In late 2020, I fell DEEP down the BTS rabbit hole. Thanks to my active contributions to the /r/bangtan subreddit, I lucked out and was able to purchase Day 2 tickets to their short four-day Permission to Dance concert in LA (which they then brought to Vegas and Seoul for similar stints). This was like the Eras tour before Taylor Swift dreamt of it: a "greatest hits" concert that compiled all of BTS's COVID-era releases and served as their pre-military sendoff. I was so thankful to see BTS at this time in my life, when they were most important to me. As the saying goes, BTS is there when you need them the most. And during the COVID lockdown era, boy, did I need them!
After over a year of COVID lockdowns, I finally made my way to Pittsburgh for Duolingo's IPO and quality team time.
For my last pre-pandemic alt-travel experience, I took a quick weekend trip to San Francisco! I didn’t plan for this to be my last alt-travel experience: in fact, I already had trips to Boston and Philly lined up too (iykyk). Little did I know, this would actually be my last trip before COVID locked everything down in North America just one short week later. Thankfully, it was a weekend full of friends in a city I’ve come to feel comfortable visiting.
Is there anything more idyllic than summer in Chicago? Just like 2017, I made my way back here for a Women's conference for the Great Lakes region.
After a delightful time in Seoul and Jeju, the last stop on my 2019 Korea trip was Busan! We had trouble finding our Airbnb at first, and were told we need to speak Korean in Korea. I felt affronted at the time, but I've come around to the logic.
When I asked Jenny to go on a trip with me again in 2019, her first response was, "When are we going?" Although Jenny and I don't see each other that often these days, she remains the perfect travel partner. We pretty much learned how to travel "independently" together, and have created our own seamless travel style that's fast-paced, highly mobile, and full of elaborate activities and delicious food. You could even say we... run on autopilot (had to squeeze in an aviation pun!).
Jenny and I bracketed our trip to Belize (1, 2) with a couple overnight layovers in the South. As someone who had not explored much of the South (other that than 17h road trip to Atlanta for DECA in HS...), I saw the layovers as a novel way to soak up extra culture rather than a hassle (akin to our crazy layovers in Hawaii!).
In November 2018, I had the pleasure of taking around my Australian case competition buddies around Toronto (aka, home!). It's not often that I get to see Toronto through a tourist's eyes, so I tried to show them all that Canada has to offer. Unfortunately, they just missed the fall colours (which I fully got to appreciate @ Rock Dunder in Kingston for hoco), so I had to figure out a way to make Toronto fun as the weather began to precipitously drop.