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For our NCS Travel roundup this Thanksgiving weekend, we’re bringing you a potluck of tales about love, household and friendship from round the world. Hold onto your dinner napkins, as there could also be some tears in retailer.
Englishwoman Charlotte Phillips is aware of a factor or two about plot twists as an editor for film trailers, together with the 2006 rom-com “The Holiday.”
What she by no means anticipated was that she’d be a principal character in a real-life love story that might start hundreds of miles from residence in a hospital in India.
In 2009, Charlotte was visiting her mother when, with a matchmaking twinkle in her mom’s eye, she was launched to a younger American affected person named Amy B. Scher.
Amy had by no means thought-about a relationship with a girl earlier than, however she felt immediately related to Charlotte and invited her to dinner. On their date, they talked and laughed for hours and the friendship grew nearer.
“I remember we were sitting on the steps of the hospital, and she was showing me something on her phone and I remember wanting to kiss her,” says Amy.
It was the evening earlier than Thanksgiving 1980 and a blizzard was raging in Missouri.
When 18-year-old John Morris’ automotive spun off the highway, the pragmatic — or “naive” — teenager sought out the solely shelter that was accessible: a clapboard farmhouse, set again from the highway.
No one was residence, so he tried calling the tow firm (no reply) after which washed up some dishes as a good deed for his unknown hosts.
John had settled in for the evening and was simply questioning if he may assist himself to the meals in the fridge when he heard voices on the different facet of the entrance door.
His encounter with the house owners became a surprising night for all of them.
Mayumi Maruyama grew up in a suburban home outdoors Detroit. Her dad was a man of few phrases, however he at all times knew how to make folks chortle, and he was at all times current for Mayumi and her sister. There wasn’t a faculty occasion he missed.
Then, when Mayumi was 12 years previous, her father died.
“For more than 20 years, I carried the weight of his death in silence,” she writes in this thoughtful memoir. “What saved me was his love for the camera.”
His photograph albums led her on a journey round the world, from the Michigan of her childhood to her father’s birthplace in Japan and to the life he led in Indiana, Turkey and India. She says, “By walking his path, I came to know him — and myself.”
In the summer time of 2013, American hiker Andrew McGowan and Taiwanese pupil Shallen Yu spent one great day collectively consuming ice cream, stargazing and bonding over peach cobbler in Yellowstone National Park. They have been decided to be collectively towards the odds.
Two years later, dealing with pushback from Shallen’s mother and father, they eloped in the Utah hills the place Andrew grew up. While they confronted household challenges, the words of a fortune teller helped get everybody on the identical path.
There at the moment are a dozen episodes of NCS Travel’s “Chance Encounters” podcast to take pleasure in in our audio hub, together with this one. This companion to Francesca Street’s hit column shares unbelievable real-life tales of exceptional journey connections.
Tony Shalhoub finds success in Tokyo for beneath $7
Actor Tony Shalhoub, host of the NCS Original Series “Tony Shalhoub Breaking Bread,” has been on a mission to discover the world’s greatest, most stunning, meals gadgets for beneath $10.
In Tokyo, he tried taiyaki, a Japanese road meals speciality. This candy deal with is modeled after pink sea bream, which is a good luck image in Japan.
This American couple made a spreadsheet of nations they might transfer to, scoring for mountain climbing, climate and extra.
They settled on a vacation spot in Southern Europe.
This Japanese-Irish polyglot discovered international fame by talking dozens of languages.
His spontaneous street interviews are each a private problem and a probability to join.
How a 60-mile, sixth-grade area journey turned a life-changing date with future.
It all started with a boxed lunch.
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