Viva Italia!!! 🇮🇹

This weekend i have had the opportunity to travel out of the country......hahahah or should I say out of the UK. Even though it is the title of this post i am still going to  announce that I am in Naples Italy!!!

 
It has been such an both a void and frustrating trip.  The city itself is very beautiful and there is so much history within it, from the many Viaducts to the buildings that are extremely old to the way the city is built on a hill. Once I got off the plane i was in love. Last night was my first time getting actual Italian food and I got lasagna, which was smaller than I tought but pact a very hard punch.
   Of course with the good of the city there is bound to be a bit of bad. Not only did I feel at home getting off the plane, but I also noticed I had no Signal, data, or Wi-Fi; even though the airport said it had Wi-Fi. This was a STRUGLE not only did I get a text from our Air b&b host saying he couldn't pick us up, but we had no idea of how to get to his place. And with no wifi, data (even though or phone suppliers said we had some) and for me nothing to eat since the night before, we were sitting ducks, in a new city, with American accents and 3 useless super computers (capable of everything but connecting to the internet.)

Standing around I thought to myself what are we to do? Then it hit me this is what we all have been preparing for our whole lives.  Math,  science, social studies, leadership classes and everything else. These classes were made to give us all basic knowledge of the world and our selves. This is when I thought about what Carmen said before we left "its in those moments that you find who you are as a person." It was in that moment that I realized that we could do anything with or without a phone.  So we converted our money grabbed a cab and made our way to our Air b&b, where we walled into this gorgeous view of the city. 

In those moments we got our stuff together and got what we needed done. I think we have concurred getting lost in an Italian city without phones.  Now let's see if we can find some cool clubs and bars and stuff. 珞 Challenge accepted.

Come on........Italy. 

Darius Lee: Smizing through London.

This week I got the opportunity to read another persons blog and I have to say that I did enjoy it. Darius  Lee also wrote a post about the slave museum and he talked about how the slaves staying  together and being each others support.
This made me think about the people of today and how people of color have stuck together through history. Unity is something I think that has been a key element in survival and perseverance in our history. It seems that as we are growing up there is less of this unity in our community. This is very dangerous when there are things that need to be done in the world, like reform of systems that have been put in place to gives privilege to certain groups. This unity is something many of us strive for within different communities but then we fail when it is for our own.

This unity is achievable for everyone but you have to start with yourself and then work a bit at a time. This, I think, is how we create a sense of unity within the world and our communities. Of course there is more work to this unity, but if we can start within then we would be able to work.

Leadership and London

         Its been an interesting few weeks here adjusting to everything that has been going on. During my stay here I have been reading for my Long Vanderburgh scholars  class, we are looking at the life of one of the most famous leaders; Nelson Mandela. Reading this autobiography has been very interesting, within it Mandela gives lessons about how leadership should be and traits that a leader should have when leading.

I have been forced to think about what leadership means to me as I read the book which has been changed by some of the things I have read. For example the most recent chapter we read was about  leading from behind and I thought to myself who in the world could you do that. Of course as I was reading the material I understood more about how Mandela would make others feel as if they made decisions themselves. Author Richard Stengel talks about how Mandela would rarely share what his views were on certain subjects but he would rather summarize what everyone else would mold the opinion and gear it towards action. 

Reading this I thought to myself that he was the most effective Resident Assistant that there was. All joking aside he really proved himself to be a great man and leader, which is something that many people strive but never achieve at that level. Does that make them less of a leader? No it doesn't. 

Everyone has their own way of leading and Mandela's might not work for everyone, but it is good to know about other ways of leading, to see see which is most effective for you. During my time here and being the RA I have noticed that it is easy want to tell people what to do and how to do it and being part of everything that people are doing, but it's more difficult letting people do them while you are doing something completely different.

Looking through my phone I was able to find a picture that I took with a statue of Mandela. I did not realize that I had this but I thought it would be fitting for this post. The statue I think captures who he was as a person in the since that he was always open and the power he radiates it very visible in the picture. I can say that when I saw the statue I was surprised to see it, but I thought why not he did meet the queen and the presence of his leadership was felt over all of the world. So far so good.

Come on London!!