I recently returned from a five-day farewell UCLA trip. I mentioned in my last post that I went to the Getty Villa, but I got to do so much more fun stuff after that!

This included more museums; one really isn’t enough. I’ve already been to both LACMA and the Getty, but I’m always in the mood to look at pretty things and both of them were running exhibits I hadn’t seen yet. On Saturday, my friend Mariam and I went to LACMA. I’ve always thought of LACMA as having primarily modern or contemporary art because I’ve always spent most of my time there in the western half looking at Warhols and those fun Serra sculptures you can walk through. But LACMA also has a large section filled with older art (from slightly less recent to like… really, really old), that I pretty much have only wandered through quickly a couple of times. This time, bored with the new stuff, Mariam and I went to check out the eastern buildings of the museum. There was a ton of really cool stuff! Granted, not all of it was super old (they did have an exhibit on the opening credits of Bond films), but we got to see bunches of beautiful art. We even saw a mummy (which you, if you’ve read my last post, would know was the second mummy I had seen in two days). We got to see some paintings, statues, and some decorative tea sets.

The next day, Mariam and I went to the Getty early in the morning. I had never really been to the Getty before noon and having a Getty coffee drink in the morning was seriously blissful. Right now, there’s an exhibit featuring some of Gustav Klimt’s drawings that we got to see (uhhhhmaaaazing). We also had a lovely sit in the gardens – the flowers were spectac – and paid a visit to the sketching gallery. So fun! We both got to sketch a nude statuette and practice drawing faces.

Besides museums, my visit included many more campus walks, stops in the Kerckhoff tour guide office, card games, eating at fun places around LA, and lots of and lots of good catch-up times with friends I won’t be seeing for a while. It was kind of weird seeing people knowing that they would be having their next UCLA year without me but promises of Skype calls and the fact that studying abroad will be, objectively, one of the best experiences evER made me feel better. I’m still going to be friends with everyone and the campus will still be as beautiful upon my return.

I’m still riding the good vibes from that trip, and I’m also feeling great knowing I’m going to be in France in a week! I’ll miss you, UCLA! But I’ll be seeing you before we both know it.