Cole and Caroline's PC Adventure: Our few days in Cali before departure

So...... right now we are in Vanutau and have been for about 3 days. It is Tuesday, January 27th. We are in Port Vila today to set up our bank accounts, have a medical interview and have another initial PC interview. I thought I would take this time being connected to post a few blog updates! We are doing well and are happy and healthy! After this, we may not be able to update for several weeks.
I'll start with our time in California...

We arrived in Cali on Jan 21st around lunch time and took a shuttle to the rental car place. We waited for about 2 hours, got our sweet minivan and headed to Newport. We stopped at Huntington Beach along the way and walked down a long pier and had lunch on the beach at a place called Sandys. After our late lunch, we headed to our hotel in Newport, freshened up and then met up with Matt and Meng for a drink and dinner.
The next day, Jan 22nd, we got up around 8:00, discovered we had a parking ticket (Thanks for taking care of that, FIL!), had some breakfast and walked around for a bit. While walking around we saw DENNIS RODMAN sitting outside of a bar. Cole didnt want to bother him, but I said YOLO and insisted! We proceeded to have the weirdest 10 minute convo of our lives! He is so strange! He gave us a lot of high fives, told us a bunch of lies and insulted us about 4 times. After a bit, we said we had to go, took a few pictures and got the heck out of there!
We then hopped in our minivan, went and said our goodbyes to Matt and headed back to LA.
Once in LA, we checked into our hotel, returned our rental and then headed to Venice Beach for a few hours. We waked up and down the board walk, had lunch, and got in about 2 hours of some of the best people watching EVER!
When we got back to the hotel, we took a little rest, freshened up and then headed down to the lobby to register and meet the other 29 volunteers who we would be spending the next few years with!
Registration went well, and afterwards we all went to eat one last delicious cheeseburger at IN and OUT!
The next morning we got up at 7, took one last LONG HOT SHOWER, and went down to the lobby for a day of staging. We had staging sessions on safety and security, anxieties and aspirations, and core expectations throughout the day. At 4 we were all done, we packed our bags and headed to the lobby to wait for the bus to arrive an take us to the airport. Lots of nerves and emotions at this point.
When we got to the airport, it was discovered that there was a little problem with our tickets, everyone's, and that we may not be able to leave that night. We ended up getting it all worked out, after 3 agonizing hours, and got to our gate just in time to board our plane at about 9:30!
The long flight from LAX went fine. We ate dinner, slept, watched movies and ate breakfast.
We got to New Zealand on Jan 25th, logged onto wifi, changed clothes and freshened up and then boarded our final flight to Port Vila!
Here are a few pics from Cali... They are not in order but have captions to explain!