Musings from Another Time and Place

Ever since I have traveled abroad, I have kept journals of my experiences. Some have been better and more frequently updated then others, but still, they exist in some shape or form. I have been trying to get them all together (all the way back to when I was 11) but it has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Through several moves and simply the passage of time, they have been misplaced. Though last weekend, I found my journal from Japan. I was so pleased. I love reading what I thought of things when I saw them, and at what age, and how my perceptions have changed. I would like this to be somewhat of a "blog series", with chapters, in which I take my favorite excerpts out of my travel journals.

Chapter 1:

Japan

Age: 17

"The first night was hard. I suppose I was expecting the transition to be a bit more smooth...My stomach sank and I realized where I was, how incredibly far away I was from anything known and familiar...There's stars on the ceiling here, to make up for the ones in the sky that the lights of Tokyo outshine."

Photo: Taken in a tram car in Hakone Nat'l Park, Japan.

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

It's my Dad's birthday! This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my dad. We were taking a break on our futons in a Buddhist monastery in Japan. The monks knocked on our doors at 5 AM every morning to watch them chant. No wonder we were tired! I have memories from when I was a little girl of my dad laying like this when he would nap or rest. Like father. like daughter!!! I love you Dad, hope you had a great one!!!

Fall Fashion

Since John and I have been taking an obscene amount of summer classes, we haven't really had much vacation to speak of. (Well, except that whole boondoggle in France...) International travel aside, we've been up to our noses in school work since the beginning of June. We only have a week and a half left before our real summer starts...all 3 weeks of it. I have decided to fill up those weeks with sewing my fall wardrobe. I have been getting very inspired after looking at some Japanese blogs, Haute Doll, and the new Gothic and Lolita Bible. This photo is slightly fashion-related, and will have to suffice until I find the cord for my digital camera.

Visions of Distant Lands

While technically I really should have started this blog a long time ago given all the traveling I have done, my laziness and/or presumed lack of time prevented me from doing so. So here is some of what I would have been posting about, if I had been on the ball. This is what me and mine have been up to for the past 4 years, what about you?

Eating and drinking, and ocassionally posing for photographs in Parisian cafes...

Viewing bones in underground tunnels in Paris...

Dangling our Boots over the Mediterranean...

Leaping through the Schloss Dyck Royal Gardens...

Protesting in Berlin...

Pondering German architecture...





Feeling small in the Roman forums...

and munching lucky black eggs in Japan...

Granted, I have been doing other things too, but all of these pictures lumped together makes it look like I'm a jet-setter! /endhistorylesson