Alada traveling: Lada's travel stories
I was prompted to do a post about my traveling stories. Below, I detail my motivation for traveling. I can say that traveling is one of the things I am very passionate about. Ive recently gone on some solo trips for the first time in ever and I will be writing more about that in future post. Below is my traveling trails from 2012 to 2017. Its been an amazing 6 years with some dope folks and places.
I caught the travel bug in 2012.
NEW ORLEANS - January 2012
My sophomore year of college, I had this dope opportunity to go to New Orleans as part of an organization called Operation Southern Comfort. Operation Southern Comfort started out in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Operation Southern Comfort made 50 week-long trips to the Gulf Coast between January 2006 and July 2013 with the mission to rebuild houses and restore lives. Volunteers from high schools and colleges participated and through a campus club named B.O.N.D. (Brothers of a New Direction) that I was part of, I got the opportunity. The trip took a day and a half by van and we slept overnight in a church. We also managed not to kill each other. While in New Orleans, we were introduced wonderful families, some dope kids and sexyyyy food! We got a home cooked meal every night while we were there (shout out to Reisie). Most days, we worked on homes and met people who shared their stories about Hurricane Katrina but for one day we got to tutor these amazing children that grew up in the 9th ward. Some were just babies when Katrina hit and others weren't even born. It was an eye opening experience. It solidified my passion for working with children and made me realize, I haven't really traveled anywhere. As a kid, my family and I visited my relative in North Carolina, but that stopped after a certain age. I got to visit Florida once in my life for about a month but stayed in a house 97.9 % of the time. I just KNEW a gator was going to come snapping at my feet. After New Orleans, I decided that I would travel again, but where?
WASHINGTON DC - AUGUST 2012
For some reason, Washington D.C. was calling a G. At first I thought it would be a solo trip but when I told my friend Andreya about it, she was down for the cause. What solidified us actually going on the trip, though, was the death of recent Le Moyne Graduate, Matt Shaw.
Matt had just graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Finance. The night of July 4th, while minding his damn business, he was shot and killed in his very own hood, Harlem, NY. He was headed to SUNY Albany to pursue his masters in Economics and his life had been senselessly cut short.
Matt and I weren’t best friends but him and a lot of upperclassmen were in integral part in making us underclassmen feel welcome when I began my college career. We'd randomly see each other in Harlem during school breaks and when we saw each other at school, we'd engage in the usual banter as many minority students sat together while in the dining room. A lot of us were from NYC and we took care of each other. I was on my way to junior year and he had just graduated. His death hit me hard and inspired me to finally pay for the trip. So in August of 2012, we hopped on the Boltbus and stayed in Washington for 3 days. We had a blast riding the Trolley, visiting the usual landmarks and museums, enjoying each other’s company and realizing that at 20, we were taking control of our happiness. It cost us about $130 for the hotel and roundtrip there and back. I resolved that I'd take my little coins I'd saved up from working in the dining hall and tutoring on the weekends to put towards traveling somewhere I'd never been at least once a year.
NEW ORLEANS JUNE 2013
I had the opportunity to go on another service trip to New Orleans through my college, this time with an organization called L.E.A.P (Literacy empowers all people). LEAP was a joint project of Le Moyne and All Souls Episcopal Church in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The goal of the LEAP program was to assist All Souls Church in its desire to make sure the children got all they needed to succeed in school, despite the huge performance gap between poor children of color and other children in the United States. Largely, due to fundraising, I was able to go on the trip. Similar to the first time I went to New Orleans, I traveled with a group of about 10. Most of us in this group wanted to be teachers and this trip would be a great experience for it. We'd spend a week teaching and being camp counselors to a large group of kids, ages 3-16, from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. It was an eye opening experience and I was humbled.
Atlanta - August 2013
That same summer, Andreya and I picked Atlanta. Andreya's aunt lived down there so we decided we’d stay with her. We were too broke to afford anything else so we took an 18 hour Greyhound trip to ATL. With stiff necks, newly formed arthritis and level 7 contortionist abilities, we arrived in Atlanta. The trip took us out because we slept the first day away lol. We did the usual touristy stuff, avoided the allure of Magic City, and attended an Atlanta Braves baseball game just for the heck of it. Of course the southern hospitality has us always saying that we need to go back.
Puerto Rico - July 2014
The next year, I went with a different group of friends to San Juan Puerto Rico. This was my first time on a plane and I was sccccccuuuuured out my mind! The worst thing to do is google your fears and that's the first thing I did lol.
We stayed for 5 days and visited El Junque Rainforest, ate food from the side of the road (it tastes better according to my boy's barber), visited Viejo San Juan, did the beach thing a few days and so much more. On our last night, which was a Monday, we visited Club La Respuesta. YOOO! This club is hands down, one of, if not, THE BEST CLUB, I've ever been too. The music consisted of Hip Hop, R&B, Reggae and the crowd was as diverse as ever. (Noted by this 40 + year old Abercrombie and Fitch reject that kept on trying to dance with me and then got offended when I had to extend my fore arm to tell him to "ease up") There was real live break dancing happening right before my eyes. It was like being back in high school during the "get lite" movement or being an extra in a "You Got Served Twice”. I was hypeeee.
Jamaica - June 2015
The next year, I went to Jamaica as part of a 2 week service trip. I was set to graduate college finally lol so I didn't think it would be possible for me to go due to liability reasons. I also thought I didn't have the funds to go and the deadline to apply had already passed. One of my great friends were already going on the trip and while talking on Facebook, she had mentioned it. In like 2.5 seconds we concocted a diabolical plan to get me to Jamaica lol. The service trip included spending 2 weeks at a school in Kingston volunteering with the teachers and interacting with the kids. The next day we went together to present the idea to one of the coordinators of the trip. She encouraged me to apply and I was psyched when I found out I was accepted. Because I was broker then a Joker, I ended up doing some fundraising. Someone had anonymously donated a huge sum of money for me to go on the trip. The other, most amazing thing was, I received some money from the Matt Shaw scholarship fund at my school. It was put in place shortly after his death. Per the website "this fund will level the playing field so that all students, regardless of their economic circumstances, can participate in programs that strengthen the education they receive at Le Moyne." 3 years later, Matt was blessing me. Donate here at http://www.dolphinsonline.org/s/445/index-1Col.aspx?pgid=2475&gid=1&cid=3779
My trip to Jamaica was EVERYTHING. The best thing was spending time with the children. They were so fun to be around, always joking though the circumstances under which they lived was horrible. I miss those kids so much and still think about them til’ this day. (Shout out to Lionel)
Albany, NY - 2015
One of the greatest trips I’ve ever made was to the University at Albany which I attended for grad school in 2015 and graduated in 2017!
New Orleans July 2016
My mother used to order Essence magazine subscriptions when I was growing up and I used to see their Essence Music Festival advertisements. I mentioned it to Andreya a few years back and was like “yo, we gotta make it here.” Of course she was down for the cause and so were my other girls. Before this, the times that I've gone to New Orleans was for service trips; I never really got the full extent of New Orleans life. We paid a little under $500 for hotel and flight from July 3rd to the 6th. IT WAS LIT and is highly recommended. New Orleans Food is life. Bourbon Street is err thang, Beignets from Café Du Monde makes you wanna slap yo’ mamma and overall atmosphere is smooth. The Essence festival, usually held in the Mercedes Benz Superdome, was great too.
Washington D.C. - March 2017
I absolutely had to visit the Smithsonian African American Museum. I heard that tickets were hard to come by but took chances anyway. Andreya and I plotted on this museum almost 5 years before when we visited.
The above pic was taken back in August, 2012 during our trip.
Andreya didn’t come on this trip but my homie, Willie, did. We were determined to get in though we got locked out of the online tickets. The walk up tickets were being given out at 1pm but we decided to start standing on line right before 11am and before we knew it, the people who worked outside gave us 2 tickets to get in. The museum is beautiful, capturing so much of African American History. Though it was overwhelming, it was very informative. I would strongly encourage everyone to go.
Philly -April 2017
Philly was calling a G so I decided to answer for my 25th birthday =). We took the Megabus which ended up being only $20 round trip and stayed in Apple Hostel which was only $60 over the weekend. I had a whole list of things I wanted to do but the most important was trying an authentic Philly cheese steak and climbing the rocky steps at the Philadelphia museum of art. We did none of them lol. 1) Because I ate too much meat when I first arrived so I was kind of over it and then 2) because the NFL draft just hadddddddddddddd to be that weekend -_-. I’ll be making a trip back though. We did Hookah, toured different neighborhoods, went to the African American Museum and had mad fun.
25 was lit.
