Negus in Greece

This year's friend trip was to Greece! What started off as getting ONE yacht together filled with 9 of my closest friends ballooned into THREE boats and 32 people.... We started planning this October of 2015 and by WE I mean myself... By July of 2016 I officially hated almost everyone involved.... But I learned a VERY valuable lesson, to never plan something of this magnitude for the free. We sailed up and down the greek isles for 7 days and it was MAGICAL...  THE YACHT WEEK did not disappoint! Spending seven days saling the Aegean Sea was a dream. Sadly on day 2 I found out that my grandma passed. It was extremely hard and only Jason knew. I didn't want to make the trip heavy emotionally for the others so I told him not to share it with anyone. I desperately needed the distraction, being away from my family during such a hard time was so difficult, but it helped being around the family that I was fortunate enough to be able to choose... My friends. Below are some pics I took... didn't go too crazy this time, I just wanted to enjoy the experience versus trying to document everything this go round.

 

Some of my favorite pics from the trip that I did not take....

COLOMBIA 2017

Every year I plan a trip to do ratchet things with my closest friends.... For 2017, it proved to be somewhat challenging because I needed to be fiscally responsible because most of my money will be going to nuptials.... I settled on Colombia for many reasons but one of the main ones was how much bang you get for your buck. The $ is longgggggg in South America. :)

It could all be so simple (c) Lauryn Hill

This is where I am with Nate Parker.

Simplified. Super simple. Incredibly simple. 

Sister Snodgrass always gives me cookies. Everyday she bakes them, she gives me some.

One day she bakes them, and she doesn't give them to me. She leaves them out on the windowsill to cool and I just take them. She's always given them to me before, so, it should be cool I took them.

Sister Snodgrass is hurt. Tells me those cookies were not for me. She tells the police.

The police tell Sister Snodgrass that basically she left the cookies where I could get to them so essentially the way the laws are made, I'm not at fault.

Years later, I find out that what I did technically should have been considered stealing. but I was young and the charges didn't stick so I'm not a thief. Whenever the subject comes up a vehemently deny any wrong doing, even though the current consensus is I was wrong for stealing.

Really and truly, I'm a thief. I stole from Sister Snodgrass. and whether I admit it or not, the deed was done. 

So while other folks telling you black feminists killed Birth of a Nation*, know I didn't see it because I don't like that type of attitude. ever. at all. Wrong is wrong.

 

*Exit polls have showed that 60-61% of BoAN's paid audience were indeed women of color, but per the usual, it's always black women's fault for everything*

When Injustice Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty (c) Original Author Unknown

**SPOILER ALERT. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BIRTH OF A NATION**

Dear Nate Parker: 

'The Birth of a Nation' was everything I expected it to be, which does not say much for enthusiasts who really wanted to see the film. I'm not sure why you thought you were the person to tell this story, as you yourself recognize how little we know about slavery and slave rebellions, but still yet you chose to do so without (I'm convinced) consulting with historians, so you've done little to help us understand anything and perhaps have misled us more than anything. Listen, Nate, I get that some part of representation is fictive, particularly when trying to represent the everyday and mundane but especially when trying to represent slavery. But, IF you are going to altogether revise history with fictional narratives, at least do so for and with purpose. Sexual violence enacted against black women is not fodder for representing the limitations of black masculinity. If you are going to add a series of rape scenes, which necessarily requires black women whom I now don't think you would have included if not for their role as recipients of violence (note: none of these scenes are done with any form of tact or attentiveness to trauma--I suppose I shouldn't expect much given the tired conversations you keep having publicly when people press you on your past and the issue of sexual violence in general), I would hope that you could see this as an opportunity to give some form of interiority to all your black women characters and narrate them as agents in the fight against--and the everyday survival of--slavery. It might have also been the opportunity to get a better understanding of the role sexual violence plays in maintaining structures of oppression and how sexual violence alters the world and life of the victims of that violence. You chose to instead focus on how it impacts the black men around them.  Because let's be clear, this movie wasn't so much about the rebellion as it was about the struggle for black men to protect their black women from white men. The actual rebellion scene felt ancillary; it was rushed, as if it did not actually take two days. The aftermath scenes felt equally rushed, as if black people weren't brutally punished and violently murdered following the rebellion. What struck me most was how quickly you were to show violence against black women throughout the whole film (noose around neck, rape and sexual objectification, dying in a chair alone, having their children removed from them) but you resisted showing violence against white women. Nat killed Margaret, a white woman, but all of the white women in the film were so redeemable and sympathetic that we could almost never imagine enslaved people wanting to kill them. They seemed like bystanders in the structuring and enforcing of slavery. I do not recall a single white woman dying nor do I recall a single white woman I wanted to die throughout the duration of the film until that white woman in the angry mob at the end. And, even then, that felt more so retaliatory for his murdering people, perhaps friends and family, than her actual understanding of him as property who got out of his place, didn't deserve rights, and could be killed at any time without recourse. When you consider that (white) men, women, and children were killed during the rebellion, it almost seemed like it was arbitrary and unjustified to kill (white) women and children, if we are to understand life during slavery through the script and lens you've provided. This tells me a lot about your gender and race politics. 

And, frankly, I was tired of seeing your face by the end of it all. It felt like you were trying to prove a point about your acting through your directing. You failed to do that, too. 

I could get into the particulars that made the movie itself underwhelming but I won't bore you with my film nerd analysis.

In sum, you could've, and should've, sat this one out.

Iceland

Chalky broke his overseas cherry with this trip. I planned it to the "t" and every second was spoken for. Iceland was beyond beautiful. I am convinced that this is one of those places that we will make the yearly family trip when Jason and I are married, washed, and with children. Iceland is just sooooo photogenic! It was such a joy to experience every type of landscape.... you could drive for an hour and see ice, green grass, black sand, and snow... It was just breathtaking. It was the great first international trip for LaFlore because it is very American friendly and there isn't the anxiety you feel when you are forced to try to communicate in a language that is not your native tongue. There was so much to do.... AND WE SAW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS! I must admit that I am extremely happy that we took a "northern lights" tour that gave us an idea of what to look for. When you google image you see these pictures of  blue, purple and pink skies... But most times those are severely edited. The days that we got to experience the lights they were more subtle and less detectable by the naked eye, but they show up GREAT with the proper settings on your camera. This link was SOOOOO helpful. It gave you a forecast of how to likely you are to see the aurora borealis based on the day, how strong the activity is, and where is it most easiest to be viewed. We relied on it a lot and were lucky enough to see it four out of the six nights (we didn't get above a seven in terms of activity) that we were in Iceland!

Enough of the rambling.... Check out the pics below and a short video compilation of GoPro footage from the trip :)