Click on the photo to enlarge.

One of my favorite things to do in this world (beside make things of course!) is travel. I can find joy in almost anything when I'm traveling....whether its an old European cathedral, a jittery bus ride in Central America or just a farmers market in the midwest.

This past week was my one year anniversary living in San Francisco. It got me doing the old "what was I doing this time last year?" philosophical bit (did I mention that our TV broke? It's been a good thing as far as fueling reflections and such).

Well, this time last year, our honeymoon was coming to a close (in a physical sense...emotional honeymoon is still alive!). We were just arriving back into the U.S. and I was making the big move to the city.

I thought this would be a good time to start sharing some of the highlights of our trek. So, each week (I can't guarantee which day each week), I'm going to share with the blogosphere...and my new crafty friends, a page from our travel journal.

With a polaroid camera in tow, we backpacked across Indonesia with the pledge that we would take 2 polaroid pictures each day....one of someone that represented the day and one for the person we took a picture of. The polaroid would become the illustration in our journal.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Journal Entry:

(Not word for word, of course. I like you guys too much to bore you like that). After our extremely tiring 3-day wedding (more on that another day), we set off for the Los Angeles airport. We were dropped off by my parents, Aunt and Godfather (shown in the polaroid - yes they got a copy polaroid of this shot!). Our wedding was the first time they had come to the U.S., and we were really really sad to have to say good-bye.

The folks of Northwest Airlines were pretty pissed off that we showed up "extremely late" (an hour & a half prior to departure - they have no idea what we're capable of)....and escorted us through security right to a couple of extremely roomy exit row seats. If this is the way they're going to "punish" us when we're late, then, well...you know....

Our cushy ride promptly ended with some motherly duties. Not my motherly duties, some other mother's duties. I'm not a mother...but...you get the point anyway. We'll call them that, but I've never experienced anything like it before. Now, I understand that I don't have kids, and I may not know what it means to have to respond to the call of duty. But the story that follows was like a re-occurring visit to bathroom bizarr-o.

So we're sitting there in the exit row trying our best to keep ourselves entertained on this excessively loooong flight. A woman and her 5 year old daughter march over to directly in front of us, and squats down. Let me help you picture this...by "directly in-front of"....I mean..."six to 12 inches in front of...". The woman pulls out a small bucket, sets it on the ground, lines it with a plastic bag. She then pulls her daughters pants down and prompts her to squat....and...take....a...well...shit. The little girl took a crap right in front of us.

We didn't actually "see" the #2, but trust me when I say that it was.

We had other ways of knowing.

After she was done, she pulled her pants up, tied the bag as if she had just walked her dog in the park, and discards it in the bathroom trash can.

Now. Am I like overly proper, or was that weird? I know that "age 5" is not too young to use the toilet. I know this because I used to babysit when I was 12. And it's not like there was a huge line outside of the bathroom stall, and the little girl couldn't hold it. Did she think that would be entertaining to us?

Were we on candid camera?

About 10 hours later we landed in Tokyo. I was still figuratively paralyzed from the unfortunate toileting experience, but managed to set it aside to enjoy the little slice of Japan that I could. We did our best to soak up as much of Tokyo as we could - considering we were there for an hour and not allowed to actually "leave" the airport. A little gift shop window shopping and a bowl of udon later...we were boarded and flying to next layover of Seoul, Korea.

....to be continued....

Ugh, that's so gross about the little girl. What was that about? You didn't call a flight attendant to make the woman take her daughter in the bathroom? That is not something I could take well. I'll be interested to see more of your journal.

i just *love* that scrapbook photo. there's something so nice about polaroids isn't there? i look forward to hearing more....

What a cool idea. I look forward to more.

That story about the girl is extremely upsetting. Was there no point where you just couldn't help yourself and say "excuse me, would you mind not letting your daughter take a shit right here? In return, we will not shit in your aisle. Thanks so much."

Cristina, I am sure you were in total WTF shock at what this adult was enabling her daughter to do. Unimaginable. Strange too when the divert flights for lesser offenses.

Double plus ungood, that's all I can say.