approaching India...

This time last year, I shared some of the same feelings I am experiencing now. Confusion. Anxiety. Apprehension. Excitement. Adventure.

This time around it is a reverse in geography. Then, I was leaving New York to head to Japan. Now, I am leaving Japan, headed to New York, while approaching India first.

Stephanie and Melissa are already on their plane from NYC, headed to Delhi. I will be meeting them, at Nirvana Hostel (check my facebook friends, they are on here) for us women to embark on a journey of self-reflection, revelation, and adventure. I began planning this trip months ago with myself as he only occupant. I am happy to be sharing it with these ambitious ladies.

India is far more than a trip, another installment in Nomad•ness, and another stamp in my passport. India represents a manifestation of a dream.
My top three dream trips are Egypt, India, and Greece. Though I have traveled to many places, these three, I have not.

Two years ago, I remember vividly, laying on my bed in the Bronx, on the phone with my younger sister and talking about going to India. The prospect of travel is something both of us have inherited, much from our father. During this phone call, I could envision seeing the vibrant colors of the cities. I could taste the magnitude of the Taj Mahal.

Sarafina spoke about her interest in visiting the Motherland, South Africa specifically. Both of us took our brains on a wanderlust that night. One phone call.

Two years later...2010.

February 1st my sister departed for South Africa/Namibia and will be there until April 1st.
February 26th I depart Tokyo, Japan for India to conquer three cities in ten days.

As my mother always says, "It's never a matter of 'if'. It's always a matter of when."

spirit...

The best way I can describe how I feel is, raw. I feel emotionally fragile, like a glass vase that needs one more push before shattering all over the place. I have had to begun the process of saying goodbye to my students and my schools and it is tearing me apart.
I don't know how you real teachers do it.

I have had everything from tears to children literally running after my car as I drove out the parking lot. I am not prepared for this. I suck at saying goodbye and to have to do it so many times to so many people who have shaped my life so dramatically over this year, is breaking my heart.

Crying has become a pastime in trying to just deal with it all. I have fallen in love with this place, these people, and this culture. I am not the woman I was when I left New York a year ago and will never be that person again.

My apartment is adorned with roses given from the school I had for the last time on Friday, handmade calendars, and posters from the children. My body has felt everything from depression, to anxiety, to love in its purest form. Dare I say I might even have found religion. I wonder if standing in front of a shrine in the darkness of night, crying, thanking the Gods for the course my life has taken automatically means I am now Buddhist.The world knows I have always had spirit.

Nomad•ness Episode 3 TOKYO

Nomad•ness Episode 3 follows me around a traditional and absurd New Year's in Tokyo, Japan. Check it out...

denial times seven...

For awhile now I have been up to my neck in denial. Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of the impending actions to be taken within the next six weeks, but at times, the reality of it is too much to bare.

I have been in Japan for a few weeks shy of a year. When I first approached this 'task', it was daunting. I would side-eye my year long schedule facing me in all its magnitude. All the colors, representing all the schools, bled together until I just saw my whole year ahead of me.

Mentally, I was in a push-pull between New York and Japan, something you all will read about further in my memoir. The man I eventually fell in love with was home. Any security I had was home, including common comforts like...I don't know...language. I was so scared, so lost, so confused. The Evita that showed up at Narita Airport on March 19th, 2009, will be a far cry from the same Evita who will be returning to New York in six weeks.

These schools, teachers, and children who were mere strangers at first, have become an extended family, many of which I will be keeping in touch with even while in the States.

I've never been good at goodbyes. I cry, a lot. My face leaks. Starting this Friday, when I have to saw a final goodbye to the first of seven schools, it may be no different. I have cursed my Company for many things, and now I do so for putting me in a position to have to say goodbye to thousands of children, hundreds of faculty members, and a core of new life-long friends....seven times.

Speaking with Megan recently, we have shared stories, worries, and emotion about facing this transition. We talk, at length, about saying goodbye to the kids and our favorite faculty members, conveniently avoiding the truth that we too have to say goodbye to one another as well.

Denial is wearing off and......

THIS SUCKS!

Nomad•ness Eps. 2 FM Niigata

Join me on the second episode of my reality webTV travel series, Nomad•ness. Bandai City, Japan on FM Niigata with DJ Minoru Chris. Gotta love that guy....

Nomad•ness Ep. 1 Niigata, Japan

Nomad•ness from Evita Robinson on Vimeo.

Nomad•ness is here!
This is the new reality webTV project that I am working on, in conjunction with my memoir. Through it, you will follow me around on my travels throughout the world.
2010 promises to be a year to look out for.
First stop is Niigata, Japan...check it out!

Leave comments and replies letting me know where you are and why I should get there.
nycgaijing@gmail.com

So far the support of Facebook has been phenomenal...Enjoy!

kiss, kiss...

This Saturday night, I literally went from in my bed editing Nomadness video footage with the intention of falling asleep, to a club. I called Kotoyo and told her the news that any ideas of going to Shame were a lost cause. This past weekend, we got Part 2 of the worst snow this part of Japan has seen in 25 years. I will be posting Nomadness EP. 1 with video footage of it, this week. With that, the cars are buried and the trains weren't running. I was content in my bed.

"Gugu and I driving night. We drive you and Megan," she refuted. Kotoyo wasn't having it.

Tired, yet fighting the urge to go out, I said yes. From downtown, these two trekked for nearly two hours to pick us both up, in blizzard weather. Might I add, Megan and I live in completely opposite directions.

I am assuming no one is going to be at this party. I was wrong. The place was packed. the show was great. The old school hip-hop and R&B was dynamic.

The bar was giving away free shots of tequila. A one, cute Japanese boy, whom goes to school by my house and speaks English, was the shot guy. He looked cute as per usual, and was donning a tailored suit with a pink button down. We flirt. We have before and Saturday was no different. Being physically starved in every sense of the word, it is fun to find someone to bat eyelashes at and have my friends make fun of me for. I have no one here. Nothing.

Truth be told, I look forward to this. So he took my drink ticket so I wouldn't have to wait, got my white wine (because I was wearing white) and smiled. Megan gave me the "I saw that shit!" look and I drank my wine, with a sly grin.

The night was progressing lovely and I was truly enjoying myself. I had my closest friends in Japan all with me and I was feeling right. The wine was hitting the right spots and my eye caught hold of these tequila shots being passed around.

"How much are the shots," I asked Megan.
"I don't know. From your boy, probably free," she responded.

I pulled him to the side and asked. They were free for everyone. Jose Cuervo being passed around free is a recipe for a night to remember, in any club, in any country.
FYI I hated tequila before this night, during this night, and still do after.

He gave us a round, only Megan and I already knew the limit. While everyone else took the full shot we sipped and tossed the rest.

I was drunk...and the Japanese boy was getting cuter.

In a bold move, long overdue, as this has been brewing for my last few visits to Shame, I moved.

I whispered in his ear,"I want to kiss you."
In a very uninspiring response, he said, "Ok."
"Right now?"
"Ok."
"Right here?"
"Ok."

In my head, I am wondering where all his English went.

I sucked up my pride, and the impending jokes that would follow this moment, and I went in for it. Closed lips, fast, and with intention.

I kissed a Japanese boy.

He smiled and walked away.

"What did you say to that man," Megan questions after witnessing the act.

I have to admit, it was very anti-climatic. I'm happy for that. I didn't want fireworks, or sparks, or tongue for that matter. I just wanted it to be what it was...a kiss.

Owari Mashita! (I'm finished!)

This little woman has the strength of a thousand soldiers.

Hands on her hips is her favorite pose,
To make sure that all who meet her know,
She means business.

Far from regular infantile desires,
To interact with her requires a little bit of fire.

See, this is an old soul inside the body of a child.
Reincarnated, but true to form, with a mature confidence and style.

You will not break her stride, nor shatter her glee.
This little woman means business.
“Can’t you see?”

To understand her brain, you’d have to begin by substituting the yellow umbrella for a cane.
To comprehend the invisible wisdom of her years, you’d have to research into her subsequent tears.
To know her power, just look at her stance.
She will never grow up to accept the phrase “I can’t.”

There is only, “I know. I will. And I am.” She finds it unnecessary to orate “I can.”
For her ability is shown through all her actions.
Childhood anecdotes become adulthood artistic factions.

She is ready for anything in both life and love.
Dancing with delight like the bears hugging her gut.

“Let’s go!” she screams from both inside and out.
Facing life, daring it to make her plump cheeks pout.
She smirks, knowing the key to playing life’s game.

She has plans, an agenda, and nothing is getting in her way.
She believes as though she’s been here before, and is prepared, this go round, to stay.


This picture has been my profile pic for the last week now. As of recently, I feel it is the most relevant to how I have been feeling. I can’t recall how old I was when it was taken. All I know is that it was in South Carolina, during a summer when my family would always drive down, as a collective. It is gracing a photo album at my Grandmother’s house.

There is so much power in it.

As the poem says, my favorite pose as a child was the hands on the hips. Once I grew out of the knocked-kneedness and pigeon toes you witness in this picture, the hand on the hip was supplemented by cocking my hip to one side.
Apparently, I thought I was hot shit as a child.

What I was, was keen, perceptive, and curious. Traits that have only developed more as an adult. Before the memoir I am currently writing, on my year in Asia, I got forty pages into one on the first twenty-five years of my life. In it are many childhood anecdotes, one note being my awareness of my curiosity.

I was the child that was always asking questions. Subsequently, I would have random bouts of being ignored by those around me who found my young quest for knowledge more tedious, than interesting.

Regardless, I continued on. When I look at this photo, at twenty-five years old, and I look back at all those things that I have accomplished between the day this photo was taken, and today, I am humbled. I have had some huge disappointments in life, but more importantly, I have had magnificent success.

I am so blessed, so grateful, and too positive to focus on anything other than the talents I was born with, and the passion for them that I acquired.

If I had to caption this photo, it’d read, “Let’s go!”

Never one to wait. Never one to make excuses. Never one to shy away from the fears that come with life.

I am absolutely in love with my life right now, and it is because I constantly dare myself to truly live it! Every challenge, is an opportunity, if you choose to see it that way.

Power.

(Sorry, I have been slacking on the blogging you lovely people. I promise it is worth it. I have been plowing through the memoir and have some video revelations coming in the next few weeks. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.)