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At the hotel we were staying at in San Diego,...

Don't know how you guys do it! BTW your grocery prices for things like eggs are out of sight! Not to mention gasoline. I went from paying $1.19 for a gallon when I left OK to paying $1.79 and higher in San Diego! What a shock!

I live in San Diego an all the people who live around us speak English. But then again, I don't live in a hotel. I don't know where you bought gas but down the road from us it's $1.45/gallon. You got caught in the tourist trap! ;o)

You can say that again. I paid $1.69 at a Shell station just down I-8 from the hotel. Also paid $1.59 on the North Island NAS which was a shock!

Have you been to the downtown San Diego Mall? We heard a lot of people not speaking English there including at the eating places. Also at the large mall off of I-8 in La Mesa -- Grosspoint Mall I believe. We just had an overwhelming sense that the number of people speaking another language at least in the service industries far outnumbered those speaking English.

We also lived outside San Antonio which has a huge Hispanic population but I had a lot more trouble comprehending out west than I ever did in the San Antonio area. I don't speak Spanish fluently but can comprehend what is being said so that was not a problem. Very few Asians in San Antonio may be the difference.

Having lived in a town outside of San Bernardino, I did not expect what I witnessed on this trip. Tourist trap or not, I didn't feel that for the most part that part of the Country was very friendly compared to the places we stopped in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.

While we are at it something else I experience that I found unbelieveable was the way people shop out there leaving the stores in disarray as they toss things around. Having lived all over the Country, I had never seen anything like what I witnessed on an early Sunday morning when I did some Christmas shopping. Talking to one of the employees I found out that people actually leave their kids off at malls, walmart, etc., and expect those kids to entertain themselves while they do other things. BTW I don't pay $2.69 for a dozen eggs either. Try $.99 or lower.

Truthfully I was left with the feeling to get me out of this State. Contrast that to when our family left on a reassignment to an Industry assignment for the Air Force in MA -- I was devastated.

Your State has changed drastically and not for the better. The High School in the town we lived in now has huge fences surrounding it with guards at the gate to let you in and it is a foothills town. Not impressed at all!