From the beginning on I’ve been very honest with you about what I find hard about moving to a new country. My biggest fear and indeed one of my biggest struggles here in the US has been finding friends from the beginning on. I know that it is mostly my fault, because I might not be the most outgoing and easy person. But I didn’t expect it to be that hard to find some nice people over here.

Now – nearly 18 months after we first moved the US – we found some nice friends and have a good circle of close people. But it for sure isn’t the same as back home. We hung out with one of Flo’s new co workers and his girlfriend yesterday. I met them before and absolutely love them, but for the first time I really got to talk to them yesterday. When I talked to the girl alone, she told me how hard even she as an American has it to find friends in LA. She is from the East Coast and told me that she considers the West Cast as somewhat of a bad place to actually make friends.

When you move here you have to learn the difference of an actual friendship and a superficial nice gesture very fast. No, I don’t want to say Americans are superficial. I really don’t think that. They are nice and open – and Europeans might often misunderstand that. But you have to learn to not mistake a nice move as a friendship. And I guess that is what happened to me when we first moved here and often left me a little confused.

I guess the best tip I can give everyone who plans on moving here or just did so is take your time. Don’t think everything has to work out perfectly in the first years. Maybe you will be lucky and find friends super fast. But maybe you won’t – and that’s absolutely okay. Because you are building a whole new life for yourself – and you have to do that one step at a time.

This weekend we had to see the downsides of the beautiful, but sometimes also unpredictable weather in Southern California. We drove to San Bernardino to see the Red Bull X-Fighters, which is a Freestyle Motocross Event in the middle of nowhere. It takes place on a race track where professional riders show crazy stunts on their bikes. I am a huge FMX fan, so I was totally looking forward to see the show. But after the event got pushed back two hours it had to be cancelled, because the winds between the California mountains were too strong and made the whole event too risky. For all the fans sitting in the 90° full on sunshine those winds were actually the best thing, but for the riders they were nothing but dangerous.

People got actually pretty mad at Red Bull for cancelling the event, but we still managed to get out of the area pretty fast and without seeing any trouble caused by disappointed fans. And here is where the day actually still turned good. We drove to a small city called Claremont which is half way between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. Our friend loves to go there, because they have one of his favorite restaurants. But the city actually has a little more to offer, which is a very pretty small town and also some very cute Vintage shops. So instead of watching Motocross Freestylers risking their lives, we just browsed some pretty stores and enjoyed a sunny day in Southern California.

As I told you before, life here has made me way more stress resistant. And therefore I took the disappointment of the cancelled event pretty chill and made the best of our day.

This week we had visitors in our new guest room for the first time. Well, actually it is more an office, but we also use it as a guest room if needed. One of Flo’s ex-co workers and her boyfriend came to stay with us for a week after taking a roadtrip down the West Coast from Seattle, where they landed three weeks ago. Sadly we didn’t have that much time to spend with our friends, since we both had to work as usual. But we still had a bit of time to show them some nice things.

We took them to one of our favorite Sushi restaurants down here on Sunday – their first night here, called Waki Sushi in Seal Beach. During the week we mostly stayed in at night, had dinner, talked or watched movies, but during the day our friends enjoyed the sun, beach and a few other sights in the OC. We drove to Anaheim to watch the Disneyland Fireworks on Friday. I think I gave this tip before, but if you haven’t read it yet: If you don’t wanna go to the actual Disneyland Park, but still want to see the pretty Fireworks, you actually can for free. Go to Downtown Disney (you can park there for free for the first three hours) and go to the area between the actual park entrances to Disneyland and California Adventure. From here you have a pretty good view and can enjoy the cute Downtown Disney area for free before or afterwards.

On Saturday, we went to Los Angeles with two more of our friends, got lunch and afterwards hiked to the Hollywood Sign. Many people think this hike is illegal, but it actually isn’t. So if you have a few hours and are in the mood to hike, you should try this one. Not only to get as close to the Hollywood Sign as you can get, but also to have amazing views of huge parts of Los Angeles including the pretty Hollywood Reservoir, Downtown, the Griffith Observatory and if you are lucky you can even spot the beach.

I always love having friends in town, because it gives me a little feeling of home and also makes me see the LA gems that I normally don’t visit!