Another hectic day in LA!

Hello! Sorry for the delay on the updates, we spent the whole of Friday and Saturday away from the hotel, so I have only just managed to reach a computer now! We are all very sad to be setting off for home tomorrow, this has been the fastest week ever!

On Friday we started the day with a marketing workshop in North Hollywood, run by a lady called Nancy who has worked with stars such as U2 and Britney Spears. We learnt about traditional and radical ways of marketing products and artists, and then created our own concepts for marketing two different bands. Nancy also said that the students in bands could email her videos of their performances and that she would put in up on her website for talent scouts to see! She also commented on Evan's fancy haircut, it seems to be causing quite a stir here! Some of the girls have also been complimented on their 'fancy attire' and Dominique and Kate had their picture taken for a street fashion website. North Hollywood is famed for is promotion of the arts and also vintage fashion, so we had a browse around the vintage shops and found some lovely little bargains!

We then went to the Beverly Shopping Centre which is a huge shopping mall and treated ourselves there! And after that we went up to the observatory in the hills and saw the most amazing views of the whole of LA from the rooftop. We were so high up, our ears were popping on the drive up! This observatory is where James Dean visits the planetarium in Rebel Without a Cause, so it was really good to see it in real life!

We ate at Bubba Gumps (the restaurant based around Forrest Gump) and had the craziest waiters ever! They were dancing, singing, stopping the meal for random Forrest Gump quizzes and generally making this an absolutely hilarious time! This was definitely our favourite place to eat and we were really sad to leave. However we had to rush off as we had tickets to see Avatar at the IMAX. We LOVED it! A lot of us hadn't seen it before and were really impressed, but even those who had seen it said it was really good to see on IMAX. You felt like you could touch all the characters, and I'm sure I saw a few people jumping because they thought they were going to get hit by the objects in the film!

Today we went to Universal Studios, and went on all the rides and tours. It was really really sunny and lots of us had caught the sun by the time we had queued to get our tickets! I think The Mummy was voted the best ride, but we also loved the Simpson's ride, where you are sat in a simulator and the whole thing is done virtually, but you actually feel like you're on a rollercoaster and flying through the air, even going upside down, but the carriage doesn't move one bit! I felt very sorry for Olivia who had to sit next to us teachers screaming, we must have been very embarrassing!! We also went on the tour of the studios which was fantastic! We got to see some film sets such as War of the Worlds, Psycho and Jurassic Park, but my personal highlight was visiting Wisteria Lane - the set of Desperate Housewives!!

After one last walk around Universal City we headed home around 8pm, and some of us went for a quick swim in the pool or sat in the hot tub. But our main job for tonight is packing our cases as we are leaving the hotel at 9 in the morning. We still get to spend the afternoon here though as we only need to check in at the airport at 5:30pm, so we are going to go to Santa Monica and Venice Beach for one last bit of sightseeing and souvenir shopping! The weather is meant to be even warmer than it was today, which will be perfect for the beach, so we just need to make sure we don't pack away our sunglasses!

We will arrive home at around 6ish (english time) on Monday, so I will let you know all about our last day and upload some more pictures as soon as I can! See you back in England!