~Jess07

Hmmm...well where do I begin? Well on June 28th, I flew to Oregon from Iowa to meet one of my good friends, Summer! The flight went smoothly, no problems with switching planes and delays so I was glad for that. When I arrived at the Portland airport in Oregon, me and Sum had a small bit of trouble finding each other until I went to go pick up my luggage and ran into her and her mom,Vicky. I was so happy to see them! After that we made our 3 hour drive back to where they live. The drive didn't seem to even take that long since we all talked a lot about different things. Once I got to Sum's house we just hung out in her room,played rock band and then he friends came over so I got to meet them! They're all so nice. I especially love her friend Carli, and Cathryn is really fun to be around. I also got to meet Summer's dad and he's just as awesome as her mom xD

The next morning we started making our way down to Los Angeles. It was a pretty long drive-about 13 hours but it wasn't too bad compared to 18 going down to Louisiana. Sum and I spent the time sleeping,watching Appleseed,D.Gray man and just watching the scenery,taking pictures like tourists xD We didn't get down to LA all in one day, we stayed at a hotel and the next day we drove 3 hours to get to LA on June 2nd. After we go there, we went to the LA convention center to wait in this freakishly long line for over an hour to get our badges..and I must say that place is friggin huge. Well it should be since Anime Expo is the largest anime convention in the country,haha. The scenery around here is just so different compared to Iowa's boring flat lands full of corn fields. There are hills EVERYWHERE and they were just so cool to look at. After Summer and I preregistered and recieved our badges, we saw this AWESOME Cloud cosplayer-who was a chick but she was so awesome and really nice. Then we went to the hotel, chilled there and swam in the pool :B
Before I knew it the next day-the first day of the convention came. I was so excited to find out what all would be there at the con, not to mention seeing all of the interesting costumes that people put together o: The convention center was packed full of people. Needless to say, Summer and I stood in a few very long lines. The first thing we did when we got to the con was going to the exhibition hall where you buy stuff. My God it's so huge and there were so many little shopping booths I didn't know where to begin! lol. But I played smart and looked around at mostly eveything first before deciding what to buy. I bought some really neat things during my time at the con ranging from artwork of axel,reno and lavi to pins,an L keychain and 4 collectible figures of Renji,Balthier,Bahamut-sin and Reno xD. I also bought an AX t shirt and some other stuff i can't remember. After looking around at the exhibition hall for over a few hours, we looked around in the artist's alley. It was smaller than I expected, but still lots of awesome work nevertheless. That night, Summer and I attended the AMV contest. It was a lot of fun! There were several really neat AMVs and my faves were the comedy ones of course :B The songs that were used for some of the videos were really awesome, so I just HAD to look them up online afterwards xD

The next day, Summer and i spent time in the exhibiton hall and more time in the Artist's alley. Then that night we attended the AX idol, which was fun as well. and one of the winners got a trip to Japan! o:

The third day of the convention went by the fastest and was the most exciting..mainly because I met my two awesometastic badass friends and his brother,Dev. I was so excited and nervous at first when meeting them-but i was mostly excited xD My hands were shaking for like 20 minutes after I first met them,lol. But really it was pretty much like talking to them online only better because I actually got to physically see them and hug them :B I was a tad shy-mostly around Dev but Summer was talking to him quite a bit so i felt like i was interfering if I did >.< We all took pictures,shopped together and just hung out from 10 am to midnight. Seems like a lot of time, I know. But really it went by too fast. I wanted to see Quinton Flynn that night but Connor and them wanted to see the masquerade, which i also wanted to see so i just went with them instead since spending time with them is more important.

The final day of the convention was so dang short. We were there from 10 am until 3 in the afternoon when connor and dev had to leave. We spent the little time we had shopping around and in the artist's alley. Then we had a photoshoot of all of us xD The pictures of us turned out really nice, so I'm glad :} When 3 rolled around, it was time for us to say goodbye So after they left, we went back to the hotel and remained there until the next morning when me, summer and her parents had to make it back to Oregon all in one day. Once we got back we were extremely tired so i didn't wake up until nearly noon today XD Tonight some of Summer's friends came over and we just hung out in her room and outside on the trampoline. It was really nice just talking and laughing with all of them. They're all really nice. I'm gonna be so sad when I leave tomorrow, but the way I try to keep a positive attitude is thinking "there's always next year". I hope to God it happens, and it will if I can actually get a job,haha. But I have a feeling that this will happen again. All I can do right now is just hope.