Josh California Day One

My friend Caden invited me to go to California with him and his family for a few days, and my parents actually said I could go! He also invited Kamen, another friend. It was about a 7 or 8 hour drive, so we left on Sunday morning at 11:00. The drive wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though since I took some travel sickness pills, so I didn't get motion sickness. On the way up we watched a movie and all took a nap at some point. We were going to be staying at Caden's Aunt and Uncle's house in a city called Laguna Niguel. Laguna Niguel was above San Diego and below Los Angeles, almost right in between.

When we got to the house, it was probably about 6:30 or 7:00. Caden's Aunt, (Julie), had made us all dinner. It was Tostadas, chips, and salsa. Soon after we got there, Kamen walked up to me and whispered, "this is really awkward." I replied, "I know." Then me, Caden, and Kamen went to eat our food outside. It was cloudy when we got there, so it was kind of cold outside. After dinner, We thanked Julie, and she said that we could go swim at their community pool before it closed at 8:00 if we wanted to. We did, so we went to our room to change into our swimsuits. Their house wasn't that big, but it was a pretty decently sized house for an older couple in California. They also had a little grass yard, even though it isn't nearly as big as ours. It probably also cost twice as much.

Anyway, after we got into our swimsuits, we drove over to the pool. The pool water was kind of cold, so we mostly just stayed in the hot tub. After getting back to the house, Julie and Kevin, (Caden’s uncle), asked if we wanted to play a game. Julie wanted to play Imagine If, so we played that. It was pretty awkward at first, but it wasn’t that bad once we got into it. After it was over, the group of us played one round of Telestrations, then the adults went to bed. When they were in bed, Caden asked me and Kamen if we wanted to play a game called masterpiece. I was kind of tired, even though it was only like 10:00, because I was used to the Cross Country schedule. We ended up playing the game anyway.

They had a little game table for chess in the corner of the family room for games, but it only seats 3 people, so that is where we sat for the game. Masterpiece was a game where we would buy and sell paintings, and each painting had a different amount of money on it, one million dollars, through ten million dollars. And there was also like 1.5 million through 7.5 million dollars. There were also paintings called forgeries that weren’t worth anything so we had to try and sell them. There were bank auctions and different things like that where we would bid on paintings. All in all, it’s a game that takes a lot of strategy and risk, but it also has a sense of luck to it. Jase would probably like it.

The game took about 45 minutes to an hour to play, so we played the game a couple times and then went to our room. Our room had a queen size bed in it, so me and caden slept in the bed, and Kamen slept on the floor on a mattress pad. I guess we had this idea that we were going to be staying up all night, but we ended up falling asleep before 12:30. The house that we were staying in had the family room, then the kitchen, and the rest of the house was an L shaped hallway with lots of different rooms. Our room was at the very end of the hallway.