" No Hablo Ingles" - G. W. Bush

So today I sat down and worked on the stamp book I got for Christmas. It was a wonderful gift from my family. One that I will enjoy for years.

I enjoy stamps, back in June I bought myself a World stamp book. I thought to myself "Self, get the world book for stamps. The stamps from around the wold are colorful and show you different things from around the world." I agreed with myself and bought it. When I got home I started to go through a bag of world stamps. Starting my exploration of the world though beautiful yet small pictures in living color. It was only then that I discovered the mistake, the flaw in my postage plan to travel the world.

Yes you guessed it . . . I'm an American.

Like many of my fellow Americans out there I never learned another language, and like the current President I to had a C average in high school. I found that try as I might I would have had to go page by page, looking over thousands of pictures of thousands of stamps to find where the one stamp I had in my hands went. After a day or two of trying and finding the resting spots for only 6 stamps , I gave up on the world tour. Sure every so often I go back and try to place another stamp. I wander the world on those sections of paper. I gaze longingly at the black and white pictures hoping that someday I will find the stamp that rest there and see what that place in the world looks like in color.

Until then I will find places for my American stamps to call home. I know many of the stamps that are in the book. Many I have used and enjoyed over the years. I will be happy searching for stamps in out of the way place to give homes to, but deep down there will always be a part of me that wishes I had learned more at a younger age. That I had understood the value of other language's. So that perhaps I could have explored more than just colorful pictures on shiny pieces of paper with stick'em on the back. I might have been able to explore more of the real world, the world beyond the page.