Happy (Very late) New years everyone! _ An Update on Life

Happy New year Everyone!

 I want to start off  by saying yes I am very aware that I haven't posted in... well quite awhile. A lot has happened. So, I have overall been great.. and some lovely things have happened. I came off some medication I had been taking for more than half of my life; eleven years to be precise. My parents decided that we will be returning to China this year to bring number six home... I'll make a whole other post about that though. Some other things have happened as well that aren't so great. In October my Grandmother died and that just Crushed me. It's been very difficult living without her but hey life goes on, Right? I also recently lost one of my best friends but in the end I guess if they left they weren't ever much of a real friend anyway so I try to not be too sad about it (Hence the word "Try" haha). Then something happened in My community last week Which is the main topic of tonight's post.

So, I live in a city that’s populations is mostly African Americans and then there are some whites, Latinos, Asians etc.. personally I am white not that it really matters. Recently we had tornadoes touch down and destroy a lot of our city, houses, businesses, doctors offices Now just a pile of what used to be what made our city. Since all of this people had nowhere to go. A lot of places are still without power and will be for quite a few weeks. I’m saying all of this because people want to talk about how much racism is a problem and it most definitely is but this past week my city has come together in ways I would’ve never expected. So, Monday night everyone was going about there business as we all (well most) Ignored the tornado watches because we have them quite often here however the likelihood of an actual tornado is usually quite small. It wasn't until the alarms started blaring outside that I even realized it had gotten bad.We aren’t seeing skin color, religion, social class etc. We were all terrified and we are all devastated.. some more than others; I personally had no damage done to my house thankfully. Churches have provided food, shelter, comfort etc. the State theater, civic center and other stable structure have opened their doors to families to come sleep. Non profits have come in to help clean up and I have never been more proud of my community. I’ve learned disasters can separate people or bring them together and while our city might not be together anymore our community certainly is. 

That is all for today. I'm going to Attempt to start making posts more frequently as I find it relatively therapeutic; Maybe every 2-3 months or once a month.. we'll see. 

Until next time, Maria  

Inevitable death - The topic no one likes to talk about :)

I told myself at the beginning of this year that I was going to blog more, yet i find myself not knowing what to blog about. A thought occurred to me today though; "One day we will all cease to exist" People die, it happens literally all the the time. Call me insensitive but it's factually a part of life because at the end of life always comes death. Death is inevitable. This is a quote from one of my favorite movies (It's also a book just fyi) 

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does."
-  John Green, The Fault in Our Stars   

Just think about that for a minute now i'm not just typing this just to type; there is a point to it. From the moment we are born we are already dying, while some of you may find that depressing I find it quite inspirational..  What if we didn't ignore the fact that eventually we will all die? If we know that tomorrow is not promised to us why don't we live like it? I mean sure we're breathing and stuff but actually live as in;  Not keeping feelings bottled up or not letting fear cripple you from achieving your dreams. The kind of living that i'm talking about will be defined differently for everyone; to some it's travelling and seeing new place and experiencing new things, others working towards that job you want, Turning your dreams into reality no matter what; I could go on and on about scenarios but that would take forever and i want you to evaluate in your head what "Living" is for you personally. 

Until next time, Maria 

I'm home - continued

So, I did say I'd post pictures and such about my trip so we will start with this (the quality isn't that great due to the fact my phone broke right before I left for china) ;

This is when we flew over either Antarctica, Canada or Russia, I can't remember but I do remember how incredibly beautiful it was haha!

Next we've got when I flew into Hong Kong..

After we arrived there we found our driver and after a long wait at the border made it into China... we got to the hotel about three or four hours later at midnight.. i was exhausted to say the least.

This was the view from the room (We ended up switching rooms later due to construction)

This was right outside the front doors of the hotel

Pictures taken on the island

Having tea at my parent's friend's shop (If you ever find yourself on Shamian island visit "Susan's Place" they have some really neat stuff!) 

I unfortunately got really sick while I was there (Im not used to being in such humid weather haha) but apparently tea fixes everything so the next day we visited their Shop and I drank tea all day..  Voila the next day i was fine so to this day I swear Chinese tea fixes EVERYTHING.

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Pictures from the hotel 

After two weeks of being there my trip came to an end and I honestly I thought i'd be ready to come home but that was not the case.. I joked and told my parents they could just leave me there.. China is such a Beautiful country and I didn't want to leave. The Last day i was there we had walked back from the market and I was just thinking about having to get on the plane tomorrow (What a dreaded flight it was) and go home when I looked out the window to take one last picture of the view we had and the sun was relatively shining; for the first time since i had been there i got to see the sunshine.. it was so pretty. I remembered that

 "all good things must come to an end but new experiences await" and I have many other places to travel too (Even though China will always hold a special place in my heart). 

The next morning at a lovely (Insert sarcasm here) time of four in the morning we got up, packed up, checked out and met the driver to drive us back across the border and to the airport in Hong Kong; as we waited at the border I thought to myself 

"Goodbye China, i'll be back eventually"

Until next time, Maria

Isaiah 41:10: "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, yes, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."

The past few days some very horrific things have occurred, the terrorist attacks in Paris, the bombing in Beirut, and the attack in Nigeria.. The list really just goes on and on unfortunately. I cannot put into words how Sorry I am that these things have happened to you, your families , your friends, neighbors.  Because I really don't know what to say except that I'm so sorry and I'm praying for peace and comfort during this time of mourning. I'm going to put a few verses for all of you to read;

 1 Peter 5:6-7  Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he cares for you.

Psalms 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Please pray with me for these families they have lost Mums and dads, sisters, brothers,children, friends etc. 
if you have been affected by one of these tragedys I'm so sorry, praying for Peace, comfort and healing for you. 

I'm home!

I know I haven't posted in what seems like FOREVER!! Sorry about that, I've been very busy.. Fundraising then I went to China.. Stopped in Hong Kong on my way there and I'll just say enduring 20 hour flights is defiantly NOT a strong point of mine haha. Regardless of being stuck on a plane that complete strangers for 20 hours My trip to China was quite great, in fact I didn't want to leave!! On my way there I stopped in San Francisco.. You'd be surprised at how many Alcatraz souvenirs they have, then from SF I was headed across the ocean to Hong kong which is a great place by the way, lovely people! Once I got to Hong Kong it was around 9pm their time and I was so exhausted.. As soon as I got my luggage I was off to find the person that was picking me up from the airport and driving me to Guangzhou, China... Around 12am I got to the hotel! I'm just going to skip the trip for now and I'll post about it later along with pictures that I took while I was there. On my back I was picked up at 4am from my hotel and driven to Hong Kong, once there I got on a plane which I would be in for 19 hours. Nineteen long boring agonizing hours later I landed in New Jersey stayed there about three or four hours and then got back on a plane to go Home. The Trip was all in all a fantastic trip and I plan to travel a lot more throughout my life, I'm pretty young still so I'm sure I'll have time to visit the places I'd like to. So that's about it for the traveling part haha. Have you ever been anywhere out of your country? If you have please feel free to share where you went and what your experience was! I've also noticed lately I have viewers from EVERYWHERE, Portugal,Ukraine,Australia,China,France, Greece just to name a few which is quite interesting to me so be sure me to drop me a comment about where your from!
Until next time, Maria

Altruism and New years resolutions?

Altruistic

[ ˌaltro͞oˈistik ]

ADJECTIVE

showing a selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish:

I really do strive to be a better person day by day I'm defiantly not saying I'm perfect because I'm not and that's okay.I try to be a Caring, loving, ambitious, successful, adventurous person along with a lot of other things however at the end of the day I'm just me and I'm quite content with that. as we are about to enter a new year, a new chapter of our lives I'm going to strive to put others first more often and be the best me i can be.

Merry Christmas, Maria