We’re going to visit Kamran’s family in Southern California for the second time starting tomorrow, and I thought maybe I should actually post some photos from our first trip now. This way, it seems like I’m not lazy but just, you know, holding out for the right time. Or something.

I’ve already made a few posts about California–what I expected to do, the one and only difference between L.A. and NYC, Laguna Beach, the lovely wedding we went to, and one-half of our trip to Disneyland–but here are the things I didn’t mention before:

The flight over the desert was pretty incredible. Growing up in Ohio, the colors were entirely new to me, and so was the lack of vegetation. Or vegetation that wasn’t brown, at least.

Kamran’s parents’ backyard happened to be a little oasis with palm trees, a fountain, roses, and bunnies, but driving for miles and miles and seeing nothing but dried-out brush and actual tumbleweeds and bare mountains was kind of awe-making for me; I couldn’t stop taking photos of lovely Saddleback Mountain especially. I absolutely loved the scenery but wonder how long a person can live there without noticing that everything around her is dying.

And seeing the landscape wasn’t the only first for me. It was my first time seeing what an absolute nerd my uber-cool boyfriend was in high school

and my first time being driven by him in a car, which he tried to make our last time by trying to kill us:

It was strange watching my usually-lovable gentleman friend for the past almost-five years become this lane-switching, aggressive-passing, going-with-the-speed-of-traffic maniac. (Just kidding, but seriously, I would’ve surely died my first time trying to merge onto the highway.)

It was my first time eating a giant beefy burrito at Albertaco’s, which Kamran claims all the locals call Alberto’s, but I think he was secretly just embarrassed by his evident illiteracy:

and my first time eating in a room full of people from California:

I had Wienerschnitzel for the first time

mousing over this photo may amuse no one but me

and learned what the big deal is about In-n-Out (the big deal is that it’s delicious, and I wouldn’t die if I had to eat that every day instead of Shake Shack, although obviously there will be a Shake Shack in L.A. in about .02 seconds):

We made Kamran’s friend’s wedding more about us than her,

Disneyland more about us than any kids,

and nights with Kamran’s friend Gary and his wife, Diana, into creepy family portrait time:

We walked around downtown San Juan Capistrano, which is like a little hippie village thrown into the middle of rich, Republican Orange County. We found an antique store that stretched a whole block, a movie theatre with maybe two screens, a pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt shop that was evidently a new concept in California, and a new friend for Kamran just wandering the streets:

My friend Beth drove down from San Francisco, and we met our friend Bridgette,

who lives in the most stereotypically 1970s California neighborhood I can imagine,

for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, because I apparently have to eat there every time I leave the state. We sat on the water underneath portable heaters in the middle of August, and I couldn’t imagine liking weather more.

We left early one morning for Kamran’s old undergraduate stomping grounds, stopping at a shady convenience store with a wall that happened to be modeled after Kamran’s shirt:

We drove around Pasadena for a while:

and then stopped at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles for a lunch of Arnold Palmers:

chicken dripping with syrup:

and waffles soaked with both:

both chicken and syrup, I mean; not Arnold Palmers

Afterward, we went for a long walk around the Caltech campus, posing with Kamran’s old swimmin’ hole:

his old dorm hall:

and the room in the physics building that houses a copy of his undergraduate thesis:

This was the last time we would see the Caltech t-shirt he’d purchased in the gift shop an hour earlier.

We had a lunch at Pink’s:

which is known for its block-long lines full of celebrities (we saw no one remotely famous and were only in line for a few minutes for this cole-slaw-covered beauty):

We then spent the afternoon wandering around Santa Monica. Well, actually, we spent an hour in Santa Monica traffic and then had only enough time to walk to the Santa Monica Pier:

before meeting Kamran’s uncle for dinner at Joe’s, where we had delicious beef and a sighting of comedian Andy Kindler:

(this is not Andy Kindler)

We had lunches with Kamran’s family, where I got to try my first albaloo polow, or Persian sour cherry rice, and wildly saturated kebabs:

Kamran’s niece basically cried through the entire lunch, and Kamran’s dad had to entertain her, and I was reminded that I’m way more interested in food than children, but the kid sure is cute, snot and all:

I met so many of Kamran’s old friends (this particular meeting included fried ice cream!):

and had probably the best beach experience of my life, even when my bathing suit was coming off and Kamran was having to tell the children around us to shield their eyes:

But more than any of this, being in California was just feeling different. There’s so much about it that can’t be recorded in pictures, although you can bet I tried. It’s driving past the power station at night, where the sky’s filled with yellow light in the otherwise empty desert. It’s eating the foods from Kamran’s childhood that he didn’t even like back then but craves now. It’s trying to find a song we can agree on from his iPod full of punk music on the way home from houses of friends I’ve heard about for years. It’s the corner of Antonio and Banderas Streets and trying to remember my high school Spanish to translate the city names. It’s having perfect hair and skin every day and people giving up their parking space for you at the beach and all of the houses looking exactly the same but entirely different than any other houses anywhere else. I’m sure I felt the same way when I moved to New York, but the point is that it’s not New York.