In the year that Covid-19 hit, almost every indoor adventure in L.A. was closed and unable to open to the public. However, with Covid cases slowly declining in California and more people getting vaccinated, many of your favorite adventures, like museums, can now reopen.

Like any other enclosed space, masks and social distancing are required for museums to reopen. Although museums will only be allowed to open at 25% capacity, director of the L.A. County Museum and Art, Michael Govan, tells The New York Times that, “It’s thrilling that we’ve finally been given permission to reopen.”

And what a thrill it is! Throughout the early months of this year, many museums have prepared to finally reopen; one of which is the admission-free Hammer Museum. Director of the Hammer Museum, Ann Philbin, is “excited to see people in the galleries” and to show their latest exhibit, “Made in LA,” which features about 30 works made over the year of self quarantining from rising local artists.

Now with summer just around the corner, there is no better time to go adventuring through our beautiful Los Angeles with friends for new exhibits and museums.

Below is a list of a couple of local museums being reopened:

1. The Getty Villa and Getty Center

• Address: 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles

2. HAMMER Museum

• Address: 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

3. LACMA

• Address: 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

4. California Science Center

• Address: 700 Exposition Park Dr, Los Angeles

5. California African American Museum

• Address: 600 State Dr, Los Angeles

6. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

• Address: 1151 Oxford Rd, San Marino

7. The Museum of Dream Space

• Address: Beverly Center, 8500 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles

On Friday, March 13th, our lives took a sharp turn. It was the day that all LAUSD students and staff were told to go home until further notice. The County of Los Angeles was taught safety guidelines and had a stay-at-home order.

Therefore places started to close and most people were stuck at home. Instincts were to stock up on pantry items like flour, rice, beans, sugar, and other items that take a long time to perish. Out of boredom, people turned to discover new hobbies. The most popular hobbies were cooking and baking. As a result, multiple videos and recipes went viral.

At the beginning of quarantine, the craze was all about sourdough bread. Later on, there was a pasta craze. Currently, the most recent craze is banana bread. This is surprising because all of these cuisines have a good variety of flavors. According to Real Simple, it is very easy to bake banana bread and there is no need for perfection.

Some tips that were given by Real Simple is to use ripe bananas, as they specifically stated “bananas should have a yellow peel with an even distribution of brown speckles all over.” The riper the banana, the sweeter and softer it is. Besides being simple, there are multiple alternatives when it comes to making banana bread.

According to a mother of 6th-grade twins named Alyssa Smith, there are dairy-free, vegan-friendly, and nut-free options. “There are many alternatives for milk." said Smith. "You can use almond, oat, soy, rice milk, and any other type of milk you know of.” As Smith stated there are so many options to choose from when it comes to a dairy alternative. Smith also stated how she “Tried [baking banana bread] with oat and almond milk [and how] the taste [was] very similar to cow milk.”

Another thing to look at is a vegan-friendly recipe. Smith stated “To start you will have to find sugar that doesn’t have bone char. Which can be pure cane sugar, brown sugar, etc. Then we have to find the egg substitute which you can just take out. The recipe doesn’t need it because it already has the banana which is the ingredient that combines it, to not fall apart. This wouldn’t affect the taste of it either.”

By substituting white granulated sugar, eggs, and milk you can make it vegan-friendly. According to Real Simple “Choose a crunchy nut, like walnuts, and give them a little toasting treatment in a skillet before you add them to your batter.”

This is one way that you can add uniqueness to your banana bread. Yet if you are looking for a nut-free recipe you can just remove the nuts from the recipe. The only alternative that anyone has yet to find is an alternative for people who are allergic to bananas.

According to CNN Health, baking recipes like banana bread can also help with improving your mental health. “As screen time goes up for many Americans, Ohana said that baking is a valuable chance to unplug” the news media asserted. In other words, taking time for yourself and having a break from technology will improve your mental health.

As we approach the anniversary of social distance learning, Zoom, our main source of communication and learning may also be the source of many students' physical exhaustion, including eye strain. Over the course of one year, many students and teachers alike have reported irritable eyes, headaches, and mental exhaustion, all of which have worsened due to prolonged hours on Zoom.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Dr. Robert Steinmetz, adds more to the list of physical exhaustion that comes with Zoom. Steinmetz states, “Backache and migraine complaints are widespread among people who are sitting on video call meetings or laptops for a long time.” Thrive Global has also stated that “Obscured sight and blurry vision are critical consequences of digital eye strain. Other parts of the body, including the ears, neck, or shoulders, are also being affected by eye strain.”

Mir Lopez, a junior at Uni who inspired this topic, comments on her busy nine to five Tuesdays and how it's affected her. "From 9 am until about 5 pm I'm stuck on Zoom. After school, I have homework, which also requires me to be in front of a screen. By 9 pm my eyes begin to bother me, it's like a burning and stinging feeling and it hurts to even finish any assignments” said Lopez. Clearly, on some days, there isn’t any room for this student to relax her eyes. However, there are many ways to relieve the strain of prolonged screen time.

The automatic response to this would be to buy a pair of Blue Light Glasses. The glasses may work for certain amounts of time, but you are ultimately still looking at your screen for too long. An alternative would be to try adding the 20/20/20 rule.

The 20/20/20 rule states that every 20 minutes on the computer, you need to look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. By taking the time to take these breaks, the chances of eye strain go down.

Other ways to help eye strain include:

• Constantly staying hydrated; drinking water refreshes your entire body including your eyes!

• Getting eye drops for when your eyes dry out.

• Using “Speechify Text to Speech” chrome extension to read aloud anything you’d like to limit screen contact on.

• Adjusting the lighting on your screen with “Night Light” or “Night Mode” to give it a warmer hue that is easier to look at.

400 feet below sea level, within the Afar Triangle in northeastern Ethiopia, lies a hazardous environment that you would believe is otherworldly. With temperatures reaching as high as 122° F, the Danakil Depression also known as “the gateway to hell,” holds many miraculous features as well as geological activity.

This alien-like environment, once part of the Red Sea, gradually formed over time from volcanic eruptions that created a new inland sea. Because of the extremely dry weather, the inland sea soon evaporated and left behind barren land. From there, the deadly sulfur springs, one of the Danakil Depression’s most notable aspects formed.

The springs consist of a combination of luminescent colors that arise from the geological activity in the depression along with water from the coast. Henok Tsegaye, a tourist guide for Jacada Travel, interviewed by CNBC contributing editor, Monica Buchanan Pitrelli, explained the process that manifests these colors. “The mixture of yellow, orange, red, blue and green are due to the rain and sea water from the nearby coasts that seep through into the sulfuric lakes and get heated up by the magma,” said Tsegaye. “As the salt from the sea reacts with the minerals in the magma, these dazzling colors begin to emerge.”

Besides the formation of the beautiful neon colors, the depression also hosts two nearby active volcanoes, the Gada Ale and the Catherine Volcano. Along with these volcanoes, the landscape is surrounded by other aspects as cinder cones, basalt flows, and a surplus of salt crusts left behind from the Red Sea.

Additionally, carbon dioxide pollutes the nearby air of the Danakil Depression’s waters and they have a pH of 0.2, a level more acidic than Yellowstone National Park’s hydrothermal zones.

Cynthia Mazariegos, a senior at Uni expressed her thoughts on the Danakil Depression. “It sounds like a magical place you would see in a cartoon about aliens or magical creatures that live in a dangerous environment, especially because of the neon colors,” said Mazariegos. “It may be dangerous, but seeing the volcanos and all the unordinary things would be cool.”

These extreme conditions alongside the daily temperatures not going below 90° F have made it nearly impossible for any life besides microbes to survive in the Danakil Depression.

According to the BBC article, “In Earth’s hottest place, life has been found in pure acid” written by Jasmin Fox-Skelly, a team of researchers from the University of Bologna in Italy discovered bacterial life in the springs.

Fox-Skelly states the team discovered “Polyextremophiles, which means [bacteria that is] adapted to extreme acidity, high temperatures and high salinity all at once. It is the first absolute confirmation of microbial life in the Danakil acidic pools.”

With the given conditions, the Danakil Depression is a very acidic and inhospitable environment to visit, yet it attracts many scientists, local salt miners, and travelers. It’s best to visit the worldly attraction during the fall and winter months when the environment is more bearable. Also, it’s notable to mention with past violent incidents, heavily armed guards will accompany visitors.

If you are a thrill seeker and enjoy visiting unearthly places, the Danakil Depression is definitely a location worthy of being added to your list.

The first semester of distance learning began on August 18, 2020, for LAUSD due to the pandemic. Since then students and teachers have been working to adjust themselves to distance learning, but there have been a few issues along the way.

One of the biggest issues is not being able to interact with others. However, some students seem to not mind it because they much rather have their cameras turned off. For some students, it might not mean much, yet most teachers feel that there is a learning disconnection to their students.

Students not turning on their cameras is nothing to be taken personally. According to EdSource, “Requiring cameras to stay on during class can be difficult for students who lack a stable internet connection or feel anxious on screen.”

Gabriela Francisco who is currently a junior attending University High School agrees with Edsoource and claims “It should be up to the students whether to keep their cameras on [and] believes that students should study in a way that is comfortable for them.”

Adding to Francisco's comment, Stephany Carillo, a junior at University High School, believes that some people are just camera shy. In the same token, students who are shy can struggle with anxiety, and being watched by family members at home does not make it easier.

Shortly stated, if students feel comfortable with their cameras on then they should have them on, but if that’s not the case, they shouldn’t be forced to.

According to EducationWeek, teachers seem to prefer when students have their cameras on because they can see if the students need help and if they are engaged. However, without cameras it is often draining for teachers to be interacting with a bunch of black boxes through a screen without students participating.

In Francisco’s opinion, she thinks "Having our cameras on would be a great idea so the teacher can see us and keep us on track without easily getting distracted and for more interaction with our classmates.”

Carrillo’s view is a little different. Unlike Francisco, Carillo believes that “We should have our cameras on to make it more realistic as if we were in school physically.”

In the end, the choice is ours. As school comes to an end, the choice might even cease to exist very soon with ultimate reopenings and the complete return of in-person school next school year.