What Is My Passion Thursdays: Meet Tanisha Townsend

Tanisha Townsend
Photo Credit: Personal Photo

Tanisha Townsend is a Wine & Spirits Educator and Consultant who delivers educational and informative presentations from the classroom to the living room. As Creator of the blog Girl Meets Glass, she aims to promote the history and joys of fermented beverages to the masses.  She currently resides in Paris, France.

Tanisha's passion is wine and spirits! That has now become her career as a wine consultant and Professor of Wine & Spirits.  Before falling into wine, she worked for a Big 5 consulting firm doing Information Technology Security work.


When asked the sacrifices she made for her passion this is what Tanisha's says, "Oh the sacrifice! Just kidding :-) I believe my biggest sacrifice was comfort. Working a 9-5 was extremely comfortable, the hours, the pay, the prestige... But I was miserable and it just wasn't worth it."

She continues with this advice, "DO IT!! If you have something in your mind, in your heart that you just can't shake...you have to take that leap. You never want to look back on your career and wonder 'What If?' If you're really really scared, start making an exit plan. Detail out what you need to do or have in place in order to leave your current career. Also get an accountability partner to hold you to it because odds are, you never REALLY feel totally comfortable with leaving your 'main' career for your passion and purposeful one."

Readers can learn more about Tanisha Townsend (social media, website, other contact info) at:

Website: www.girlmeetsglass.tumblr.com 

FB: www.facebook.com/GirlMeetsGlass

Twitter: @girlmeetsglass

IG: GirlMeetsGlass

Florence American Cemetery, San Gimignano, and a Winery Tour

We had a world wind couple of days. I'm going to post Monday's events. Tuesday's activities will be posted in the morning. Collette Vacations took us on a surprised tour to the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial. It is at this location where we were able to see the grave of original Tuskegee Airman, Captain Erwin Lawrence. His grave is among the more than 5000 men and women, including names on the Wall of the Missing, who died during the last phase of the Italian campaign from June 1944 to May 1945.

San Gimignano

From there we went to the windy, but very scenic San Gimignano. Lots of shops, including La Buca for salsiccia cinghiale (wild boar sausage) which we read about in Doing Italians...Oops...Italy by The Delusional Divas'.

Finally, the part of the day that everybody was waiting for: WINE TASTING and it didn't disappoint. Chianti is the wine made in the Tuscany region. This particular brand was produced by Tenuta San Vito.

Tomorrow we will post about our visit into Florence and our first of three interviews here in Italy for Take A Leap with BET/AOL Travelista Host Andrea Adams.

With those who are not familiar with Take A Leap, we are chronicling the lives of African-American expats. The pilot episode will feature our interviews in Italy.

Grazie,
Rhonda W

Uploaded Pictures

Low and behold, I give it one more try, and the Internet picked up speed; thereby making it possible to load the two pictures.  Two interesting tidbits I thought I'll share in reference to the pictures.  The town of Assisi has thousands of visitors on a daily basis visiting the Basilica and shops; yet there are only 600 residents within the walls of the town.  Mostly nuns and priests.  Another tidbit is that the wine in Italy have natural sulfites, so good-bye to headaches and hangovers.  That's good to know because wine comes with every dinner and the waiters either fill it to the rim or offer refills.  I would be zonked out right about now rather than up at almost 1AM updating this blog.  So on that note...Buona Notte (Good Night)!!

Assisi hilltop view

Red Wine

On the Road!

We spent quite a bit of time on the road from Rome to Montecatini Terme, outside of Florence, Italy in the Tuscany region.  En route to our destination, we got to know our travel companions.  Rhonda and I are the youngest on this trip along with two other Black females from Georgia.  Neither of them knew each other before the trip. The other travelers are older retired White adults.  We shared with them our various passions including the concept of Take A Leap.  They shared very interesting travel stories from African safaris to river boat cruises along the Mediterranean.  We took only a few pictures today, and if it wasn't for the slow Internet connection, we would share them on this post [I've tried for over an hour].  One is from our trip to Assisi which was en route to Montecatini Terme, and the other is a glass of red wine from our wonderful dinner.  I will share them on a later post.  I was famish, so apologize for not taking pictures of the dinner itself which was a five course meal consisting of pizza, pasta, vegetables, fish & potatoes, and dessert.