Thursday 13 July:
Good morning, I am up bright and early at 3 and by 4am I am check out the hostel, have my luggage with me and am waiting at the bus stop with a really sore stomach (maybe food poisoning). After about 2 minutes of waiting I see this lady cross the road and sit down next to me. Then OFFICIAL TERRIFYING YAEL DRAMA. I will confidently say that I have a sixth sense when it comes to sketchy people. I unfortunately have had many scary experiences with these people and have gained a gut feeling when it comes to this. I also am very interested in psychology and crime. This lady sits next to me and I can see that she keeps glancing at my bag which is between my legs (secure). She starts trying to talk to me, get some information and probably trying to get me to think she is friendly. She asks me if I’m leaving and I say no, prevent conversation and then secretly text my family group to tell them to answer my call and that I’m next to a creepy stranger. I call them and they pick up and then I hear my dad saying ‘HEYYYY I’m putting you on speaker, we can all hear you, how are you doing?’. They hadn’t seen my message and obviously I couldn’t tell them to read the text as this lady who is watching me is there and will get sus. I try continue the convo with my parents while also thinking of how I’m going to tell my parents to look at their damn phone. I walk towards the street with my bags looking for my bus and as I do that I tell my parents to look at their phone. They see the message and now that I know they know I’m in trouble I see that the bus said it came even though it didn’t and decide I’ve got to get out of this situation. Terrified I run away in the dark and this lady crosses the road and follows me – I scream at my family asking them what I should do. Call 911? My dad having my location kept a close look at it to make sure he knew where I was. I don’t know and I don’t hear them properly as I’m shaken with fear. My stomach is so sore and I can hardly move, my head is spinning from the fright. I lose her eventually (I think she gave up) but I’m scared she’s going to come back. My parents tell me to look for other people, maybe pull over a car. I didn’t want to pull over a car as now I’m paranoid about everyone – what if they are part of this elaborate plan. I find a group of friendly looking people and ask if they can wait with me while I wait for a ridiculously expensive Uber (US Ubers are crazy expensive when converting into Rands). They were so nice and stayed with me and they knew which area to avoid, they were also tourists and a bit scared now. I get into the Uber, tell my parents I’m alright and arrive at the airport.
In pain, feeling sick and adrenaline causing a drop in energy I make my way past security honestly not thinking how I’m going to cope getting through as I honestly can hardly walk. I manage to make it through and curl into a ball on the chairs waiting for the flight. By the time boarding comes I’m feeling way better. After an hour and a bit I’m in LA, yayyy.
I arrive in LA and go to the hostel as they emailed me the code and everything, where I find no obvious office, so I just dump my things and get on with the day.
I start off by going to the California Science Center which was all planetarium based things and it was really cool. I then go on to the MOCA where I look at art as if I really understand these paintings that have a childish messy look to them (it’s free that’s why I went). I go from there to the Bradbury building which is just a very old building that for some reason is a tourist attraction. I go to the last bookstore which is a massive bookstore that has an amazing atmosphere but no Faye Kellermann. I go to the Broad which is by far the best place I saw today, there was this whole light show artwork called the ‘infinity mirror’ which was incredible! The artworks had so much variety so it was easy to find at least one artwork that you would like. After that I walked around artwork district and had supper at grand park.
I arrived back at the hostel early and went to bed, exhausted from the eventful day.
Goodnight
XOXO
Yael
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