Dear Diary,

On January 1, 2009 we had finished watching the Rose Parade in Pasadena, and it was the first time we had seen it in person. Knowing that it would be pretty crowded near the parade grounds, we figured that we would take the metro rail there. When nearing closer to the parade the metro was getting more and more crowded, but I prefer this over trying to find parking for 1 hour. I won’t sugar coat my metro experience though, I admit to a few scary moments on our way to Pasadena. Midway into our trip there was a drunk white guy talking in a ghetto accent, and I couldn’t understand a single word that came out his filthy mouth. The few words that did make sense was when he told my husband about how his dad died for him in Korea. What the heaven? Anyways, he smells like he didn’t take a bath for years, and we tried our best to not give him eye contact.

We were off the Metro now, and walking to the parade, I had very high expectations because of all the hype from the media. I was very disappointed of what I saw when I got there. The first thing I noticed was the strong odor, it smelled like I just stepped into a big dirty bathroom. And because the parade was right after new years, there was disgusting puke all over the place. But I didn’t come here to critic the condition of the streets, it was all about the great floats I could snap pictures of. But this was a challenge considering there were so many heads in the way of all my shots. It even got to a point where I wanted to knock some heads with my lens, which almost happened, accidentally of course. My parade experience was nothing less than a living nightmare.

After the parade was over, me and my husband decided to take a walk down Old Town Pasadena. What once was a beautiful clean city became trash town in a matter of days. We decided to just go home and leave because of the ridiculously dirty and smelly streets. I wonder who is responsible for cleaning all that mess, I’ll have to go back in a few days and see if things are back in order. I still wonder why people can’t just pocket all their trash instead of leaving it on the streets?

So I could definitely say that I felt unfulfilled, but at least me and my husband could stop wondering what the parade would be like. Now that it’s over, it will be our first and last time there, but maybe one more time for our kids and that’s it.

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