when you wish upon a star.

so i continue the tales of my US trip 6 months ago, much to the amusement of one of my silent blog readers lori. (: yes i'm slow. but i take time to remember my exciting and memorable trip. so it's a nice time for me too. to blog and tell stories.

so i continue my days in LA. we woke up bright and early to get to disneyland! it was really way too early i didn't even get my contacts in my small eyes. we managed to navigate through the morning rush hour on the freeways to get to anaheim, california where disneyland was. just about 50 minutes from west hollywood. we got there at around 8.30 am and there was already a long line of cars waiting to get into the carpark. the theme park isn't even opened yet. after parking our car we sat a short tram ride to get to the entrance plaza. joined the LONG line to buy tickets. a one-day pass, if i didn't remember wrongly, cost us US$80+. steep. but it's once in a lifetime right? unless i bring my kids there next time. then we joined a huge crowd of people gathered at the entrance and waited for about 15 minutes for the park to open. tourists are always kiasu, not just singaporeans.

so we enter the park and i was a little girl again. i grew up with disney films and i can sing and tell you disney stories and rattle them out at the tip of my fingers. i used to watch my LDs over and over again. although that feeling did fade away after awhile when we went to sit the rides. there was the pirates of the caribbean ride, which was so disappointing. oh i should get on with the pictures. i didn't take a lot 'cos we were just enjoying our time in the park and sitting more and more rides. (:

at the center of the park is this big lake, with an island at the center. a big ferry allows you to explore the place. oh not ferry. haha a pirate ship.

disney characters have designated photo ops around the park. so as we walk along in the park, we'd stop and wait for our turn to take pictures with them. they even sign autographs for the children. i was thinking i would be so super happy if i was a kid. and if you need an introduction, that's winnie the pooh beside me. he's very cuddly.

remember that lake? because we were adventurous and didn't wanna take the pirate ship, we chose to take the kayak ride. and in case you think you can just sit on the kayak and admire the sights, we had to paddle!! we were all given paddles and it got tiring after awhile. haha. but it was quite fun and my kayak "instructor" was quite cute, dark and muscular. hurhur.

it was a hot hot hot day! i got sun burnt so i was quite glad i wasn't wearing a t-shirt or i'll have ugly tan lines. this ride is for kids, but for linda my travel partner, we queued for it. it's the ride where you sit in a big tea cup and the ground spins, and you grab the wheel at the center of the tea cup if you wanna spin somemore. it was fun in a strange way. haha.

the ever famous disney castle of sleeping beauty. and the symbol for buena vista international, the company that is owned by walt disney company and produces lots and lots of films and television. including grey's anatomy and brothers and sisters.

pretty flowers. i was bored while waiting for a ride. i think this is the lunge ride. where you sit in a cylinder-like thing and whoosh down narrow tubes around a man-made mountain. it's called the matterhorn, which is an actual mountain in the european alps.

the spacey-futuristic theme at one part of the park. and this is where space mountain is! my favorite ride of disneyland. we sat on it twice and it was really very exhilirating! (: and it's a super popular ride. the fast passes for space mountain for 1115pm (the very last time slot) is given out at 6pm, and it runs out super fast but we managed to grab them so we can sit a 2nd time.

anyway the fast pass system is really good. it's only available for the popular rides and you scan your theme park ticket, and they print out a fastpass ticket for you for an allocated time slot. so all you gotta do is to return to the ride at that designated slot and you get to skip the long lines and go on the fastpass line. 90% of the time, the fastpass really allows you to skip the queues. but for the VERY popular rides, there's a waiting line at the fastpass queue even. but still faster.

oh and i remember another one of my favorite rides was the buzz lightyear one! where you sit in a space car and you get a "laser gun" and as the car moves along the ride, you travel into "space" and there are many targets all around you and you gotta point your laser gun and shoot. different targets (proximity, distance, size and moving/stationary) all get you different points and it's recorded at the "dashboard" of your space car! it was such a cool, high tech ride and loads of fun shooting the aliens down.

another ride, where you get to power a bumper car and drive on tracks. it's for children lah but we still went to take. haha.

then at 6pm, it's time for the grand parade, where everyone in the park gathers along the main streets and watches the parade. so here we are, sitting at the sidewalk waiting for it to start.

so the parade consists of dancers, stilt walkers, clowns, characters from the disney films and singing of course! and the very elaborate floats. this one above is from the little mermaid!

still the little mermaid.

that's alice from alice in wonderland.

and i forgot what's this. (:

the lion king. also one of my favorites. can still remember how i cried buckets when mufasa died.

as night fell, we sat more rides, grabbed dinner and waited for the famous fireworks to start at 9pm. but we have the poorest luck. the fireworks were canceled due to strong winds and impending rainstorm. HUH. we were all so disappointed. the fireworks over the castle were famously spectacular. sigh. we resigned to our fate and hung around somemore, walking the shops, buying souvenirs, sitting more rides.

so after our final space mountain ride, we walked around for abit more before the park starts to close, and we head out of disneyland, sat on the trams to bring us back to the carpark and drove home. so essentially we were there before the park opened, and we stayed till closing time. ahhh the perks of driving. of course i was SO tired from the day's activities and still had to drive back home. travelling is tiring, but i really don't mind.

ok here are the pictures taken by the professional photographers of disneyland. it's just like many theme parks (like movie world). you take picture with pooh, we snap, and we ask you to pay US$10 for one lousy 5R photo. but at disneyland, they issue you your individual bar-coded photo-pass, where all your pictures are stored digitally under your card and they are available online at the disneyland website for a month! so technically you view them and if you wanna order prints you can order them at the park or online when you get home. times have changed huh. high tech. but since we cannot ctrl+c and ctrl+v the pictures, i use ctrl+printscreen. (: or in mac terms, grab!

oh you can even add your own borders at the website! which is what i did. haha.

this is aurora. she's very pretty and she said my top was very nice. (:

this is belle. her dress reminds me of giselle in enchanted.



everyone let's sing. m-i-c-k-e-y m-o-u-s-e!

and to end off disneyland pictures, here's winnie the pooh again. xiaohan, this is for you. (:

***

these days have been days of pigging out. i had fish & co. dinner with justina before we sent cherie off to UK for exchange. and it was nice seeing so many people send her off and it reminded me of my own departure for exchange 1 year ago and was quite thankful i didn't have so many friends sending me off or i'll cry buckets in front of everyone. i'm going to miss cherie and her company a lot these 6 months when she's not around. but i'm sure she'll have a great time of learning and discovering and loving the Lord and being stronger in Him so much more.

then the next night i met with long-time-no-see classmates from tj for melben crabs at AMK. ahhhh i love their crabs so much and i ate so much. after that we adjourned to jalan kayu for some drinks and the guys ate prata. i reckon they're not seafood fans. but it was so good seeing them again and catching up.

then the next afternoon, which was today, we had a post-christmas, post-new year's party at work. boss treated us to pizzas and we exchanged gifts. it was a rather unique way of gift exchange because you can choose to take other people's gifts which they chose from the pile and opened already, and that person have to give it to you. strange rules right. but it's quite fun actually. at first, i grabbed a pink shawl from a spanish post-doc fellow who's pregnant with twins! cos she wanted another person's present for her babies. then my own supervisor grabs my shawl when another person takes her gift. so i proceed to grab a bottle of wine from another guy. HAHA and i brought home the wine in the end. good thing i didn't have to steal from boss.

yes it's complicated. but anyway i ate quite a lot again and there were many snacks going around and we sat around and talked for 2.5 hours. everyone was so nuah and boss also commented no one was in the mood to work anyway. (:

***

the macbook air is calling out to me. my ibook is still going on strong when it's coming to 4 years old. apple laptops rock (when you take care of it). but now i realized i have to really get down to learning photoshop in order to edit my photos of my zebrafish for FYP, as well as get annotations for my figures out. and i'm afraid my ibook has not enough memory to support. sigh.

***

i'm glad it's the weekend because after a long hectic week at work/FYP/gatherings and lots of distractions and tiredness, it's good to turn my utmost focus back unto the Lord and worship Him and learn from pastors His word and truths. and recharge my spirit for the coming week and renew my strength once again. and i also look forward to choir and singing. (: