Monthly Archives: October 2013

Get Paid to See the World

How would you like to get paid to see the world? The girls of Girl Gone International have spent weeks working it out and now you can read all about it in the third issue! Interested in becoming a Girl Gone International? You can read the first twelve pages complimentary and subscribe here. One lucky reader of my blog has even won big from GGI!

CONGRATULATIONS TO JENN!

Jenn has just won herself a complimentary issue of

Girl Gone International magazine

from A Compass Rose’s October giveaway!

N o t a W i n n e r ?

You can still win big! Subscribe to Girl Gone International magazine today and read our current third issue packed full of information on traveling, living abroad, and in this issue long distant relationships.

Satisfy your wanderlust with the destinations found inside the third issue of GGI and start fueling your future plans of where to go next!

An interactive online magazine you can read from your computer, your tablet, and phone…anywhere in the world!

CLICK TO READ A PREVIEW

FIND GGI ONLINE:

OUR MAGAZINE | http://www.girlgi.com/

EMAIL GLOBAL MANAGER | anne@girlgoneinternational.com

GGI PAGE | www.facebook.com/GirlGoneInternational

WEBSITE | www.girlgoneinternational.com

LINKEDIN | www.linkedin.com/in/girlgoneinternational

PINTEREST | http://pinterest.com/GirlGoneIntl/

INSTAGRAM | @GirlGoneInternational #girlgi

TUMBLR GGI | http://girlgoneinternational.tumblr.com/

SPOTIFY | Girl_GoneInternational

* Girl Gone International images original to GGI | http://www.girlgi.com/

** Photograph of Jenn sourced from her blog: http://weiderjl.blogspot.co.uk/

Mayor’s Parlour – Bath, England

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This week my kids have off of school and the city of Bath have Heritage Open Week going on for all the families that live here. One of my favourite things about living in Bath is being able to have my Discovery card, which can get me into many places free or with a nice discount. The Heritage Open Week is tied into the Discovery card and twenty two different locations within Bath. Despite the heavy rainfall on Monday we hopped into a taxi and headed into town to explore.

Our first stop was the Mayor’s Parlour at the GuildHall in the city of Bath. I have been to the Guildhall Market before (an indoor shopping area) but have never step foot within the building that often will have a blushing bride and groom outside its doors. When we finally found the Maylor’s Parlour we were greeted by two different individuals who gave as a great tour of the room. They were both amazing at giving out information about the Mayor and history of the Mayor’s Parlour to a children’s level. We got to see the book where all the royal families sign when they visit the city, Peppercorns that were once used by the city as payment, and the robes that the Mayor wears. They even had a neat smaller size one that the kids could dress up and wear.

The only thing we did not get to see was Mayor’s chains as he was wearing them that moment for a meeting in the Guildhall. Perhaps we will pop in later this week and see if we can meet the Mayor!

Q: Does the Mayor of your city get to wear historical dress like ours in England?

Barmouth Beach Pt. II

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So happy to have another Travel Tuesday with you all and getting my fix of wanderlust by hopping around all the travel posts. I hope you guys are meeting some great bloggers! I just found out that I will be attending a London Bloggers Tea next month and I cannot wait to share that all with you here on ACR. There seems to be so much going on still in 2013, so I want to share few things with you here:

Link Up! Join the link up at the bottom of the post with any travel, wanderlust, or expat post from your blog. Then hop around and get your travel fix from visiting other blogs.
Join the Map! If you click the Map link you can add your Travel and Expat blog to our ever growing map of bloggers!
Get Ready! The first Tuesday of November will be our themed Travel Tuesday post and the theme for the month will be: Relationships. Perhaps post about a place you would love to go next and tell us who you would bring with you or share your favourite family photographs from your recent trip this summer! The choice is yours and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next month.
Join the Sidebar! I love sharing travel and expat posts and stories on my blog from other travelers. Become a November Sponsor today!

Today I am going to be following up my travel post from Barmouth Wales, when I posted about The Beach at Barmouth Pt. I back in the summer. This is part II and our third trip to Barmouth Beach during our 10th Anniversary Vow Renewal trip to Wales. We just loved being at the seaside and this time we actually go into the cold water. Well my sons did anyways and the rest of us enjoyed hanging out on the beach. The picturesque views and salty air were just what I needed. Now that it is getting cold and November is approaching, I really enjoy soaking up the last memories of Summer.

(Also as a side note the girl pictured below is my sister)

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Share your Travel stories and wanderlust addictions.

HERE IS HOW IT WORKS:

1. Share a post about travel! From road trips to trips abroad and from past travels to dream vacations. You can write about travel tips and tricks, favorite places to stay, or anything in between! Just make it about traveling somewhere!

2. Grab the lovely button. If you run into trouble, just make sure to mention Bonnie in a link! 😉

3. Linkup goes live every Tuesday at 9 am GMT.

4. Hop around and meet new travel loving bloggers! Link up will be open for a few days, make sure to check back to visit some of the newer travel posts!

5. Please only one linked up post per blogger. Save other posts for future linkups!

6. The First Tuesday of every month will be a themed prompt if you want to join in!

ACR: Become a November Sponsor

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Hey babes and babettes. Have been a little preoccupied this weekend with a sick kid. Luckily my WebMD search of scarlet fever and strep fever was inaccurate and it ended up being a body rash due to a viral tonsillitis that has been going around. Which meant we spent the entire weekend inside the house taking care of my son and getting ready for the ‘big storm’. Which for us meant some nice howling wind and lots of rain that carried on through today. The wind even blew my heart shaped brolly inside out today while in town. The good news is my son is now starting to feel much better and in good time for their week off from from school. We are having a fun week preparing for Halloween. It is hard to believe there are just a few days left until November. Which means now is the perfect time to sign up to be a sponsor for November!

Join the Sidebar | I would love to have you a part of the ACR family. Become a Sponsor Today!

War On Girls: ‘All I Need is Love’

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“We all fail to appreciate each day just how much we already possess.

Light, air, freedom, the companionship of friends.”

― Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic

I Want More. This is easily a subject that can attack us all no matter your sex or age. Christmas is just around the corner and already ‘wish lists’ and Father Christmas are on my children’s radars. At any time of the year I find myself holding several ‘want’ lists in my memory for either next month or as soon as it becomes feasible. It is almost shocking how often our ‘wants’ are disguised by the word ‘need’. As a consumer I see how the newest phone releases send out the message that you need to have the newest model to keep up with with the rest of the world. In our current day technology ages faster than ever before, but the need to want more is not a new phenomena.

I Need More. As a girl growing up I remember wanting the latest new thing. I fell in love with the American Girl dolls and loved when I got a new catalog so I could circle all the new items that I just had to have. Though an iconic toy from my childhood, they would be replaced by other material items through out my life. As a photographer I feel as if I am always ‘in need’ of the newest and latest or just better item then what I have in my kit. It is not like we are going to wake up one day and realise we do not need something that we want. It would have to be a self made choice to find happiness in life and not in the material world.

Materialism and the War on Girls. How does this affect our younger generations of girls growing up in today world where society is heavily centered around consumerism? When I was growing up as a teenager overseas I had moved on to catalogs geared towards clothing for teenage girls like Delia’s and Alloy. Every time a new issue would come in I would be plagued with things I wanted and ‘had to have’ and then would bug my parents for new clothes. I cannot imagine what it would be like today with a teenage daughter. Mail order catalogs have pretty much been replaced with hoards of online shopping options. Add that with the bombardment of materialism messages sent out from online, fashion blogs, television shows and movies, magazines, advertisements, and visual stimuli available by smart phones. Top that off with the cherry of viewing others for what they have and you have not and it becomes a pit of never being satisfied.

All I Need Is Love. I took the photos in this blog as part of a photographic series I did entitled ‘The Secret Lies of Men & Women’. While the woman shows you the lie written on her hand ‘All I need is love’ you can see visually the truth being that she feels she really needs money and love of designer purses with the image of credit cards, cash, and purses. When does needing material hide what we really want out of life? Are we missing out on other areas of our life, relationships, or opportunities because we are more focused on what we do not have? How does this affect the relationships we make and the ones that are continuing in our life?

3 SIMPLE WAYS TO HELP GIRLS IN A MATERIAL WORLD

You ARE valuable. Life in itself is so precious. We never know how long we will have on this life or with the people we cherish most. Remind the girls you know, that they are valued in your life and in the world. The focus should be on the person and not on what a person has or has not in life.
Your self worth comes from the inside. A person’s worth is not based on numbers or possessions. Nor is a person’s beauty about their place in society or how they look on the outside. You are beautiful with our without the must have fashion item of the moment. You are beautiful in your skin. You do not have to be deemed ‘perfect’ by someone else to be worth a second of happiness.
Do not believe everything that you hear. Just because you hear an advertisement that says you ‘need’ this or that to satisfy _______, it does not mean you have to believe it. If you know a young girl who feels she needs to own something to be worth something to her peers, help her see her self worth. Encourage, love, and inspire the girls around you to love life for more than material things in the world.

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Q: How do you see yourself in today’s ‘Material World’?

** Model: Lolo Leialoha Seabiscuit | Make-up Artist: Dhyana Leung

Self Portrait: ‘Snap’

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DO YOU LOVE SELF PORTRAITS?

I try to do one every week and post on a Saturday.

If you would like to link up with me, add this button to your blog.
I would love to see your photography!

Grab button for A Compass Rose's Self Portrait Saturday

Get out those tripods, remote controls, and set your self timer!
It must be a ‘self portrait’ and does not need to be an image you took this Saturday. Feel free to link up to past Self Portrait posts in your blog. This link up will be every Saturday so feel free to use that as your motivation to learn more about your camera, hone in on your photography skills, try out new post processing techniques, and let your creative spirit come alive. Join the Self Portrait Saturday challenge!

My Life as a Military Brat

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The ‘My Life as a Military Brat’ series talks about my my life growing up. When people ask where I am from, it is sometimes easier to just say ‘Everywhere. Military brat’. I have been asked by many readers to talk more about what it was like growing up in Europe as a military kid. For me I loved it and love that my parents chose to keep choosing overseas assignments.

My Beginning.

I was born into a military family that was stationed overseas in Europe, on my father’s second tour in England. For the next seventeen years I would move around frequently as my father chose other overseas assignments. Sometimes we would live in a place for a few months and sometimes for a few years. Up until today I have still never lived in one place for longer than three years at a time. There are so many numbers in my head correlating to aspects of my life as a military brat.

Thirteen is the number of bedrooms in homes I had until I left the house for University. Nine is the number of schools I attended until my high school graduation. Four is the number of countries I grew up in and two is the number of continents. I still have a hard time tallying up the number of countries I have step foot in (up until the age of seventeen) without talking it over with my mum. Even though it has been thirteen years since I grew up as a military dependent, I am still attached to my military brat identity.

What is a military brat?

Many traditions in the US military come from the British Army. For example, if a member of the British Army was given an assignment to India and could take his family with him, they went with the member in an Admin status called: BRAT status. In this instance BRAT stands for: British Regiment Attached Traveler. As time went by it became a title given only to the children (omitting the wives) of the military member and taken to be used in the US military world as well.

A Military Subculture.

On top of living the life of an ‘american’ family and living in different countries and cultures overseas, there is a military culture too. It is not something you choose like your parents who joined and becomes an integral part of every day life. So many expectations are set on rules & regulations and conduct for the military kids. There were also many privileges and perks of having a military ID card: the comforts of ‘home’ for shopping on base, free admission to the on base cinema (overseas), and military resorts and lodging. Then the day to day life of hearing reveille in the morning, the retreat at the end of the duty day, and having to stand for the pledge of allegiance before a movie begins on post. When I think of my own life growing up overseas it becomes a mishmash of so many different cultures and growing up military is a huge part of that.

Nomadic Life.

As a military brat we were always moving. I was constantly in a cycle of three phases: being the new kid, finally being settled, and preparing to move. There was one year where I went to four different schools on two different continents because we were following my father to keep together as a family. As of today my sister and I both still move around frequently only staying in one place for a few years at a time. Often asked how I can do it, I answer from the heart: It is all I have ever known.

Q: Do you have any questions you would liked answered in this series?

Click to view the Giveaway

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I have one extra special treat for you today, a guest spotlight! You may remember Lindsey as this is her second time sponsoring A Compass Rose. I love having her aboard on the side bar and getting sick with wanderlust from her blog. One of my most favourite posts is her recent one about dancing on tables at Oktoberfest! Now theres one for your bucket lists, I know it is on mine! For her #TravelTuesday post this week she took us all with her to The Swiss Countryside with beautiful photographs of picturesque views! She has just started a twitter account so you can now send her tweets too!

“Hello everyone! This space is called ‘A Broad’s World’ but you can call me Lindsey. My blog meanders through my life abroad, from leaving Thailand to transitioning into Australia, and all the adventures in between. Occasionally I get distracted and write something on the lines of the very chaotic yet always rewarding task of being an ESL teacher, or about concoctions that I bring to life in my kitchen, or about the preparations and results to my sometimes-insane decisions to participate in marathons and other outdoor adventures. I hope you enjoy this space that acts as my creative outlet and I hope you stay awhile!” – Lindsey (A Broad’s World)

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M A K E F R I E N D S & F O L L O W L I N D S E Y !