Seeing Taylor Swift from Zone 4
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Getting Taylor Swift’s Era Tour concert was highly competitive if you wasn’t aware of that yet. We were trying to affordable tickets at So-Fi stadium in LA, but failed. Luckily, Taylor added a new date for unlucky fans like us, so we were able to get two 50 dollar tickets at Zone 4 of So-Fi stadium. How far were the seats from Taylor Swift? The answer is far enough that you wouldn’t want to pay more than 50 dollars. Still, So-Fi is very equipped. Their huge screen around the stadium made us feel so close to the stage. 3 hours went by so fast!
Once we arrived in SAN, we took a train to our friend’s house in San Diego. Tonmai and Fai are Poy’s friends since he went to Scripps research institute for his Ph.D. They took us to several places such as La Jolla tide pools, Tacos stand, and Tonmai’s workplace which is next to the ocean.
We were then headed to LA to stay at the royal century hotel to see Taylor’s concert on the next day. When the day came, we wore our Taylor t-shirts, friendship bracelets, and heart-shaped glasses (all of these were Poy’s idea). We then went to Inn-n-Out to fill up our energy before the concert.
The concert were held at So-Fi stadium, which does not look so big from the outside. However, on the inside, it can serve up to 70,000 people. This is because the stadium was expanded in a more vertical direction instead of the horizontal direction as in a traditional stadium. The opening singer on August 8, the day we went to, was Gracie Abrams. She was so charming! Then Taylor Swift walked in and people started screaming out of their lungs. The show went by so fast that we couldn’t believe it was 3 hour long!
Not only that we went to see a good concert in this trip, we also got to see Poy’s friends in California. Waan also came see us on the last day and brought us to her favorite northern Thai food spot. She even brought us very close to the Hollywood sign. We were so grateful for our friends who let us stay with them and treat us with good food.
This trip was part of Poy’s trip to Champaign while he was studying at Oxford. He stayed in Champaign for a month to write a thesis. From time to time, we made a short trip to places near Champaign. We also got to pick apples at the Curtis apple orchard before he flew back to England to finish his Ph.D.
Despite the polar vortex that swept through Illinois, we decided to visit Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, driving from our home in Champaign. Along the way, we got to meet some friends in Cincinnati and Akron. In fact, we didn’t stop only at Cuyahoga Valley; we also continued on to see a much bigger set of falls in upstate New York—Niagara Falls. Everything was freezing cold, but the fresh snow somehow gave the entire trip a magical atmosphere.
Foliage season feels so fleeting to me, so Poy and I never really planned to chase fall colors anywhere beyond our university campus. But there are a few national parks that are especially beautiful in autumn, and we wanted to try visiting them at their peak. We followed the fall–color predictions closely and booked our flights well in advance to keep costs down. On this trip, we were lucky enough to catch vibrant red and yellow leaves in Shenandoah, New River Gorge, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. We also had the chance to explore the beautiful wetlands of Congaree National Park before flying back home!
At the end of Summer 2025, we embarked on a grand tour of the northern United States. Our goal was to explore a mix of popular national parks and hidden gems across Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington. The journey took us through breathtaking mountain ranges and bountiful wilderness teeming with wildlife. Thanks to booking our flights more than six months in advance, we were lucky enough to fly directly out of Champaign, a perfect start to our adventure!
This past July, we embarked on a whirlwind three-day trip to visit some of California’s national parks that were still on our list, namely, Channel Islands, Pinnacles, and Kings Canyon. While they may be less famous than their neighbors, we found them to be refreshing, full of fun, and wonderfully family-friendly. The trip was a showcase of California’s diverse wildlife, giving us our first-ever sightings of whales, island foxes, scrub jays, and California quails, and that’s not even counting the school of dolphins that raced our ferry to and from the Channel Islands!