Three Influential People

My grandma and Papa.

Someone who has influenced me:

My grandma has always been my role model. She's worked hard to get where she is today. Born and raised in Southwest Detroit, or more specifically Delray. Her mother passed away at a young age, so she had to raise her four other sibling, she is the second eldest of five. Later, she graduated from Southwestern High School, and had a daughter in 1976 (my mother). She was a single parent, but she took care of what was needed to provide for her child and herself. A few years later, she met the love of her life. They had a son together in 1980, and then were married in 1987. She found the one thing everyone looks for, someone to help you build up your life. While working full-time and being a mother, she went to college. She first attended Detroit College of Business and received her undergrad degree. At Wayne State University, she majored in Information and Records Management, and later received her Masters in Library and Information Science. Some of the places she worked at was the Joe Louis Arena as a Computer Operator, Great Lakes Bancorp as a Records Retention Specialist, and worked at a law firm that handled asbestos class action litigation. Currently, she is working at a major law firm located in the Renaissance Center in Downtown, Detroit. I look up to her, she is the example I want to follow. She overcame all her obstacles and is living a great life. She has five beautiful granddaughters and a loving husband whom she has been married to for 29 years. She is one of the reasons I am going to college, I want to be as successful in life as she is. She always encourages me to do my very best, no matter what I'm up against.

Mrs Johnson and her husband.

Someone who has influenced many:  

Mrs .Johnson has been a Kumon Instructor for 17 years. She has her Masters in English and received her teaching degree at Madonna University. She opened her first Kumon center in August 1999, and then the second in April 2002. Since then, she has helped over 2,000 students learn how to read and comprehend what they read at a quicker pace, and become better at figuring out math problems. I became a student of hers when I was in 2nd grade, and now I'm an employee. If it wasn't for her constant encouragement that I can figure out the problems in front of me, I wouldn't be as intelligent as I am today. All these years at Kumon, I've watched struggling students catch up to their grade level in a few months, and some even go further, and it's all because of Mrs. Johnson. And now, my younger cousin and little sister are enrolled into Kumon, I always tell them that Kumon will help them in the future. Any child can come into one her centers and learn, no matter how smart or inadequate they are. She believes every child has the potential to become smarter than they are. By becoming better with reading and math, the child's self-esteem goes up, and they'll want to learn more. Every year, she holds an award ceremony to give trophies to the children to show that they are special and deserve to be rewarded for their efforts. The children's smiles are from ear to ear when they receive their trophy, and they run to show their parents. I appreciate everything she does to help these children reach their potential and show them how smart they can actually be. 

Someone who has influenced the world: 

Walt Disney was born December 5, 1901, in Hermosa, Illinois. He was one out of five children. He mostly grew up in Missouri and this is where he started drawing and painting. He later went back to Illinois and took drawing and photography classes at Mckinley High School. He also was a cartoonist for the school's paper, and took night classes at Chicago Art Institute. At 16, he joined the Red Cross and went to France to help with the war and drove an ambulance for a year. In 1919, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri and started working at Kansas City Film Ad Company where he made commercials with animating cutouts. He later made a studio of his own called Laugh-O-Gram, but in 1923 it had to be shut down due to debt. After rounding up some money, Walt and his brother moved to Hollywood, California and started the Disney Brothers' Studio. After being betrayed by a distributor. they lost their first cartoons and animators. Walt, his brother, his wife, and a trusted cartoonist, created Mickey Mouse. They created short silent films with Mickey, and also put sound, music, and voices in the films. Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto were made in 1929. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first ever full-length film, and it produced $1.499 million dollars. After Snow White, Walt was mostly focused on making movies. On July 17, 1955 Disneyland was built in Anaheim, California. People come from around the world to see the Disney characters come to life. He began plans to open a theme park in Florida, but before he could see it finished, he died of lung cancer at 65 on December 15, 1966. His brother finished the plans, and Disney World was built and then finished in 1971. Mary Poppins was the last work Walt looked over before his death. He and his animators brought joy to the world with their cartoons. He overcame all the problems in his way and now his name will live on forever.

Top 10 Movies

Who doesn't love watching movies? These are my utmost favorite 10 movies that I could never get tired of seeing.

1) Sleeping Beauty has always been my favorite Disney princess.

When I was younger, I would watch this movie like if my life depended on it. This is the only princess movie with a prince fighting a dragon. I love how her dress changes colors due to the fairies, Flora and Merryweather, fighting over what color is better. Merryweather is mine and my mom's favorite character in the movie, she makes us laugh every time we watch the movie. I have an old doll of Aurora that is still in the box, and quite a few figurines. Every time a new edition of the movie came out, my mom bought me it, so i might have five editions of the same movie. To add onto my love of this princess, she is also my boyfriend's favorite princess. He surprised me when he told me this, He came up with the idea for our future wedding cake, that it will have the dragon on it. and when we cut the cake, he'll be slaying a dragon for me.

 2) Land Before Time is the reason I love dinosaurs. I watched this movie many time, but not as much as Sleeping Beauty. I wanted to learn about dinosaurs, I had many dinosaur toys, and the Barbies I did have were the food to my giant robot T-Rex. This story reminds me of my life. Little Foot's (main character) grandparents raised him after his mother passed away, and he never met his father. Growing up, I was mostly was with my grandparents because my mom worked midnight shifts, so I didn't see her as much. I don't remember my dad, he passed away when I was two or three.

Little Foot and his grandparents.

 

3) Oh man, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was the other movie that I watched way too much. Other than dinosaurs, horses are a love of mine. Anything with a horse in it, I either read, watched, or played it. It was either this or Sleeping Beauty being played on the T.V. This movie is great, there's humor, sadness, epic chases, and the facial expressions are the funniest I have ever seen.

Just an example of the expressions.

4) I'm a huge fantasy genre fan, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the best in my opinion. I remember when I was younger, my Papa (grandpa) played the movies, and I never got up from my seat. I was so entranced by the magic, elves, battle scenes, etc. Still to this day, I have movie marathons of the trilogy, and now since The Hobbit (the story that started it all) was also made, I don't leave my house. I have so much merchandise, the Ring on my car keys, way too many shirts, a lifesize Legolas cutout, a Gandalf staff, plushie, and beard, and a charm bracelet. That's most of the stuff I have, there's just too much to list.

My charm bracelet, and me with my Gandalf beard and Legolas. I was having a movie marathon.

5) Legend is another fantasy movie. My favorite animal is the unicorn. Unicorns top dinosaurs and horses. This movie is beautiful and scary. There's glitter everywhere! There's two unicorns that are being hunted by a huge, red monster that looks like the devil but isn't. He still creeps me out.

The two unicorns.

6) Another unicorn movie is The Last Unicorn. This is a beautiful and sad story. The last unicorn searches for her lost family that was stolen by a greedy King and his huge Red Bull (kind of like Legend). She makes friends on her journey, and to escape the Red Bull, she had to be turned into a human. She was so pretty. She eventually freed her family by fighting back against the King and the Red Bull in her returned unicorn form. I had my boyfriend watch this one day with me, and he loved it too.

$349.99 

7) Labyrinth is another glitter filled fantasy movie that I enjoy watching. Sarah (main character) reminds me of myself. She's very much into fantasy world type stories just like I am. David Bowie was the best choice to be the Goblin King. Sometime later, I want to get the Goblin King statue, but it's super expensive. So I will have to stick with my t-shirts for the time being.

Sarah and the Goblin King

8) Back to another dinosaur trilogy. The Jurassic Park three movie trilogy. When I was young, the dinosaurs looked so real. I have the original movies from when it was first being sold. I got so excited when the newest movie came out, Jurassic World, that I had to go see it. In the move, the old park building was in there, and I started hitting my best friend in the theater because I was so excited.

This building is the one in the new movie. I can remember that banner anywhere.

9) I love video games, and my favorite series is called Dynasty Warriors. I always thought it was just made up characters and story, but then I found out these were real people and events in China. And then I found out there was a movie called Red Cliff that is the story of a huge battle in the game and in real life in the past. I had to watch it. To see my favorite characters come alive on the screen is a great feeling. Even though some scenes are exaggerated, it's still a great movie.

10) Finally, my last favorite movie. Journey to the West is a comedic movie remake to the book Journey to the West, a very old Chinese literary classic. I was scrolling through Netflix one night, and me being a Kung Fu movie fanatic found this. I didn't realize this was a comedy, I laughed throughout the whole movie. The next day I made my boyfriend watch it since he like Kung Fu movies also. He was laughing as much as I did. And come to find out, there's a sequel coming out in 2017, I can't wait.

This would the main character.