Category Archives: Travel

L.A. Life, Travel

The Top Beaches Close to USC

By Alisa Saleh

School is out and the sun is finally peaking out from behind those “June Gloom” clouds. Our beach days are here and as a new Southern California resident, you need to finally see why SoCal is famous for its beaches. The problem is there are so many to chose from. To make it a little easier, I have picked my top 5 beaches in the area.

  1. Corona Del Mar

Photo by Daniel Peckham on Flickr

Corona Del Mar, or “CDM” is nestled south of LA in Orange County. It is a nice change from LA’s busy environment with its relaxed feel and quaint surroundings. The beach features views of cliffs, vintage houses, and tide pools. While it is a popular spot with a lot of visitors, it maintains its tranquility even on the busiest of days. The beach has two main points of access, Little Corona and Big Corona. Little Corona is smaller and more secluded while Big Corona is more populated.

  1. Laguna Beach

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The charm of Laguna Beach is unmatched. Also located in Orange County, at this spot the city and beach are one. With beautiful views, basketball courts, great restaurants, and a boardwalk all within a mile, there’s very little that Laguna does not offer. While Main Beach is more popular, the 1000 Steps Beach area is also something to check out. It features steep stairs leading to the main beach area.

  1. Malibu

Photo by Jenna Day on Unsplash

Located North of LA, Malibu is the perfect place for a secluded beach experience. Malibu is probably the most serene of all the beaches listed her. It’s right off the scenic Pacific Coast highway and a popular surf spot. If you go to Point Dume (also known as Westward Beach), you can see the famous rock wall in the iconic final scene in the original Planet of the Apes.

  1. Santa Monica

Photo by Glen Bowman on Flickr

Santa Monica is located in the heart of the LA area. Not only does it feature a beach but also a mini amusement park on its adjacent pier. Additionally, the Third Street Promenade is just a short walk away. If you’re looking for a packed and diversified beach day, this is the perfect spot. Be prepared for huge crowds of people.

  1. Redondo Beach

Photo from Wallpaper Safari

Redondo Beach is located close to LAX on the south bay region. It offers a variety of things including restaurants, seasonal whale watching, and pedal boat rentals. This area is not as populated as some of the others on the list, making it a good place to get away from the busy feel of LA.

Featured image by Orange County Archives on Flickr

Alisa is Business Administration Graduate from the Marshall School of Business. She was born in Orange County, California and moved with her family to Houston, Texas shortly after. She moved back to California at the age of 13. Alisa transferred to USC her sophomore year from Loyola Marymount University. She is fluent in both English and Urdu as she comes from a Pakistani family. Additionally, she has grown up playing basketball competitively and still enjoys watching/playing the sport.

Cultural Exchange, culture, Family, Outlook, Travel, Uncategorized

Understanding Diversity

By Tahrima Bhuiyan

I am the child of two Bangladeshi Americans. Every summer until I was ten years old, my family would visit our relatives back in Bangladesh– and then again, when I was fourteen, and then again this past summer, at eighteen.

I grew up travelling. I had visited a number of countries by the age of ten. To me, differences were normal– different colors, different cultures, different foods, different clothing, different religions. This was further reinforced by the fact that I was brought up in a very diverse community in Dallas, Texas.  

I have been raised amidst every possible race, culture, sexuality and religion. To the left of our home, there lived a Chinese family, to our right an African-American couple, and straight across, an old Colombian couple. In high school, my best friends represented every possible ethnicity. On Tuesday, my Vietnamese friends and I went to eat pho; on Friday, my African American friend’s mom gave me a dashiki, and on Saturday, I learned to do the salsa (even though I’m not good at it).

Diversity was a significant part of my experience; I was naive growing up, for I thought it was as normal to embrace differences for everyone else as it was for me. However, as incomprehensible as it was to me, discrimination soon became impossible to ignore. The older I got, the more I noticed misogyny, Islamophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance. It was sad to see my friends and peers experiencing hatred and prejudice due to their skin color. It was difficult to experience it myself. It was heartbreaking to interact with refugees from places such as Yemen, Syria and Myanmar and hear their stories of hardship and injustice and watch the world fail to care. I witnessed a lack of accessible healthcare, education and, many times, of basic human rights in developing nations abroad. These experiences led me to want work with NGOs; I have been working with UNICEF for three years and I hope to continue to work with  NGOs to address human rights violations.

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Asian American, culture, Family, Language, New Experience, Outlook, Travel

The Universality of Human Connection

By Anthea Xiao

At a young age, I was introduced to and fascinated by Japanese culture through the channel of Japanese animations such as Studio Ghibli films and Doraemon. Eager to learn more about the Japanese language and customs, I enrolled in Japanese as my foreign language class and took the initiative to study Japanese culture on my own. My Japanese teacher recognized my passion and introduced me to an exchange program, which allowed students to live with host families and experience life as a Japanese High School student. I quickly seized the opportunity, and in the summer of 2016, I embarked on an unforgettable journey to Kanazawa, Japan.

Prior to flying to Japan, I diligently memorized Japanese phrases applicable for specific situations, read countless articles regarding Japanese etiquette, and even watched host-exchange “horror-stories” online from other students to prepare myself for any undesirable scenarios.

My heart was leaping out of my chest with anxiety and excitement when I saw my host-family waving the sign “ようこそ, アンセア!” (Welcome, Anthea!) at airport gate. During the initial stage of my stay, my host-exchange experience was exceeded beyond my imagination and expectations. I tasted a diverse array of authentic Japanese cuisines (a superb bowl of ramen was only $5 USD!), I quickly bonded with classmates through organizations such as the student acapella and traditional tea ceremony club, and I was able to improve my language ability through practicing colloquial Japanese outside of a classroom setting.

However, despite enjoying my host situation, I found it difficult to feel completely at ease with my host-family. I had read in textbooks that it is impolite to address Japanese people in an intimate or casual manner upon initial greetings. Therefore, although my host-parents asked me to address them as “mother” and “father” just like my host-sister did, I insisted on calling them Mr. and Mrs. Yoshida in fear of breaching their existing family structure.

The phrase “迷惑” (meiwaku) means to burden or to cause inconvenience for others. In Japan, a collective and harmony-focused society, causing meiwaku is a taboo and could signal a person as self-centered and uncouth. To avoid being seen as a meiwaku to my host-family, I refrained from seeking for help when I had trouble finding the way home from school or did not understand how to operate machine devices at home.

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