Dreamed Out Fantasy

Time Flys by but where am I now, who am i, what have I become?  Is this the life I've always dreamed? The  place I wanna be? Miraculously I've made it through school, got a job, bought a house, and seem to have everything in order but was this the plan?  The Dream was to have a company pay to travel the world so I can hop flights again and again, but I can't stand being out of my country for more than 2 weeks so is that  truly the true dream job for me or just a dreamed out fantasy. 

Doges palace

On the day I took a boat ride to Doges Palace the place caught me off guard.  I seriously had to take a deep breath and stand back to realize where I was.  Doges palace had so many rooms it reminded me of the Golden Palace in China.  There would never be a reason to ever leave that place.  What point would it be to go visit the outside world?  That would be torchure but I could have definently laid on the floor of each room of that palace and just stare at the ceiling.  The artwork was so detailed.  Lil fat cherubs were running around the ceilings and Atlas Adam Eve Saint Mark and others were on the walls.  It felt just like a Disney movie.  I kept asking where was the Real Italy.  People were speaking quietly and were nothing like the "Italian" stereotypes we have in America.  Maybe its just Venice... Idk.  Nobody there had cars so it changed the feel of the whole city for me.  I had to ask do kids take the water bus to schools.  Their response was yes.  I wanted to know where people worked... It seems like all I saw were vendors but maybe I was just looking in the wrong places.  

Solona's doughnut

Let me talk about the BEST doughnut on Earth.  The Kill all to Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Doughnut wars.  This doughtnut was past amazing.  I will admit I had three one before dinner and two afterwards.  (A true fatty I must say) I loved the sweets so much she gave me a mozzarella stick with rice and ragu stuffing for free. I swear it was the best doughnut I've ever tasted.  Found in Roma Italy served by Donna the half Auzzy half Italian. 

Africa Missions Trip Prayer

I will eventually get back to answering my questions that I started on my blog but I woke up this morning very thankful.  I just wanted to share a prayer that I wrote on Facebook that I wrote after coming back from Africa on a Missions Trip.


Lord thank you for me being able to wash with running edible water last night because a few times last week the well went dry. Thank you for letting me sleep in a king size bed of my own because I saw where some only sleep on a mud floor covered with only one layer of cow skin. Thank you for allowing me to wake up and brush my teeth in a sink because I saw some have to travel all the way to an out house and a wash room to get ready for the day. Thank you for allowing me to turn on my stove because last week I saw where women had to gather big rocks and make a fire outdoors to cook. Lord thank you for allowing me to charge my phone because I saw where others had to go to the local market to have their electronics charged due to not having electricity in their house. Thank you for the shoes on my feet because o saw plenty of people walking barefoot through the mud or walking with holes in their shoes. ( thank you for letting me see that toms actually follows through on their word and they are providing people with some shoes) Lord thank you for allowing me to have a car to drive because I heard a story from a man last week who walked 40 kilometers just to get to the city and I heard a preacher talk about walking for 3.5 hours just to get to his own church on Sunday. Thank you for ALL the food i have gulped down since I've been home because regardless of whether I'm in America or Africa the orphanage is still only eating every other day. Thank you for allowing me to head to work because 90% of Ahero is unemployed. I def have more thank you for....

When will people notice my social media updates have stopped?

While I was gone for two weeks in China, all social media engines that I was active on at the time were not updated. None at all. But who noticed? Who was really worried about the fact that Mylanda had stopped posting nonsense on her page? Who had the thought run across their mind that Mylanda out of all 500 of their friends and or followers (on facebook or twitter) did not post a selfie all week? I like to think that my posts mean something to somebody. I post motivational meme's so that hopefully someone will use that as the motivation they need to get through the day. I create pretty hair styles, hoping that someone will search on Pinterest and test it out. When I am up late at night with no one to talk to, I'll get on twitter and tweet about nonsense, but either way I use social media as an outlet. Whether I receive a like on a post or not, someone will see it. But it lead me to the question of: Who was really looking for my individual social media update? While I was gone for two weeks in Thailand and Africa or that one week in Italy I can tell you exactly who was looking. My mother, My sister, and my cousin. They were looking forward to me communicating with them through whatever outlet was possible. I'm pretty sure they would have been content with any type of communication, update, anything as long as they knew I was ok. They wanted me to check with them when I arrived in the country and when I was leaving. They questioned me about the places I was at and the places that I was headed. I am not saying that no one else cared but I will say out of sight out of mind. Your closest circle aren't your facebook friends. Your closest circle aren't just the friends that know about your life. Your closest circle are the ones who come check on you, or call you out of the blue just to make sure you are ok, or understand when you are doing things out of the ordinary just to hide from the fact of something else. They are not the people you have to communicate with on the daily basis. They are the people that you can catch up with after 6 months and re-glue all of the pieces of your lives back together. Some people get so trapped in the life of social media they forget the solid foundations of real friendship. One thing that I thought about constantly while I was in China was, If I get left here and I could not make it home, how many people would notice when my social media updates have stopped. How many people would text my number or send me a message just to check and see if I was still living? Who are the people that would click on my page just to see when I last posted a status?

We have images in our minds of this world being huge. I'm here to say from what I've experienced it's not. Don't get me wrong there are beautiful places, beautiful people, and beautiful things all over this Earth but the World to some is just a perception of their mind inverting what reality is and to others the World is creating possibilities where they once created doors.

The World is in fact what we make of it. Our perception changes as we are introduced to what lies outside of our perimeter of life. Actions, for me switched from me liking pictures of places I saw on Social Media to posting pictures of me there. My statements changed from "I want to go to the Great Wall of China" into "While I was there I stopped at the 2nd tier because I nauseous from the 20ft drop when I looked back after climbing the stairs." My thoughts changed from "This World is huge, to I've been around this World and back multiple times." During my trip in China, I discovered my life is not set on posting status' and updating people about my life. My life is focused on me living, having fun, and creating reasons to conquer a bucket list. A list of things I would like to do rather I was about to die or not. I started creating my bucket list like I wasn't going to make it to see the next year.

The truth is you don't have to be dying in order to kick the bucket.

So what if my social media updates were to stop? I could die tomorrow and they would stop. I could travel tomorrow and they would stop. My point is I'm sure the people who really care would find other outlets to check on me, but most of all they would want to know that I am happy and living my life to the fullest at every moment possible and living that type of life in particular would never need an update. (I hope you were not under the assumption that I will no longer use social media...*Checks Instagram*)

He welcomed us into his house and cooked for us.

Epic Night.....  China Karaoke.....Story will be told

Out on an adventure lol

Photo session

My I have conquered the world pose.

The more I upload pictures the more I think of stories to tell... I will have to add China Karaoke to my list of events.

What is a black person to a color blind world?

Have you ever discovered a place that makes you feel beautiful? That regardless of how you wake up, or how bad of a day you are having you just feel amazing? I honestly felt like a prized possession. I felt like a queen. I found the place all disney movies talk about where the princess has been taken away from home and everyone knew who I was except for me. Weirdly enough I enjoyed it. I didn't understand why so many tourists were approaching me in order to take a picture with me.

I am probably on more peoples refrigerators and photo albums than I can count. I was enjoying it so much that I was tempted to start charging for my picture and autograph. I would have made and extremely LARGE amount of money if I had done so and it was all just because of the way God Created me. Cancel out my voice because I did not talk to anyone. My voice was not what captured the audience. Cancel out my smile, other people were smiling. Cancel out my clothes because I was dressed in the same types of clothes as the group that I was on a tour with. It was strictly my appearance. My Brown skin tone and my Hair.

If I had to chose one place in the entire world that made me feel like I had everything, the one place in the world where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could stop Millions of people from sight seeing and become a moving attraction, a talent-less superstar, a gold metal winner of no competition, a world champion for just being me,it would be in the center of Tienanmen Square.

From the moment I stepped out of the bus there were tourist literally standing in awe. Holding their cameras up towards me, pointing their fingers, and smiling. While walking, trying to experience a tour, other tourist would walk up to me with a large smile on my face holding a camera. They would signal a friend to come take the camera from them and they would look at me and then take a picture. I literally became a tourist attraction by being the tourist.

I wonder if I somehow messed up their tour experience. I mean we were in a place most people have never been. Everyone was on a tour. I remember our tour guide had a little purple panda umbrella just so we could tell where she was at at all times. But I guess I was just as important as the location we were in. I feel I can literally connect with kings, queens, movie stars, and other people who are high in Media due to the effect that I felt from just touring Tienanmen Square.

I will say that it takes a special somebody with a positive personality in order to experience that amount of people approaching you while you are sightseeing. The experience didn't just stop there. It seemed like I had that experienced everywhere I went in China. It was just magnified by the large amount of people that were in Tienanmen Square. Even at the Oriental Pearl, while trying to overcome the fear of viewing Shanghai from a gazillion stories high, I noticed a large group of tourist staring at me. Most of the tourist that were in awe of seeing me were tourist from the hillsides. Darker Asians that rarely came to the city.

In my mind, they had only experienced me(a black person) in school books and/or once or twice on Television. Students who were practicing their English would approach me and ask where I was from. Mentally I would ask myself, Don't I look like an American. But I began to think. What does an American look like? How would you know if a black person is from America? I could be from Jamaica, Bahamas, America, Canada, England, or Anywhere, so how unfair of it for me to assume I looked like a Black American.

In turn, what made this experience one of the largest impacts on my life is that I could have in fact been from any one of those places that I named, and I would have still received the same experience just by my appearance. Not from my tone of voice. Not from anything else. So what if some days I don't fit what the American Society has noted as Beautiful. I will always have one place on Earth that I can go and feel like I am the most prized possession in the world.

Who am I?

Well clearly I’m a Black African American Female.  I mean I have brown skin.  My hair cannot and I mean Can Not have a comb slip straight through it.  My eyes are dark brown.  And everyone I know in my family is Black.  At least that is what I have been taught all of my life.  HA!  The joke was on me.  When I stepped outside of the United States of America I quickly learned my skin tone had NOTHING to do with who I was.  The government did not care if I was orange, yellow, or purple they cared about what country I was from and how long I was staying.  They cared about what I was there to do and what places I would be going to see.  The color of my skin had absolutely no purpose for my life.  No purpose at all. 

 All my life I knew myself to be Black/ African American.  America had lied to me.  I was just apart of America’s creation of a subcategory.  A subcategory created to divide what we all are.  What we all stand to be “Home of the brave Land of the free” “United we Stand Divided we Fall.”  You know all the great tag lines we recited in Elementary but had no true definition of its meaning?  That’s why half of us still screw up the national anthem.  Is it wrong to say I didn’t become an American until I the day I was headed back from China?  It’s sad to think most immigrants or refugees appreciate America more than an American who was born in the states.  We are spoiled and I was not able to realize this until my first international experience.  Until that moment, I had only experienced the life of an African American. A side performer not a Headliner.  A choir member not the lead singer.  I was hidden somewhere in the back within America’s group huddle and I finally was nominated to become everyone’s representative.

 Talking about a bittersweet moment.  I was not aware of all of the CNN headlines.  I did not know everything about politics.  What did I get myself into?  I just wanted to experience an international trip to China.  I did not sign up to become this representative of every American issue, American Policy, American everything.  I was just a Black Female.  What do you mean I’m an American?  Do you not understand the pressure?  I was not famous for something that outweighed my Americaness like Beyonce or anyone, I was just me in China.  But then I began thinking about it.

I am an American.  Do you realize the amount of power that is?  I am not just Black anymore.  I am everything.   I’m like two steps short from being the President.  Not Really.  But honestly.  I made it!  I might not have had the title, but I had A Title in a country that was not trying to sub categorize me.  If anything happened to me at the hands of the country I was visiting and I mean ANYTHING my country was going to do everything in their power to find little old me and American Student in China on a Visa.  I didn’t have that much power in America, but you would be surprised at the amount of power your home has when they can’t find you.

Whether it's America, or whoever you love, when you leave and can't make it home it effects more than just you.  No matter how far you travel or call yourself running away from home,  what is considered home to you, will never have a distance that matters.