When I travel I hate using a camera it marks me as not from this place. However, the act of being someplace new always stirs up all kinds of novel images. A sketchbook is nice because it enables me to blend a little more into the scenery in cultures, where that is possible. In places where my skin and hair mark me as foreign, at least I'm a foreigner that is doing something interesting for once. At the sphinx I sat down and did a watercolor on the back of a cereal box; and I was mobbed, not by tourists, of whom there was multitudes, but by the native Egyptian tour leaders.

    Using a sketchbook also forces me to sit down and contemplate a place. You cannot hurry a pen and ink drawing. When traveling there is a tendency to rush to site to site in order to see it all, when sometimes more is learned about a culture by sitting and resting and watch the rhythmus of one place as they pass you by. The sketchbooks then become amazingly personal accounts that document my activities at a place and time. My most missed possession is the sketchbook of my travels through Jordan, that was stolen while I was making out at the beach of Tel Aviv.

    A sketchbook also is amazingly helpful in communication with the natives of a place. The act of creating has a universal interest, so it facilitates meetings. But also, it helps a conversation along, "where have you been?" Can be answered by flipping through pages and showing the places at which you have spent real time at because you enjoyed some aspect of it. Also, in some instance the only conversation that can be had are through pictures, scribbled back and forth in the back of my books. With the help of my sketchbook I can be an excellent communicator despite being a terrible linguist.