Disneyland Trip - Day 3: California Adventure - Pt. 1

How time flies, it was last day of the trip already. Just like yesterday, we packed our clothes, had a quick breakfast, and headed to Disneyland. But today, we were not going to the original Disneyland Park, we were going to the new California Adventure Park. The park opened in 2001, and it is the second of two theme parks built at the Disneyland Resort Anaheim. I think there are more "old-kids" rides in California Adventure such as California Scearmin' and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Just as usual, both Disneyland park and California Adventure entrance were very crowed, we had to wait for a while to get into the park.

One of the most popular attraction in California Adventure: The California Screamin' Ride!

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Disneyland Trip - Day 3: California Adventure - Pt. 2

(Please read the first part of this post first: Disneyland Trip - Day 3: California Adventure - Pt. 1.)

We visited Cars Land today! (I will mention it later)

After this quick but awesome trip around California, we went to one of the most famous attraction (but it's not in the video...) in California, Hollywood! Well, of course, not the real one, we are still in Disneyland, we went to the Hollywood Land! This area are inspired by the 1930s Golden Age period of Hollywood, I really love it since I kinda like some old-fashion buildings, that's why I also love Main Street, U.S.A. in Disneyland so much, it is inspired by the 1920s of Los Angeles. The reason why we were here was because we are going to get ready for Elisa's "Disney Junior's Live on Stage" show at 2:30, this was the only time when she could take a small rest. Before lining up for the show, we just walked around the Hollywood Land. There were not too many rides in this land but some nice gift shops and maybe some stages. When we finally got into the show theater, we were surprised because we have to sit on the ground, there was no chairs in this theater, I guess it's because this theater was designed for kids to dance and sing. But we were actually expecting to sit on some nice, soft chairs and take a rest during the show... I have to say, the actual show was pretty good. Although it was designed for little kids, I still enjoyed it a lot, I love the decorations on the stage and the music of the show, plus, seeing all small kids dancing, singing and replying silly answers to the host was really interesting. I remember that there was one time when the host asked something like "Do you want to discover Mickey's clubhouse?" (which, of course, she expect kids to answer YES), and I heard a kid behind me answered NO really loud. That was just really funny!

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Disneyland Trip - Day 2: Disneyland Park - Pt. 1

Yeah!!! This day was finally here! It's day for visiting the world happiest place, Walt Disneyland! Disneyland opens at 9 today, so we woke up at 8, and had a simple, quick breakfast. Our hotel offers free breakfast, it was very basic, and there has not place for us to eat so we have to eat in our room, but it's actually a good thing since we can finish it fast have save time to have fun in Disneyland! As we were on our way to Disneyland, we could see some rides in California Adventure Park such as California Screamin' and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, that make boys and me even more excited! By the time we arrived Disneyland entrance (about 8:45), there were already lots of people waiting there to get in to the park, it took us at least half an hour to go through all processes and got into the actual park, processes including backpack check, which can make this 40,000-visitors-per-day park much safer.

One of the rides in Disneyland, the Space Mountain

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Disneyland Trip - Day 2: Disneyland Park - Pt. 2

(Please read the first part of this post first: Disneyland Trip - Day 2: Disneyland Park - Part 1.)

Disneyland Mickey's Soundsational Parade (I will mention it later)

Buzz Lightyear, one of the main characters in the movie "Toy Story", even has its own ride, called Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. We went on it after riding Matterhorn, it didn't take us too long to wait. I remember that I have played this in HK Disneyland, we basically just have to use laser guns to shoot wherever targets are. I got 13000 points at last, but Ethan and Jason got much more points than me, I guess they know the trick... At the exit of the ride, we can send the photo of us on the ride to our own e-mail for free, I of course did send it, but I looks dumb in the picture. Ha ha.

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Disneyland Trip - Day 1: Downtown Disney

Where is "The happiest place on Earth"? I believe most people would say it's Disneyland. I've been looking forward going to Disneyland for months since I moved to California, and today, Feb 8th, was like dream come true, we were going to Anaheim for 3 days during the break! Anaheim is where Disneyland Resorts California located, including the original, oldest Disneyland Park, California Adventure Park, and Downtown Disney District. We planned to go Downtown Disney to have dinner and do some shopping on the first day, and visit the parks on day 2 and 3.

A restaurant in Downtown Disney- Rainforest Cafe

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Solana Beach: beautiful view & fine gift shops

Today, we went to another famous coastal city in San Diego, the Solana Beach. We thought that today might be a nice day to go down there and have lunch. According to Wikipedia, Solana Beach is an affluent city in San Diego County, California. When we first arrived Solana Beach at about 10 o'clock, the weather was really foggy, and the sky was dark, there were only few people on the beach, and one person was surfing. To get to the actual beach, we have to walk through a park, so we decided to let Elisa play in the park. Karen, boys, and me walked down to the beach, it was a bit cold, and since the weather was foggy, we couldn't really look far from the beach. Karen told me that if the weather is nice, we will be able to see through all Southern California beaches, including the one we visited before, La Jolla beach. Elisa and Jason then came down to the beach with us, we took some pictures, and decided to head to the restaurant to have lunch. By the time we leave, the weather started to turn nice... well, it seems we doesn't have good luck today...

Solana Beach

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Chinese New Year Festival in Downtown San Diego

Chinese New Year is a traditional Chinese holiday celebrated at the turn of the Chinese calendar, in 2014, Chinese new year was on January 31st. There are all kinds of Chinese New Year celebration around California during this new year season, since Chinese population have a large percentage in California. Today we went down town to attend the "Chinese New Year Food & Cultural Fair", according to the official San Diego website, this is a event fun-packed with various cultural performance including lion dancers, martial arts demonstrations and acrobatics, children's crafts, lantern parade and a wide variety of Chinese and Asian food booths.

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The First Formal Essay I Have Ever Written

English class is a must-take class in United States high school. Before I moved to San Diego, I had speech class in Ipswich, and I have "English 1" class now. Both classes require students to write essay or article, I just finished writing a formal essay in "English 1" class recently, and I would like to share with you.

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Upgrading iMac & Having Panda Express

We did such a cool thing today, that is, open the iMac and upgrade its hard drive. Before doing this construction, we went to Costco to get some groceries. After that, I asked if I can buy some food at the Americanized-Chinese restaurant which is right next to Costco for lunch. This chain restaurant is called Panda Express, it is kinda like a "fast food" version of Chinese food, today was my first time trying it. Some people always say that Americanized-Chinese food are nasty, but I found it is actually pretty good! But all workers in the restaurant are not Asian, which is pretty interesting, isn't it a Chinese restaurant? I ordered a plate of chow mein with Beijing beef and black pepper chicken entries, all of them taste fantastic, it is even more delicious than the real Chinese food! Why was that? I guess is because most of the entries are either spicy or really sweet, but anyway, I love it! Maybe I should learn to make some Americanized-Chinese food instead of real Chinese food so I could feed myself...haha

The process of upgrading iMac was a good opportunity for kids to learn about computer hardware.

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Visiting San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Today, January 26th, the weather in San Diego was still so perfect, not too cold, not too hot. So we decided to visit the San Diego Zoo Safari Park today. According to Wikipedia, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, known as the San Diego Wild Animal Park, is an 1,800 acre zoo in the San Pasqual Valley area of San Diego. It is one of the largest tourist attractions in San Diego County. The safari park is different from the zoo that we visited few weeks ago, there are more wild animals here.

The parrot welcome us to visit San Diego Zoo Safari Park!

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Swimming in friend's neighborhoods

I still can't believe that it's 80 degrees today, it's January already! Because of this, a friend of Karen invited us to their neighborhoods' swimming pool to swim. I was very excited since I haven't been swimming for so long.

Their neighborhoods is very huge, after entering their "North gate", we were lost. There are golf courses, tennis courses, swimming pool, restaurants and lots of houses in the neighborhoods, it's a very fancy neighborhoods. The swimming pool area is pretty big, there are standard lanes and kids area. Next to the pool, it's a small restaurant, people can order drinks or foods to eat either indoor or on the deck chairs. It is really nice!

After changing my clothes, I first played with boys. We use water guns to attract each others, it's fun to play with them. Beside playing with them, I also went swimming myself. I don't know how long is the standard lane, but I swam back and forward totally 17 times today. It's a kinda tired job. Elisa also came into the pool, she was just floating around, but it's super cute! When it's almost noon, we started to eat our lunch. We made our own sandwich and brought them to the pool.

Everyone was so tired after playing. But it was fun.

The video.

The swimming pool

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Must-Watch Great Movie - Captain Phillips Review

Few weeks ago, Uncle Paul recommend me a movie called Captain Phillips, he said that it is so great, and it is one of the best movies he have ever watched. So I downloaded and watched it few days ago.

It is a great movie, I really like this kind of movie. If you want me to rate this movie from 1 to 10 star(s), I will give it 9.5. By the way, it has 8.1 stars on IMDb, which is very good. I would really recommend you to watch this movie, it is on iTunes now, or you can also buy or rate the Blue-Ray disk. Here is some of my feelings after watching the movie, it includes some important elements of story, so don't read it if you haven't watch it! Also, here is the trailer of the movie:

The trailer on YouTube:

The official website:

http://www.captainphillipsmovie.com/site/ 

I still can't believe that this is a real story, not only Captain Philips is very smart and  wise, but the US Navy and other military people are awesome, they have really good skill.

Most of the people may think that those African people are bad, and they should not have done this, but I have a different thinking. Although being a pirate is bad and not right, but they don't really have other choice to choose from, I remember there was a moment that Philips said "everybody have boss". Those pirates of course have boss, too! I believe that if they have choice, they will defiantly do other jobs besides being a pirate, but unfortunately, if they don't be a pirate, they will have no money to live. One of the four pirates was only 16 or 17 years old, it is a age to learn, to attend school, but he can't. And one of the pirates said that he successfully got 10 millions from America government last time, but he was still being a pirate, because those money won't goes into his hand, but his boss's hand. They also want to have better life! Who will want to do this dangerous job if they can live in a house, have a car, and have money to get enough food? One of the pirate said "after this, I will go to New York, and buy a car." I really feel sad to those pirates, being a pirate is not the best solution to solve the problem, if their government can change, if their "boss" can change, all people can have a better life!

These are just my thoughts, but anyway, it's still a great, must-watch movie! Make sure to check it out!

Poster

(Thanks again, Uncle Paul)

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