Travel & Adventure Archives - Page 20 of 26 - Sonia Marsh

Are French Movies More Gutsy in Tackling Sensitive Issues?

December 11, 2012 by Sonia Marsh 8 Comments

Passengers are sleeping, coughing and sneezing around me. I’m hoping the plane’s ventilation system isn’t spreading the germs to my area. This is not a time to get sick, not when I’m doing my first book signing in Paris.

I’m writing this blog post at 35,000 feet over Kansas City, traveling at a speed of 699 miles per hour. We have 7:52 hours left until we reach Charles de Gaulle airport and most of the passengers are asleep, after a choice of Moroccan chicken or Boeuf Bourguinon for lunch. The flight takes 11 hours from Los Angles to Paris, and I enjoy flying on Air Tahiti Nui, where the flight attendants wear Tahitian dresses with a flower in their hair.

Sonia on Air Tahiti Nui from LAX to CDG (Paris)

I’m comfortable in my aisle seat watching a French movie, Mince Alors!, with its double entendre title: Becoming Thin, and What a bummer! The theme is about the stigma attached to being overweight in France, (a big no-no) and is tackled in typical, outspoken French style.

I’ve always been fascinated by the cultural differences between the French and the British, and enjoy the posts written by my French blogger friend, Muriel Demarcus, who is so adept at pointing these out with humor. I take it one step further and compare the French way of addressing certain issues with the American way. Even if you don’t understand French, I’m sure you’ll get the gist of the movie trailer below.

Nina, a 30-year-old wife, accepts to enroll in a one-month weight loss program in the French Alps, a gift offered by her French husband. Nina works in a modeling agency alongside her husband and is by French standards overweight. Her suave husband, with an eye for other women, hands her a gift certificate to attend a weight loss farm, while he takes off to Munich with his skinny assistant.

“You’ll have time since we’re not busy at work right now,” he says, handing her the certificate.

When Nina has her first appointment with the doctor at the health clinic, she says, “My husband likes skinny women, make me skinny doctor.”

“I want you to be healthy, and to loose weight for yourself, not for someone else,” the doctor replies.

“I don’t have time; I’m here to get results. I don’t care what you do, but I want results.”

I watched the movie in French to brush up on my conversational skills, and to immerse myself in the French way of life. There were certain scenes that made me squirm, such as when Nina says she has about five kilos to loose, and her mother-in-law says, “more like 20 kilos.”

I’m not a psychologist, just a curious woman who happens to have lived half her life in Europe, and the other half in the U.S. Although France and the U.S. are both multi-cultural, I do believe it’s possible to identify specific traits relevant to each country.

Take for example young children. I noticed immediately how the French tend to dress their young children as mini-adults, with stylish coats, belts and hats, whereas Americans dress their toddlers as toddlers. Who knows, that might be because I live in southern California, which is more casual than perhaps New York.

In her book, Why French Parents Are Superior, author Pamela Druckerman wrote:

“French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables.”

Druckerman’s statement hit home when a few weeks ago I was standing in line at Peet’s coffee where I noticed a mom and her twin toddlers sitting at a table sharing a muffin. Chunks of muffin went flying, as the twins practiced tossing them, and when she left, the tile resembled a muffin war zone. Did the mother pick up the mess? No.

Druckerman writes,

“Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I’d clocked at French playgrounds, I’d never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn’t my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn’t their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?”

Yes, I do like comparisons, purely from an interest point of view. Debra Ollivier, another author who spends her time in the U.S and France wrote, What French Women Know. I had an opportunity to meet her and read her book.

So, yes, I do believe that French movies are more gutsy in tackling sensitive issues than American movies, and I think it’s different and refreshing.

DECEMBER IS DIFFERENT.

I shall be posting from Paris this week. I plan to share stories and photos, from Paris and London, where I am doing an event on December 13th.

I am collecting new “My Gutsy Story” submissions for 2013. NOW is the time to submit your own “My Gutsy Story” and get published in our Anthology. Please contact sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Thanks and don’t forget to VOTE for your favorite November “My Gutsy Story” on the sidebar. The WINNER will be announced on December 13th.

Vote for your favorite November “My Gutsy Story”

November 29, 2012 by Sonia Marsh 1 Comment

This month he have 4 amazing “My Gutsy Story” submissions.

Please vote for your favorite story. You have until December 12th to vote, and the winner will be announced on December 13th from Paris where I shall be doing a book signing at WH Smith.

SCROLL DOWN ON SIDEBAR TO VOTE. Only ONE vote each.

Jerry Waxler shared “My Search Led Me to Story,” and his global vision of sharing our stories and breaking down barriers through a Memoir Revolution.

Elaine Masters shared her story about “Answering the Call” where she got the strength and courage to leave your “unhappy” marriage and find a new life.

Susan Weidener: shared “Taking a Risk on Love,” a story of courage and re-inventing herself after the loss of the man she loved, and how she was able to start a new life.

Jerry Holl: An amazing “My Gutsy Story” about one man, one bike and one tent. Jerry quit his job at 57 to experience a life-changing adventure.

Do you have a “My Gutsy Story” you’d like to share?

DECEMBER will be DIFFERENT.

I shall be leaving for Paris and London, and plan to share stories, photos, and other posts during this month on my blog.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Thanks and don’t forget to VOTE on the sidebar.

I Can’t Believe I Have John McAfee As a Facebook Friend

November 15, 2012 by Sonia Marsh 5 Comments

Yes, you heard me right. John McAfee, the anti-virus pioneer who is being sought for questioning about a murder case, lives on the island of Ambergris Caye, where my family lived for one year.

Thanks to a mutual contact on the island, I became “friends” with him on Facebook.

It’s not like I ever wrote to him on FB, however, today with US News covering the scandal with John McAfee, it no longer surprises me to read about crime, gossip, guns, drugs and dog killings on the island where we lived. Even the Telegraph has an appropriate title: John McAfee: sex, drugs and anti-virus software.

John McAfee moved to Ambergris Caye, a popular island in Belize, after we left in 2005. We did not know him personally, however we did know the murder victim, Gregory Faull. He lived a few houses north of ours on Ambergris Caye. Greg was a contractor from Florida who was building his retirement home on the island. We invited him for a beer in our house, and nick-named Greg the “lobster guy.” I shall never forget when he told us he caught thirty lobster in about an hour or so, while my son Steve and his dad caught only one puny little lobster in two hours. We were all so envious of his lobster-catching skills.

Greg was a fun guy who spent half his time building houses in Florida, and then the rest building his own home on Ambergris Caye. He invited us inside his house to show off the huge rooms he built. (Read page 193 of Freeways to Flip-Flops, and you’ll find him. I changed his name to Mitch.)

Life on the island of Ambergris Caye was both scary and exciting. For such a small island, there was always something going on, and for those of you who have read my memoir: Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, you might recall certain chapters where I expressed fear once in a while about living on Ambergris Caye.

Here is one excerpt about a drug boat from Columbia:

I strolled along the beach to get away from the bustle of golf carts, taxis and bikes on Front Street. The next Island Ferry was scheduled for 11 a.m., so I collapsed on the wooden step in the shade, thinking about how much our lives had changed in just two months. Curiosity led me to the end of the boat dock, where some locals had gathered. They were pointing at something in the distance, and when I saw what they were looking at, my heart skipped a beat. A boat had capsized and six men holding long poles were attempting to flip it over. “Oh, my God, Duke must have lost control of the Island Rider,” I thought, straining my eyes to see if a Cubs baseball cap was floating in the water.

“Mario, what happened to the boat?” I asked. Mario was one of the Island Ferry’s boat captains.

“It’s a drug boat from Columbia,” he said.

“Does this happen often?” I asked.

“Yes, lots of drug smuggling from Colombia to Mexico.” After years of living in my safe Orange County neighborhood, I suddenly felt vulnerable. When I reached home, I hurried upstairs to tell Duke about the capsized boat.

Another excerpt about my fear of being alone with my two younger sons on Ambergris Caye when Duke left for California.

My ears were on high alert for any unusual sounds, so we watched a comedy I knew would make Josh laugh and me forget my fear for a while. “Can I sleep in Steve’s bed?” Josh asked, snuggling closer to me than usual on the couch.

“Of course,” I replied. At least that way, I wouldn’t be all alone downstairs. Alec would sleep upstairs with Cookie.

I hid a solid mahogany rolling pin underneath Duke’s pillow and tucked a machete behind some books on the shelf next to my bed. I regretted not following Lucy’s advice – she was a 70-year-old woman from Michigan who lived alone in town – “Keep a bullhorn next to your bed. It’ll scare the heck out of any thief or rapist.”

So this time Belize is making national news due to a scandal involving a famous American businessman: John McAfee.

What a small world.

“My Gutsy Story” by Elaine Masters

November 12, 2012 by Sonia Marsh 10 Comments

Answering the Call

It was winter in San Rafael. I was in front of my glowing computer, checking email. Tucked into a newsletter was an invitation to see the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Pyramids? In Mexico? I clicked on the link.

What opened up changed my life forever. An image filled my screen with stone snakes and two large pyramids set in a wide valley. It took my breath away. Excitedly I read the description of a ‘power journey’ filled with the ancient Nagual teachings and of four days exploring the Avenue of the Dead with a teacher, Victoria Allen. She was one of don Miguel Ruiz’, author of The Four Agreements, elder students was taking small groups to the ruins of the ancient city of “Teo.”

My heart wanted to go and suddenly longed for transformation, for spiritual connection and for the ancient stone site. It wasn’t logical, but from that moment I was determined to go.

I had been living in a disaster of a marriage, emotionally abused and sexually abandoned as the chief caregiver of my 5 year old son while my husband worked a series of jobs that often took him away from home for weeks and into the arms of other women. It wasn’t the marriage contract I’d signed on to. I felt trapped, was financially dependent and overly protective of my only child. How could I ever leave the country, my family for even a few days or find the money? I was such a victim!

Yet, within three months I flew into Mexico City to join a small group of seekers. My parents had surprisingly sold some property and split the proceeds between my siblings and me. A few weeks after I saw the Teo flier, they sent the check and made me promise to put the funds in a separate account in my name only. That was their only caveat and I held to the agreement. Without realizing it, I had begun my Toltec journey from that moment and was practicing one of the Four Agreements – Be impeccable with your word. What was also surprising was my husband’s agreeing to take care of my son while I was away. Soon I was packing.

Victoria had sent detailed instructions on how to prepare for the trip. I was advised to put my personal life into order, to even make a will. It scared me at first but it was the first step to opening up to healing. I was intrigued and quietly prepared.

Walking alone into the labyrinth of Mexico’s largest airport took a little more gumption but soon I was with a new, chattering family. Our small group of 21 men and women climbed into vans for the forty minute ride to Teo. After rumbling along in traffic and through the countryside, we entered a narrow road and someone shouted, there’s the Pyramid! The vision touched me with amazement that I had come so far and my heart opened with gratitude.

We pulled up to the colorful Villa Archaeologico and settled into our sweet, comfortable rooms which ringed a large swimming pool and patio. It was our home base. Each morning outside the lobby, we gathered for final instructions before beginning our single-file, silent procession to the ancient site.

I thrilled to look straight up the Avenue of the Dead as we left, all the way up the steps of the Pyramid of the Moon at the far end. Each morning we walked through the entry gates, past other tourists and uniformed students, to visit the ancient classrooms and work on whatever was no longer serving us. I had no expectations and was no stranger to rituals, having grown up in Catholic schools. It was nourishing to participate in small actions that held large significance which, I soon discovered, revealed old wounds. Many of our small group were hurting. We shared so much and with Victoria’s gentle guidance, let go, opened up more and let go again and again.

On our third day we walked up the Avenue of the Dead in determined silence. All our preparations and practices led to climbing the Pyramids. I walked silently past the artisans and wove through the crowds, scarcely hearing the small whistles blown by the vendors and the many different languages being spoken.

There was a shift and words won’t describe adequately how I stepped into a new awareness. It was as if I were everything and nothing. The silence within me roared. I was fully myself – the same, comforting, familiar me, and simultaneously part of everything. Victoria came to sit next to me on the steps of the Pyramid to check in with how I was doing. I only tilted my head and dared to look deeply in her eyes with a slight smile. She gently touched me and simply said, “Good”, before she moved to check in on the others.

It was all good but the profound shift slowly faded. What didn’t was the sense that I had returned to myself. I returned too to my home in Northern California and shocked my husband by how happy and clear I was. We didn’t stay together long after that first trip to Teo and I could never have initiated my divorce were it not for my first power journey to Teo.

Life isn’t always pleasant but that can be necessary. I came through all the changes just fine and my son flourished after the separation. I’ve been on other power journeys to Teo since and my last, nearly ten years later, was with my new life partner. We walked the Avenue of the Dead in silence with our hands clasped. I live in gratitude for that profound place, for don Miguel’s teachings, Victoria and her partner, Doug’s, gentle guidance and for walking the difficult places that have led me to a life far richer and fuller than I could have dreamt.

Victoria and Doug Allen’s Website: https://www.raiseyourstate.com

Elaine Masters Bio:

Elaine J. Masters is a travel writer, speaker, scuba diver, yoga teacher and the award-winning author of Drivetime Yoga and Flytime Yoga.

She blogs at www.tripwellness.com and hosts a top ten podcast on the Women’s Radio Network and hosts several travel meetups in San Diego. Twitter: @tripwellness

Sonia Marsh Says: You prove something that I am a firm believer of: getting away from the familiar, getting out of your comfort zone to an unfamiliar environment helps you grow and strengthens you as a person. I am so happy you got the strength and courage to leave your “unhappy” marriage and find a new life. By the way, I love your Travel MeetUp group. It looks lively and very active. I wish you were in OC, not San Diego, as I would like to be a part of your group.

Please leave your comments for Elaine Masters below. She will be over to respond. Thanks.

Also, don’t forget to vote for your favorite October “My Gutsy Story.” You have until November 14th to vote, and the winner will be announced on November 15th. You can read all of them and vote here.

SCROLL DOWN ON SIDEBAR TO VOTE. Only ONE vote each.

Do you have a “My Gutsy Story” you’d like to share?

NOW is the time to submit your “My Gutsy Story” and get published in our Anthology. Please contact sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

“My Gutsy Story” by Don Darkes

October 8, 2012 by Sonia Marsh

Fighting Fear With Fear

The advent of my forty-fifth birthday was marred by the unexpected delivery of a large brown envelope containing photographs of family I have never known. Each photographic image of my biological father, half-brother and my half-sister was carefully annotated with the names and circumstances portrayed by each picture.

If fear could be measured on a scale like earthquakes, the prospect of meeting my father for the first time would have registered in my heart as a catastrophe. As the meeting date drew nearer I desperately sought to neutralise my rising anxiety by misapplying a tenet borrowed from homoeopathy, to “cure like with like” by fighting fear with fear.

Shelley Beach, a stones throw from Ramsgate, in KwaZulu-Natal is the launch site for scuba diving expeditions to Protea Banks, a deep-water reef, world famous for its annual congregations of mating ragged tooth sharks. By way of opposing emotional and physical fear, fighting fire with flames, I booked a shark dive for my son Bill and I, deliberately coinciding it with the day that I was to meet my father for the first time.

Don Darkes divers8 — Don and his son Bill

The azure sea hissed the arrival of each hissing wave wafting the sharp smell of ozone and clean wet sand over us as the dive-master delivered his pre-dive briefing like a General inspiring his troops. He outlined the objectives making certain everyone understood their roles in an emergency before leading the ritual of forming divers hand-signs to which we chorused the meaning out loud as we returned the underwater hand sign indicating the appropriate response. He concluded the rite with a shout.

“May the sharks be with you!”

Bill and I bantered with the false bravado of anxious combatants about to engage their foe. Looking to my son for support, I gave voice to the war cry of the Hillbrow Diving School where we had we had earned our divers qualifications.

“What must you do if you spot a shark? Which he instinctively responded,

“Stab someone else’s buddy!

The other divers laughed uneasily at the cynical parody of the scuba divers cardinal rule although they may not have understood the black humour anchored in the bizarre scuba training we had endured in a dry concrete jungle hundreds of miles from any ocean, dodging traffic, weighed down by our heavy equipment trudging between the Hillbrow Dive School’s seedy high-rise classrooms and the fluorescent-lit, sickly-green underground pool deep in the bowels of the Summit Club.

Don Darkes raggie tooth shark at Protea banks — Raggie tooth shark at Protea banks

The Club was infested with human sharks ready to exploit any opportunity to prey on the weak and helpless, as they perpetually trolled the premises, one of the most notorious brothels in the cesspool heart of the famous gold mining town, Johannesburg.

Shining silver shattered mercury bubbles marked our descent through iridescent green water. We exchanged the OK! sign with each other and with the dive master when we reached the half-way point at a depth equivalent to the height of a three story building. Submerging further, the cheerful sunlight receding far above our heads grew dimmer, muting our brightly coloured wetsuits to muddy browns and greens as our ears ached and squeaked their warning of increasing pressure. Fighting the urge to thrash for the surface, silently screaming boiling bubbles, clawing my way upward out of my self-made predicament, I revolved instead, long scuba fins fanning slowly, scanning the murky depths for any sign of movement. My scalp prickled, anticipating the swirl of dark sleek shapes of the creatures we had chosen to confront. Bill’s eyes widened with shock as a torpedo-like shape cruised lazily between his legs and the dim sunlight around us flickered as dozens of grinning sharks appeared, suspended above and below us, their half-open jaws exposing curved, sharp white teeth, their cruel pointed snouts frozen in a silent snarl and their unblinking eyes showing no sign of acknowledging our presence as they engaged in a mating ritual as old as time. Bill and I exchanged glances, acknowledging a bond forged by the sharing of a powerful experience, facing and overcoming one of our deepest fears, together. My heart contracted painfully out of my love for him and in response to a new wave of fear, as my thoughts turned to an encounter far more terrifying than this, that awaited me.

“Hey dad did you see that the cocky big guy didn’t even make it halfway down?” A jubilant Bill chortled as we climbed into the car setting off for my fathers house and the first meeting that made me numb with terror.

“What about the redhead who refused to remove his wetsuit pants when we got back to the beach?” I replied with a nervous laugh.

“Hello Desmond”, I said, with a catch in my throat as I extended my trembling hand toward him. “I would like you to meet your grandson Bill”.

“This situation is like something out of a movie” he replied gruffly, attempting unsuccessfully to lighten the moment.

***

An excerpt from a soon to be released book, 2^nd Time Lucky, the sequel to 6692 Pisces the Sailfish.

Website. http://www.dondarkes.com
Blog: 2nd Time Lucky
Facebook Don Darkes
Linked-in Don Darkes

Don Darkes Bio:

I was born as Lawrence Huntingdon-Rusch, adopted and renamed Lawrence de Robillard. I was reborn on June 6th 2012 as the Writer Don Darkes. My choice of pseudonym is due partly to the fact that I am penning a Biographical Memoir entitled My Life of Crime, the memoir of an intriguing man, the “real” Don Darkes who was marked with this identity at birth to protect a secret and the fact that like him, my given name also conceals my true heritage. The irony in this tickles my love of the bizarre and my sense of the ridiculous. Of course it makes marketing sense too since any of my “real” names would fill a book cover and leave no space for the Title!

Following a number of exciting and successful careers in Construction, Manufacturing, Information Technology, Franchising and Entrepreneurship I find myself combining them all into my new role as an Author.
I repudiated my Psychology degree in the mid-seventies prior to serving my mandatory National Military Service in a top-secret Electronic Warfare unit, clandestinely deployed in Rhodesia, (Now Zimbabwe) a horrendous episode, for which I later received a medal. (novel in progress)

During the eighties, at the height of apartheid, together with (then) illegal “black” partners I built a successful manufacturing company. Following a series of traumatic events I sold it and opted-out to buy the yacht upon which I was shipwrecked together with my wife, our five year old son and four year old daughter. (Non fiction novel, 6692 Pisces the Sailfish). After returning destitute to South Africa I rode a ripple in the dot.com wave and sold my Internet start-up in order to distribute organic chocolate and to research a challenging historical novel exploring an intriguing link between the Jewish Holocaust and Madagascar. (Novel in progress– Bread from Air)
Currently, together with my wife, son and two daughters we are building another yacht and living aboard it whilst I work on several books with a common denominator; my love of history and my belief that fact is stranger and far more interesting than fiction.

Sonia Marsh Says: You certainly have a “Gutsy” life with many adventures and I am so happy you contacted me to share your “My Gutsy Story (ies)” with all of us. Please leave your comments for Don below.

***

Check out the wonderful bloggers who interviewed me around the world.

You can check out all the interviews here, and if you’re an author and want to learn more about marketing and promotion, see Linda Austin’s blog.

Do you have a “My Gutsy Story” you’d like to share?

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Please vote for your favorite September, “My Gutsy Story” on the sidebar. The winner will be announced on October 11th.