How Americans Celebrate Easter

Easter is a big deal in the U.S but I don’t think it’s that big in California – at least not in Los Angeles. I hear way more about Passover (nice Jewish holiday) than Easter. BUT Easter is big for the kids nationwide. There are a lot of activities for the little ones such as painting eggs and Easter Egg Hunt.  

 

Oh! And The Easter Egg Roll game is a MUST. The game is a race, where children push an egg through the grass with a long handled spoon.  In the United States, it’s part of the annual events held at the White House. It happens every Easter Monday. It’s open to the public and it's free.

 

 

 

The special dish for Easter is baked Ham (I love it by the way), potato and vegetables. Hot cross Buns are another demanding recipe and it’s traditionally eaten on Good Friday. Like most countries, Easter symbols like bunnies and Easter Eggs are everywhere.  The popular Easter symbols were first brought in by the German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s. Eventually, American people accepted these crafts and made these symbols a vital part of their Easter celebrations.

As a part of Easter traditions in the US, sunrise services are held and the prime motive is to include various Christian religious groups in this event. Easter parties are also a common sight during this holiday time where people come, feast and make merry. Like most places in the world, pre-Lent carnivals also form an integral part of Easter celebration in the USA.

A fun fact:  Easter wedding is a popular trend in USA. People usually like to their tie nuptial knot on this propitious day.

I like Easter and the history behind it.

Happy Easter, everyone!

 

 

Source: www.indobase.com / www.govoffice.com

 

 

100k views !!!!!

 

 

This blog just crossed 100,000 page views. That is a very nice achievement. My sincere thanks to all the readers whose motivates me to write more. It didn’t start of as very serious, but the slow and steady growth in readership has made me take it more seriously. It is time to celebrate.

 

This year we added a few things:

 

• Now the blog is also in English. It was only in Portuguese.
• We added an Instagram account to share pictures of California. @californiadiaries
• We added a Twitter account that is linked with this blog and our Instagram account. @CA_diaries

Add us on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Thank you so much guys !!!!!!!

 

Raiane

Bike ride from Venice to Malibu

One of the things that I like to do is take a bike ride from Venice to Malibu. I absolutely love the view. On weekends it gets a little crowded but it’s very nice during the week.

If you are a tourist and doesn’t have a bike don’t  worry. You can rent one for $ 15 for the whole day. I recommend to rent it from a guy in Via Marina, he’s at a hotel parking lot in front of the Oakwoods Apartments in Marina Del Rey.

After you get your bike, go to Venice and enter the Bike Path. It's an amazing ride. It’s about 20 miles of nice breeze and wonderful view. After you pass Venice Beach you’ll see the Santa Monica Ferris wheel and very quickly after that you’ll  get to the sand of Baywatch.

Men can get really disappointed because there is no Pamela Anderson lifeguard but  for me and those who care, the lifeguards are mainly men and they're GORGEOUS!!

Anyway ...

How to know you arrived in Malibu? It’s at the end of the Bike Path. You can't miss that.  Once you’re there, stop, go to the beach (take the bike with you), sit back and enjoy the dolphins "playing" very close to you. They are there every day. ;)

Oh... And the sunset in Malibu is amazing.

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Text Message Abbreviations

WTF are you talking about? LOL.

Here are some of the most used abbreviations in English and their meanings:

lol = laughing out loud
bff = best friends forever
cya = see ya
kk = ok ok/ ok cool
k = ok
y = why
4 = for
2 = too/to
gtg = got to go
hbu = how bout you
u = you
ttyl = talk to you later
l8tr = later
tho = though
cyl = call you later/ see you later
thx = thanks
np = no problem
brb = be right back
nvm = nevermind
rofl = rolling on floor laughing
rotfl = rolling on the floor laughing
smh = shaking my head
idc = I don't care
hm = how much
idk = I don't know
tyvm = thank you very much
gl = good luck

LANDMARK HOME BY OSCAR NIEMEYER IN SANTA MONICA

Photo: Scott Frances / Architectural Digest

Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian modernist legend responsible for important designs in Brazil such as the Museum of Modern Art in Rio State and the capital city of Brasília. He has built only one residential structure in the United States, where he was long banned because of his leftist political associations. The whole project was built without his presence but very carefully supervised by him. Despite his global fame, the Santa Monica house he designed in 1963 for the film director Joe Strick was hardly known even to Southern California’s Nikon-strapped aficionate of midcentury modernism.

Photo: Scott Frances / Architectural Digest
 

Sited on a bluff overlooking a golf course and the Santa Monica Mountains, the expansive one-story house, with a 14-foot-tall glass-walled living room, gradually became destabilized by seismic waves and it shifts in land values. Several years ago a developer bought the 4,600-square-foot house, planning to raze it to build one twice the size. The application for a demolition permit finally triggered the attention of the landmarks commission, which issued a stay of execution, putting the preservation community on alert.

 

 

 

Michael and Gabrielle Boyd heard about the endangered house the day they were closing on the sale of their town house in Manhattan. Michael Boyd was on the plane the next day to safe the now landmark house.

Photo: Scott Frances / Architectural Digest

 

The architect died in 2012 by the age of 104. Niemeyer was still practicing in Rio months before his death.

 

Source: Architectural Digest

Let's celebrate the Irishness!!!!!!!!!!

I loooooooooooooooooove St. Patrick's Day!!!! It's one of my fav time of the year.

I love to wear green. I think it brings good luck. I think that drinking green beer is cool and fun. Never had green beer? Don't worry it's safe and it will not give you green pee. LOL

Have fun, people!!!!! \o/

Celebrity of the Week: Sean Penn

Last Friday (15), in Los angeles, Ariel Goldenberg, a Brazilian  actor with Down Syndrome, saw his life long dream of meeting actor Sean Penn come true. The actor met Sean Penn at his house. For those who doesn’t know what’s going on, Goldenberg is a huge fan of Sean Penn and his colleagues started a campaign (#vemseanpenn) to bring Sean Penn to Brazil to attend the premiere of “Colegas” (buddies).

Despite all the buzz, Sean Penn didn’t come to Brazil for the premiere of “Colegas”. I actually knew he wouldn’t come. A lot of Hollywood actors don’t like their names associated with advertising campaign. #vemseanpenn helped to promote the movie. I wasn’t aweare of the movie before this campaign and I didn’t know about Ariel either. But everything is possible in Hollywood, baby. And Goldenberg’s dream came true and he met his idol.

I think that Goldenberg was a little crazy to simply knock on Penn’s door. This is actually banned in some states. Places like Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Malibu have a very strong privacy law. You can’t even drive thru some streets uninvited. There are many warning signs and security cameras and in California, depending on the case, a person can get up to 6 months in jail and have to pay a fine of about $1000.

I've always liked Sean Penn. He's on my list of favorite actors. There is a group in the U.S who doesn’t  like him for being "socialist." Maybe that’s why the campaign was not as strong in the US, but it was enough to catch his attention. He didn’t go to Brazil for the premiere of the movie but he welcomed Ariel into his house and was very nice to him and that’s why Sean Penn is our celebrity of the week.

I’m not socialist but I don’t care about people’s political view, race, sexual orientation or religion. I don’t judge people. I like Sean Penn’s work and that’s it. I don’t care about anything else and you shouldn’t care either. ;)

 

 

Fonte: Folha de SP.

Rhyolite Ghost Town

After the Tour of The Museum of Death, let's talk about a ghost town?
 

The Rhyolite is not in California but it’s a good tip for those driving from CA to Vegas. Rhyolite is a ghost town in Nye County, Nevada, located in the Bullfrog Hills, about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas, near the eastern edge of Death Valley. 

I’ve been to this place in one of my trips to Vegas and loved it. There is absolutely nothing there besides ruins, but I found the place fantastic. It has an amazing Wild West feeling. It’s like been in a movie and Hollywood knows that. The site is often used as a location for films. The Cook Bank for example has been used in movie The Reward. The island also shot some scenes in Rhyolite. A tip: You should visit the Rhyolite during the day. Who knows what's out there at night. Lol

A little bit of history:

The town began in early 1905 as one of several mining camps that sprang up after a prospecting discovery in the surrounding hills. During an ensuing gold rush, thousands of gold-seekers, developers, miners and service providers flocked to the Bullfrog Mining District. Many settled in Rhyolite, which lay in a sheltered desert basin near the region's biggest producer, the Montgomery Shoshone Mine.

Industrialist Charles M. Schwab bought the Montgomery Shoshone Mine in 1906 and invested heavily in infrastructure, including piped water, electric lines and railroad transportation, that served the town as well as the mine. By 1907, Rhyolite had electric lights, water mains, telephones, newspapers, a hospital, a school, an opera house, and a stock exchange. Published estimates of the town's peak population vary widely, but scholarly sources generally place it in a range between 3,500 and 5,000 in 1907–08.

 

 Rhyolite declined almost as rapidly as it rose. After the richest ore was exhausted, production fell. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the financial panic of 1907 made it more difficult to raise development capital. In 1908, investors in the Montgomery Shoshone Mine, concerned that it was overvalued, ordered an independent study. When the study's findings proved unfavorable, the company's stock value crashed, further restricting funding. By the end of 1910, the mine was operating at a loss, and it closed in 1911. By this time, many out-of-work miners had moved elsewhere, and Rhyolite's population dropped well below 1,000. By 1920, it was close to zero.

After 1920, Rhyolite and its ruins became a tourist attraction and a setting for motion pictures. Most of its buildings crumbled, were salvaged for building materials, or were moved to nearby Beatty or other towns, although the railway depot and a house made chiefly of empty bottles were repaired and preserved. From 1988 to 1998, three companies operated a profitable open-pit mine at the base of Ladd Mountain, about 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Rhyolite. The Goldwell Open Air Museum lies on private property just south of the ghost town, which is on property overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

 

Source: Wikipedia

The Museum of Death

Are you seeking something weird, dark and...well.. hm... unique?

 

The Museum of Death in Hollywood, California, was founded in June, 1995, originally located in San Diego’s first mortuary in a building once owned by Wyatt Earp. The founders JD Healy and Cathee Shultz realized that there weren’t anything that would teach about death so they decided to make death their life’s work.

 

The museum houses the world’s largest collection of serial murderer artwork, photos of famous serial killers crime scenes, body bag and coffin collection, replicas of full size execution devices, pet death taxidermy, and so much more!

 

I haven’t been to this place and I don’t feel like going either. I don’t think I have stomach to see its contents. But it’s in Hollywood to anyone who wants to visit. It’s a self guided tour, lasting approximately 45 minutes to an hour, but you can stay longer if you like.

 

They are located at  6031 Hollywood Blvd. Admission is $15 per person and parking is free!

 

Their administrators say that there is no age limit but they strongly recommend mature audience. There have been people passing out at the museum so they stress that you should be prepared for “a good dose of reality”, as they say.

 

Museum of Death $15 admission Free parking 6031 Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90028 (323) 466-8011

Hours: Sun-Fri 11am - 8pm Sat 11am - 10pm

 

Source: Museum of Death http://www.museumofdeath.net/