AS IT IS MUCH LOUDER IN THE PERSON'S EAR and quite distracting.)

The biggest highlight of the LA trip was seeing how much little AC enjoyed playing with all her cousins (except the 7-year-old that was annoyed by her, which caused A LOT of friction). Hard to believe he was bummed to see us go (he was asleep when we left for the airport) when just a couple of days prior he asked, "Next time you guys visit, can you just leave her with a babysitter?"