Show #1

     Since I have not officially mentioned what the idea for my first show is, here goes. My idea for all of my shows is to change people's perceptions about a culture, about a city through experience. By understanding the culture and seeing the beautiful and amazing things about it.

     My first show is going to be on the South side of Chicago.  I personally don't know a lot of people from the North side who have ventured down there. All I hear about the South side is the violence and crime from the news reports. Even Second City has an entire show about the South side of Chicago and makes jokes about how people from Northern Chicago know nothing about it. So I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make my first show, and since I can't financially afford to make a show abroad quite yet, it will be the perfect start.

     I was originally going to move out of Chicago at the end of October. One of my friends is from the South side and also a bouncer at a bar I work at. He told me that before I left Chicago, he had to show me the South side. It perfectly fit my show idea, and at that moment I knew I had to do it. With Chicago being such a big media production city, I thought it would be the perfect place to make my start.
   
     With this show, I will present production companies and tv stations with my idea, hopefully they will like it and want to pick it up. I am a tall white blonde female going to explore the South side of Chicago with a 6'3 football player built black man named Taji. I'm sure I will learn a lot, stereotypes will be broken and my experience will change me for the better.

Jumping over hurdles

     Ok, so I am very mentally motivated to make this show happen. But I guess when you do something for the first time, you have something specific in mind. I keep waiting for the perfect weather, the perfect day, and then I still have a lot of research to do about my camera and learning to film and where we will shoot. I have to match up schedules with my friend Taji who is supposed to help show me the south side of Chicago and it is proving to be difficult as well. They are all small hurdles I need to jump over. 

     With Thanksgiving barely behind, I am trying to fight off my hibernation mode and continue to stay active and motivated on this project. Its not that I am not motivated. But there are so many things that need to be done it can be easy to get discouraged. Since this is something I have never done before, I'm sure there will be many mess-ups and things I will learn along the way. I don't want to put a ton of pressure on myself to get it all filmed in one day and perfect the first time. I was thinking three or four different times of filming down on the South Side and maybe a couple up north. But I will want it to look like one collective continuous video instead of broken bits and pieces that are very noticeable due to change of clothing and weather. Although it will be snowy and we won't see the sun for the next six months, so that may help the different videos to look the same. So I definitely have a lot to think about and a lot to figure out!!

The Dream

     I have wanted to make a travel show for over four years.  I have made ideas, contacted production companies and done research. I have been inspired by my travels and hope to inspire other people by sharing my experiences. My goal is to inspire people to have these experiences themselves and to break down cultural barriers through learning, cultural acceptance and by creating an open mind.

     Due to my financial situation, I will be doing my first show in Chicago where I am currently living. I currently don't have the financial ability to hire a crew and have people help me. So I will be doing everything myself. Producing, editing, writing, directing, filming and all of the other things I don't know that exist in making a show. I have never made a show before, I really don't have the slightest clue how to do it, but I have a dream and it inspires me. So I am hoping that with this dream, with hard work and motivation, I can make this happen. But unfortunately it will probably take ten times as long because I will be doing everything myself and learning as I go. So hopefully this blog will provide some entertainment value for whoever wants to follow it. And I hope you enjoy following my journey on this new road to follow a dream.

Papa at the laundromat

One of my favorite memories from Naples.

      I had been living there only for a few weeks and I needed to go to the laundromat. I was low on money and there were not a lot of laundromats around, so I had to walk about half a mile with my four giant bags of clothes. I got to the laundromat and I told the nice Italian man that I wanted to only wash my clothes because I didn't have money to dry them. I was able to make it so all my clothes fit it into two loads. I told him I would wait for my clothes because it wouldn't take too long, and honestly, by the time I walked all the way back to the hostel and back to the laundromat, my clothes would be done. He tried to make conversation with me in his broken English, but he knew much more English than I knew Italian.

     After only five minutes of talking to him, I felt like he was a close friend. He told me about his son, he told me about his wife who helped him at the laundromat. His friend who owned the store next-door often stopped by to talk. When my laundry was finished being washed, I stood up and was ready to put it back into my bags soaking wet. In the meantime it had started to pour, and he told me I can't walk home with wet clothes and even though I didn't have money to dry my clothes, he would dry them for me. I was puzzled as to why this person was being so nice to me. You would not find this kind of store owner anywhere in America. Heck, laundromats in America basically run themselves! As I waited for my clothes to dry and thanked him for his hospitality, he told me I looked thin, so he gave me some cheese and couple of apples that were in his fridge. I thanked him again, at that point I didn't want to insult his hospitality because he had been so nice to me. When my clothes were finished, it was still raining, and he gave me his only umbrella to walk home with. He also invited me to eat lunch with his family the next afternoon. I went and ate, using an ironing board as a table, but was very grateful for the homemade lunch. I live for these moments and for meeting these people. I'm sure he had no money and might not have been able to pay his bills. After meeting me for only five minutes, he took me under his wing and took care of me like I was one of his own. For that I will always be grateful, and I hope one day to go back and show him my appreciation for his hospitality.

Naples has a bad rep, but its not the city's fault!!

      So what I am trying to do by making a tv show, is to broaden people's horizons. Open their minds to places they have never dreamed of going, were scared to go, or to change their view about these places. Even if you don't plan to travel to these places, its my goal to show that these places are not the negative depictions that the media shows. For example. I lived in Naples, Italy for four months. Every time I told anyone from America I was there, they looked at me like I was crazy. Yes there are negative things about the city, like in every city. The mafia is prevalent and they do have a garbage problem. I feel like Americans avoid Naples like the plague and its so sad.

     The city has so much to offer. Its the birthplace of Pizza. Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneo, the Amalfi Coast, Capri, its cheap and it has so much character!!! One of my favorite things about the city is that they don't speak English. I didn't travel across an ocean to be surrounded by English. Its a rustic city, the food is amazing, the people are enchanting and there is more to see than you could do in a year! On top of that its a perfect central point. Its only an hour away from Rome by train, the Amalfi Coast is only an hour away, and if you are going to venture further South, its a perfect place to stop along the way. I'm not saying the negative depictions about the city are not true, but I am saying that it isn't what Naples is. Every time I go to Naples I am amazed at the hospitality of the people. They have a lot of reasons to be angry and bitter (the mafia, the garbage, the government, the economy), but they aren't. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met. So it is with this love for the city and the people I want to share. I want to show everyone the city has so many amazing and beautiful qualities. If you travel there, it is important to always be cautious. As you would be in New York or LA, but the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. Every place is not like America and if you understand that before you travel, and you go with an open mind. The world is yours and you will be humbled by your experiences.

Why I am the way I am

     So I guess I should start with an introduction. I am in loooovvvveee with everything that has to do with traveling. The experience, the excitement, the adventure, but mostly, I feel traveling makes me more accepting and open minded towards other people and cultures by understanding them. It makes me a better person and it helps me grow in ways nothing else does. I have done quite a bit of traveling on my own throughout Europe. I lived on the Greek Islands for three months and then in Naples, Italy for four. 

     

     My first time in Europe was to visit my brother who was studying abroad in Belgium, and ever since then I have been hooked. Its quite easy as an American to have a certain view of immigrants who come to our country. If they don't speak our language, they take our jobs, they commit crimes and don't pay taxes. If you look at only these things, its easy to look at them negatively. I grew up in a middle upper class white suburban bubble outside of Cincinnati. There was not a lot of diversity. And most of the only interaction I had with other cultures were with immigrants I did not understand and through the news with the crime reports.

     The first time I went to Europe, I was the outsider. I was the one stepping on their toes. I was the one who needed help. I didn't speak their language and wasn't from their country. When I needed help, I expected them to look down on me because I wasn't the same as them. The same way I feel its so easy for us as Americans to look at people negatively because they don't speak English. But they didn't. They went out of their way to help me. If I asked them for help in the only five french words I knew, they didn't look at me like I was lower than them, they really tried to help me find my way. It was this moment that has changed my life forever. At that moment, I understood a new level of cultural acceptance, open-mindedness and learning through experience. I was truly humbled.

     Ever since this first trip to Europe, I have had a fire inside of me to not only see other cultures, but to experience them, learn about them and understand them. In a way, I think that if everyone did this, it would bring the world a lot closer together. Call me a dreamer, call me what you want. But I am a perfect example of this. Travel has opened my eyes, broadened my horizons and continues to break down barriers I previously thought to exist. So it is with this, that my dream came alive. 

     There are some people who will never travel to these places, and there are a lot of negative media depictions in the world. The media does this to get us to read the paper. And it causes a lot of negative emotions towards these other countries that we may know nothing about. What if other countries only saw negative news about America? I'm sure they would have a negative view about our country, and there are enough negative things that happen in such a big country, I'm sure its easy to make our country look bad. But that isn't all America is. We understand this because we live here and we experience it every day.