The Pre-Blog Days

Last weekend, Bill kicked off "Project Purge" by bringing down all the stacks of paper we'd accumulated in his office upstairs and piling them up right in front of the fireplace in the living room. Half of it was boring stuff like old bills and my teaching notes and handouts; the other half was the maps, ticket stubs, and knickknacks that we've collected from our travels. I also found...

My Journals

It took me a long time to go through the paper because I spent the majority of the time reading my old journals and going through all the ticket stubs and coins that we collected on the various trips we took in the last 5 years.

This was my solo trip to Switzerland and France in 2004.

In Switzerland:

• Bathrooms are always clean, and there's always toilet paper
• Buses and trains are always on time
• The Swiss are proud and they laugh at Asian tourists with cameras
• The mission in life is to ski
• Hard liquor is effective in building up body heat and immunity against eating raw meat
• The Swiss eat raw meat
• The guest tells the host when the party is over
• No tipping 'cause it's included in the bill
• People don't talk to strangers
• The sense of community is present in every village and town
• People eat and drink a lot

The Swiss students I went to visit all warned me about the buses and train being on time. I mean, if it says the train leaves at 5:12, the train is pulling out of the station at exactly twelve minutes after five on the dot. It's not surprising that the Swiss are punctual. After all, they make good watches.

"Throughout our lives, we spend about 2 weeks kissing..."
".. and 3 and a half years eating."
You can read Facts of Life on these sugar packets.

I've always kept journals. When I was in 6th grade, my grandfather read my journal and teased me about what I wrote in one of the entries. I was so furious that I threatened to kill him if he ever did it again (scary, huh?! I was only 12 years old...). Unfortunately, I lost all my journals from childhood. When I was moving to Canada, I stored a box of things with my best friend. But then her family moved, and I think my box got thrown away with some of their stuff.

The last entry of our travels was when we went to Orchid Island.











The journal reminded me how much fun it was and how we really have to get back to doing it more (both traveling and the recording part).












And to think how much more fun it will be for Kai to go through these old journals one day when his parents put him on the mission of cleaning out all the papers they have accumulated in the house... Muahaahahahahahaha....