花見

Hi guys!! Yumiko here~

This past weekend I had the chance to go to a "Sakura Festival" here held by CALB.

We got there early in the morning when they had booths where you can participate 

in several numbers of activities. ~

Here's my friend working on her calligraphy!

I did some too~ but I forgot to take pictures!!

I didn't take very many pictures of the place just because it wasn't really anything special to look at, sadly. I was expecting to see a lot more.

What I did do was make a fan for a friend of mine at work.

V ~ for her last name initial.  My friend used the last M to make a fan for her mum.

One of the main reasons for my going to the event was to participate in the karaoke contest. 

That event started like at 4 in the evening, so to kill time, we took the free transit bus and traveled around the area~!!

We went for lunch over at Bubba Gumps'

Loooove love looove that place! What sucked though was that we had horriiibble service that day. I usually go to this Bubba Gump's when I'm in Long Beach, but I never had to deal with any sort of bad service.

This was the first time my friends went over there, so I wanted them to have the whole Bubba Gump's Experience. But I mean, we had to keep flagging people down. Nobody came to greet us, nobody explained the concept of the restaurant - how the sign worked, other tables seated after us were getting their main courses before our appetizer. We only ordered that one dish. We had to flag people down for drinks, order, and even to check our food. I rarely EVER complain at restaurants. I would probably usually be the last to complain. So I was disappointed with that visit.

We didn't let that spoil the rest of our day thoo!

After eating lunch there, we went down to the docks to relax a little by the ocean~

I thought this picture was cute enough to be turned into a postcard!

Afterwards, we went to visit the Queen Mary!

Beauuuutiful ship!!

Such a shame that my friend wasn't hosting his tours that day  

Since we didn't have money to go inside the ship, we toured the gift shop outside the Queen Mary. It was all in commemoration of the Russian Submarine tank they found, I believe!

When we walked in, we were greeted by this guy here.

Looks so scary!!

A little further down, they had one of the coin making machines, and sophia made one for herself~

They had a whole bunch of interesting stuff to look at! My favorite are these suits ^

I also found one of these stereotypical Russian hats!

Fun stuff they are! (＞ ∇ ＜);;

Afterwards, we headed back for the karaoke competition, aaaaaaand I won

Second Place!♡

It was fun and everyone was wonderful!

It was a fun day, but I feel like I had more fun in the Long Beach area instead of the actual "festival" itself. The actual festival itself was really kind of disappointing. I was expecting to see Sakura or at least fake ones, or SOMETHING with Sakura, but nope! Absolutely nothing~ minus one gallery where there were several artworks with it. They tried to do a live viewing of the Sakura from Japan, but that didn't work because the area where the guy on Skype was had a storm the night before. So all the flowers had gotten blown off ||| OTL

Oh well~ the rest of Long Beach made up for it! (＞ ∇ ＜);;

Until next time!

Yumiko