A Blast From My Past

Hello all,

I have something a little silly to share with you.  My Mom was doing some fall cleaning and she found this card I made for my parents 15 years ago.   My parents were kind enough to help me finance a trip to Kenya and gave me my first camera.  When I look back, this trip was one of those events that shaped me as a person.   It changed how I thought about the world and my place in it.  

I wish I could share every story/lesson with you in this post...but I won't do that to you.  I'll limit myself to one. This was the moment that jumped to my mind first.  I vividly remember watching a woman drinking water from a small pond.  The water was thick with mud.  Just a few feet away from her was a man urinating into the same water.  This was the only water they had access too. Sure I had seen stuff like that on TV, but when you see it in person it becomes real.   You suddenly feel more thankful for the clean water that pours out in excess from the facet in my house.   When I came home, my mind was racing. I had been exposed to so many things and it took weeks to the experience.  I remember trying to talk to my peers about the experience and no one seemed interested.  I was so frustrated.  I came to realize that most of us in the US live in a bubble...it isn't our fault.  We are so far removed from the problems that these people face everyday.

 It eventually inspired me to lead several student based trips to the Galapagos, Egypt, Belize, and China.  I picked destinations that were very different from the USA.  I loved watching kids discover the world.   I hope that in some way I helped them seem see that we are part of a much bigger world.

I went on that trip to discover lions, elephants, and giraffes, oh my!  I had no idea that I would discover a piece of myself.   Thanks MOM and DAD for providing me with this opportunity.

Enough of the rambling... here is the card I made my parents.  OH MY, Look how stamping has changed!!!  I used computer paper and decorative scissors to create the card base.  I think I used every animal stamp I had to make the card.   What is that little guy doing under the elephants?!! I even made the mistake of getting a little extra red ink on the corner of the card.  I still make the mistake...somethings never change!    I wrote the card from the prospective of the African animals.  Yep....I'm pretty funny.

Copics used:

Copics??? What are those? 

I'm lucky that I had access to so many colors of ink! 

Thanks for taking a trip down Memory Lane!