Lance Fuchia: Los Angeles

After driving six hours to Los Angeles for a badminton tournament, sophomore Lance Fuchia took the opportunity to explore the surrounding area — including Disneyland and college campuses like USC and UCLA. He recalls that he didn’t observe many safety precautions being taken at Disneyland, and the lack of an outdoor mask mandate meant that even Disneyland staff were instructing park tourists without a mask. While touring the colleges, however, proof of vaccination was required and contact tracing was implemented, partially soothing Fuchia’s fears of contracting COVID-19. 

“I’ve always heard that L.A. is a super fun city, but it turns out that it’s not that clean, and there’s a lot of homelessness — it’s much dirtier than I thought,” Fuchia said. “I thought that the environment near the colleges are super good, but, for example, USC is right next to downtown L.A., so there’s a lot of homelessness and graffiti all over the place. In general, it was kind of underwhelming for me.”

Fuchia explains that avoiding areas with a lot of homelessness, where people were likely to be unvaccinated and untested, was one of the safety precautions he took on his trip. He also got the booster shot before traveling, wore a KN95 mask for the duration of his trip and did an antigen test upon arrival back to Cupertino, which came back negative.

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Lance Fuchia

Fuchia poses in front of the Mickey Mouse ferris wheel at Disneyland, which lights up each night the park is open.