LA Day 2

Hegai liked Esther and took a special interest in her. Right off he started her on beauty treatments, ordered special food, assigned her seven personal maids from the palace, and put her and her maids in the best rooms in the Harem -Esther 2:9

Each girl's turn came to go in to King Xerxes after she had completed the twelve months of prescribed beauty treatments--six month's treatment with oil of myrrh followed by six months with perfumes and various cosmetics. -Esther 2:12

On the second day, we studied the story of Esther. We were invited to attend Esther's Ball, a Jewish masquerade ball. And in the story of Esther, before she goes to the king, she endures 12 months of beauty treatments. So, in an attempt to experience the culture of LA, we drove to the NEw Hong Kong district. This place is crazy! All of a sudden, all of the buildings have CHinese writing and there is hardly any English. Our GPS took us to a massage place where we got an hour back, neck, and foot massage. THe place was owned by a large Asian family that spoke limited English. The whole time we were there, friends and family kept walking in and out, stopping to chat. It was super hard to tell who actually worked there.It was cool though to see how family-oriented thier culture is.
After the massage was done, we tipped them and left for our second destination. This time, our GPS wasn't as nice and got us quite a bit lost. Instead of seeing Chinese letters, we were suddenly seeing Spanish signs. It was crazy how instantaneous the switch was. We drove around the Spanish area until we found the nail salon we were headed to.
While our nails were being done, we took the time to observe those who were working. Two of the girls, who seemed close to our age, were talking about going clubbing that night. Partying, it seemed, was all they could talk about. Mind you, the TV was showing footage of OBama announcing a third war on Libya. Also, it mentioned the tsunami in Hawaii and the girls had never even heard of it. I was kind of disgusted that people could not even care what was going on in the world.
After these two, we headed back to the house to get ready. Apparently in SD, we get ready a lot faster, because they were shocked at how quickly we got ready. (LAans have this thing with ish. And I've basically discovered it's an added in excuse factor. Like if they say they'll be there at 7ish, it leaves time to get stuck in traffic or just running behind. So bascially, we were always early and they were usually late.) We headed out to continue our Esther day by eating some Persian food. But, Google messed up and gave us a Peruvian restaurant instead. (We quickly figured it out when the menu was in Spanish) But God had a plan in mind, because the food was delicious. :)
We headed out to the Biltmore Hotel, which I was informed is one of the ritziest hotels in LA. It was huge! (This is also where I saw my first skyscraper) The lobby was absolutely stunning. It had huge chandeliers and very Baroque looking architecture, with a grand piano in the center. We followed the people wearing masks, but discovered there was also a masquerade birthday party going on. But, they showed us the way to the ball. There were hundreds of people inside, milling around, sitting at tables, or on the dance floor Our leaders challenged us to mingle with people while we were there. About a minute later, Emily was sitting at a table just chatting with some college students. Ashley and I quickly joined in the conversation. It turns out that the group was on a mission trip. They all attended Bethel University and were eager to chat with us about our lives and what we're doing in LA. The dancing pretty much reminded me of USF dnaces, but with a much cooler dancefloor.
However, the coolest part of the night was when they stopped the dance for the reading of Esther. The coolest part was that the Jewish group who put this on was Messianic Jews, and they had combined with the Gentiles to team up against Abaleck, the spirit of doubt. (It's in Esther if you're confused.) At the end of the reading, a rabbi prayed in Hebrew. I've decided it is one of the most beautiful languages to listen to. Afterwards, we heard from Aaron Cohhen who rescues sex slaves out of LA everyday. Human trafficking is a huge problem in LA, where we discovered most of it takes place in places like the massage parlor we visited earlier. We were also informed that a lot of what we are doing this week will be focused around that. I know that I do not know very much about it and am looking forward to being able to educate myself on it. By midnight, we were all pretty exhausted. After all, that is 2am back home, so we headed home for the night.