Take Me to Afghanistan

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Day two of Blogtember states ‘If you could take three months off from your current life and do anything in the world, what would you do?‘

I would love to leave the comforts of my home and travel to the part of the world I have never been, the Middle East. Specifically I would like to spend three months in Afghanistan and do two things: work with a humanitarian aid organization and tell the story of the people I meet by working as a documentary photographer.

(Pictured: Alexandra Boulat)

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I remember listening to a program on NPR during my commute years ago and hearing about a journalist who befriended two girls from an Afghan brothel and ended up buying their freedom. At the same time a book was recommended to me about a woman who started a beauty school in Kabul to give women a profession after the Taliban had been disbanded. Both of real life stories impacted me so much I was inspired to go to Cambodia with my training in hairdressing and do something similar. Perhaps open up a school or just own a salon with apprenticeships I can give to women we rescue from the brothels there.

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My parents flew me out to Cambodia on the last leg of their backpacking trip around South East Asia. It was there that I saw with my own eyes on one street, nothing but beauty salons and barber shops side by side. Certainly not a need for a beauty school. We managed to choose one out of the line up and went inside to meet the girls inside. We were with one of the missionaries working in Cambodia and the salon let me cut her hair. They graciously let me use their equipment and experience the life of a Cambodia hairdresser. The Cambodian girl washed my friend’s hair before I cut it and the process was really interesting as it was different from what I was used to back in the US. She wet her hair down and lathered it up with lots of suds in the chair and then had her walk over to where they would rinse it all off.

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During my trip to Cambodia and meeting with missionaries there I realised the problem is more of a catch-22. Any girls who were able to leave that lifestyle would go back due to the fact they could never make more money outside the brothel. While I fell in love with Cambodia (and left a piece of my heart there), I realised my ideas of helping out the less fortunate with the passions I held was not going to work in this country. Although I physically left the country on a plane, my desire to do something more still fueled inside of me.

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I would love to go somewhere most people who travel never see in their lifetime. To experience life in place that is far from anything I have ‘called home’ before. To meet the people. It makes sense that my role models are humanitarians like Audrey Hepburn and Angelina Jolie. I was very much inspired by Angelina’s onscreen work in Beyond Borders as well as her real life work documented in her book, Notes from my Travels. With my profession in photography I love to capture the world, the people, and the details around me. To connect with life and share it with those who were not there. As challenging as it would be, I think in the end it would be so rewarding to spend three months with aid work in Aghanistan working as documentary photographer. Yet I know that I do not have the skills now that I would need. Which led me to this video about the RISC: Reporters Instructed in Saving Collegues. This is a nonprofit organization which provides battlefield first aid training to freelance conflict journalists.

I wanted to also bring to light a photographer who has inspired me. A photojournalist from Liverpool, England who ‘photographed the experience of war from the perspective of the individual’. His name is Tim Hetherington and he was killed in 2011 while covering the conflict in Libya. His film Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and nominated in 2011 for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. The co-director, Sebastian Junger, is the one who started the npo, RISC.

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Books I recommend: You can read more about Tim Hetherington in the book Here I Am read about Angelina Jolie’s work as the UNHCR ambassador in Notes from My Travels and about the women behind the veil in the book Kabul Beauty School.

Q: If you had three months to do anything, what would it be and why?

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On the note of photography I am pleased to introduce you to one of my new sponsors for September, Jess from Mocha Fox. Does she not remind you of the Khalessi from Game of Thrones in the photo below? Not just a beautiful person but a beautiful soul who loves to take her inspiration and put it into her photography. You definitely should check out one of her favourite photo sessions entitled, ‘Water Nymph‘. I really love the way she uses the the natural light and my favourites are the ones of the model in the water. You can connect with Jess by clicking the social media links below in the image.

* photographs in today’s post are not owned by ACR and are sourced.

TCK: Where I Come From

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Today marks a new monthly blogging challenge called Blogtember, hosted by Story of My Life blog. Which means that some days this month you will be seeing more than one post a day as I have other regular scheduled posts. If you are also participating in the link up, let me know in the comments so I can view your post too!

Image original to A Compass Rose blog

Day 1 of Blogtember. Today’s prompt asks that you describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are.

Fact. I have not lived in one place longer than three years at a time since the time I was born. I am now thirty years old. Through out my nomadic existence I have been asked by people all over the world the same seemingly simple question:

“Where are you from?”

Insert the sound of crickets. Or the sound of a sigh from my lips as I pause and try to quickly determine just what length of an answer the person before me requires to move on in our conversation. Perhaps this time I can just say ‘everywhere‘ and softly laugh as I flick my hair back behind my shoulders with a twinkle in my eye. Leaving just enough mystery in my vague answer that it suffices for the moment.

It really depends on what country I am in, where the person who is asking the question is from, and just how much time we may spend in conversation that determines a rough idea of what I may say. Since I currently live in England I shall give you an example of how it normally has gone since we moved here in 2011.

“Where are you from?”

“I live here in Bath, ” I reply as I assume they think I am here on vacation.

“Oh. Where did you live before here?”

“All over. My husband was in the military and my father before him.”

“So where are you from?”

“Well I was born here in Oxford.”

“Really? But your accent…”

“Is American. I know. I have had an English accent twice in my life once in Oxford and then when we moved back to England around the Norfolk area.”

“So how come you have an American accent?”

“My parents are American.”

“So you grew up mostly in America?”

“Not really. I grew up moving around Europe until I was seventeen.”

“Well…where are your parents from?”

“My dad grew up in New Jersey but he left at seventeen to join the USAF and had moved around ever since. My mum has lived in a few different states as her parents were part of a churching planting group.”

A pause as my answer really has not clarified where I call ‘home’ or from where my accent originates.

“I am dual citizen though, since I was born in England and it is why I wanted to move back. I do not really see America as my home since I did not grow up there.”

The question now as resolved as it can be and I will be referred to after that moment as ‘the American’.

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I have started referring to John Barrowman now that I live in a country that knows of the actor who starred in Doctor Who and its spinoff, Torchwood. He is Scottish and retains that accent when conversing with his family members. However his main accent is an American one that he picked up as a child when his family moved to live in the US. Basically after being teased enough with a Scottish one he realized to fit in he would have to sound like everyone else. As an actor he is known by his American accent.

My theatre professor at my University asked me where I was from because he could pick up regional dialects from all over the country, and places from which I have never lived. However like a sponge I have picked up how to say words and phrases from the people I have spent much time around. In the military world that encompasses people from all over.

My accent and ‘home’ aside I am made up of all the places, the people, and cultures from which I have come in contact with throughout my life. My world view, the way I relate to people, and the person I am to the core has been molded by generations of people from multicultural backgrounds. I have a chameleon soul that picks up little things from the people around me. It would be nice to have an easy answer that people could understand. I could say I was from Los Angeles, California and people could right away put me in a box and see me a certain way and know me by not just a single nationality but a particular region in a state. Being a nomad is the only thing I know as it has been my entire life and I would not ask for it to be any other way.

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If you would like to know more about Third Culture Kids, check out my post on TCKs.

Travel Tuesday: Railway in Wales

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So glad to be back with you for another Travel Tuesday with my beautiful cohost Belinda from Found Love Now What? Today I continue our journey in Wales with a voyage by the old steam railways. It was a rainy day and a perfect one taking a ride through the Welsh countryside.

Here’s how it works:

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Weekly Wishes # 5

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A candid of my mum and outtake from a photo shoot at the Cymmer abbey ruins outside Dollgelau, Wales.

With September upon us the Weekly Wishes series, hosted by The Nectar Collective, is back on track here on A Compass Rose. If you are a new reader this is a weekly blog themed at positivity for the upcoming week. If you are regular friend here, I hope you enjoy seeing this being picked back up.

UPDATE! If you missed my update on the post Exciting News, my weekly wish to get back into the theatre has been successful.

Weekly Wishes #4
w i s h e s o f t h e w e e k

Get all caught up. It is crazy how backed up you can get in the blogging and social media world when you go on vacation. While our trip had ended I was still on ‘summer vacay’ with my boys while school has been out of session. Then it just piles on as the days go by. With their school year starting this week, I have been working hard on crossing off things on my todo list. I have just my email account to tackle and I apologize to anyone waiting on a response from me. There has been an large number of inquiries to the blog and wanting to be added to the Expat & Travel Blogs Map. Working on getting this sorted!

Get back to my reading schedule. I know this will be easier once my boys are back in school. However I want to have more time devoted to reading blogs. Coming back from vacation I feel so out of it from what everyone has been up too. I do not like that disconnect and want to break down that invisible wall between the writer and the reader. I really appreciate when readers comment with their blog address in it, since it makes it so easy to click over to your blog. I love that you love ACR, and I want to keep up with your blog too. Even if I do not have time to comment, know that if you post it I will read it.

Get the clutter out of the House. This is actually a continuation to a previous weekly wish about Getting Rid of Most of my Wardrobe. I have done it! Except that it has not left my house yet. Which is bad because I have dived into it to find items to wear. Luckily anything I have taken out I have remembered to put back in it. However, the huge IKEA bags filled with clothes is taking up needed space as well as being an eye sore.

***I also did the same thing with my boys’ clothes and with their toys and let me say they have finally been able to keep their room clean for two weeks! We do not have a separate play room so everything that is boy related finds a home in their room and making sure everything has a home has really worked wonders.

Sell it or Give it Away. On the previous note I have bags of clothes my kids have never worn or have not worn since they left my in-laws. Plus I am not one to make my kids wear clothes I did not buy just to get a photograph of them in it. I believe that only enables the problem. I would have donated this stuff already, however some of them still have tags on them and my husband thought it best to try the Ebay route. So I need to either try Ebay with a bulk of boys clothes or just get rid of it.

Become that Mom. Currently my sons go to two different schools, and neither closest to the house. Actually my youngest goes to a school that would take me an hour to get to on foot. This is due to rules on space for younger students in classrooms. I have had my youngest on the waiting list for his brother’s school since last school year. Supposedly that is supposed to give him higher priority over others wanting a spot at the school. So far he has not received an offer and there is still the issue of a cap on size restrictions. Since we do not have a car and I do have to be home for when the boys get home from school, there has been many things I have missed out on at my youngest’s school. Not to mention I hardly know any of the parents at either school since I cannot walk either of them to school. So I am going to become that mom that calls the school board every week to keep on them about a spot for my son. Our goal is to have them both at the same school. I want to never have to miss a school function or activity, to get to know the other parents’, and be more involved than we can possible be now.

Finish Editing Photos. I have not finished all my photos from Wales, nor sharing with you all yet. However I also have a maternity shoot I need to finish from Wales. With the kids going off to school this week, I want to get that finished as soon as possible.

Channel my Inspiration. Recently I have been so inspired and so motivated to do a few different things or projects. I love being in that state of mind because it creates productivity. However I want to make sure that I can and do channel the inspiration in the ways that I should so that it all works for the same underlining heading in my life. I am going to leave this as vague as it is now until I can let you in on the projects to come.

Q: What are your Weekly Wishes? Have you linked up?

Better yet, if you have a weekly wishes post, put the link in your comment!

Our Expat Summer ’13

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Kisses on the Avon River as we pulled our two kayaks together close for a photo op.

Still cannot believe we have been married for ten years

This is it. Though autumn does not begin for another twenty one days, this is our last weekend of summer. My husband has been back to work since our 10th Anniversary trip and this week my kids go back to school. While both my sons and my husband and I are glad to have a new school term starting, it makes me a bit sad to know that summer is coming to a close. However any sadness is overshadowed by the immense thankfulness I have for what a great summer it has been. Not counting the week my boys and I spent at the Jersey Shore last year with my family, it has probably been 2007 since the four of us have really experienced and loved every moment of summer.

All the family dramarama stayed stateside and our entire vacation in Wales was but perfection, including our Vow Renewal. We got to experience a lovely two days in London with my mum and sister, a city the three of us have not all been at together since we lived in England back in the early 90’s. Another ‘this is your life’ moment was when my mum and I got to show Ryan and my sons the city of Oxford, the place where I was born during my father’s second out of three tours stationed in England. The rest of our summer has been filled with country walks, picnics in the park, kayak journeys on the rivers and canals around Bath, and enjoying food and drinks at our favourite pubs.

With summer getting ready to be behind us I can now count out the rest of the year by upcoming events and birthdays through the last four months of 2013. It really surprises me every year with how fast the months go by and this year is no exception.

Q: What has been your favourite thing about this summer

and what are you looking forward to in the last third of 2013?

Self Portrait: ‘Summer End’

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“You don’t need to be perfect to inspire others.

Let people get inspired

by how you deal with your imperfection.”

–

Wilson Kanadi

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Barmouth Beach Pt. I

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Since so many of you enjoyed the post about our evening at the coastal town of Barmouth in Wales, I thought it only fitting that I follow up with a couple more beach themed posts in the town. We spent sunset at the nearly empty beach on this particular evening and it inspired a follow up beach day later that week. During this occasion it was quite windy and tiny sand particles stung our face as our hair flew about in the wind. The tall grasses seemed to dance and the sand was textured by the ribbed pattern the wind created like art. In our exploration of the beach we found an Easter Island type statue watching out towards the ocean in solitude. My hawaiian raised boys had fun playing in the sand and running up and down the dunes. With the setting sun and the picturesque town views behind us, I walked away to the car leaving my regular glasses (I was wearing my prescription sunglasses) and my hair clip in the sand. Luckily once in the car I realised it was not on my person and we made a mad dash to locate the items. Needless to say the area had a way of capturing my heart and keeping my attention away from worldly matters and onto the details of simple beauty and the wishes that the ocean holds.