I'm sure you have those days, too...
... where you think, "Oh, I should really post," but then something else comes up. Before you know it, it has been weeks--or months, maybe years :P--before you sit down and make the time.
So here I am making the time, but I have no one thing I want to make an entire post about. Therefore, have some hodgepodge:
--I started an online drawing course at the end of January. I am really liking it, but I wonder if I am not missing the point of the class, which is overall, to be able to see shapes and values and therefore simplify complex subjects into paintable compositions. Simplifying is not my forte. I am making lovely sketches, though.
Here is one from this week's homework:
--When we moved to Lebanon last year, we bought some potted fruit trees (2 lemons and a kumquat), which we kept out on our balcony. We were just about to harvest our kumquats and our first lemons (after a year of watching the flowers become fruits and slooooooooowly ripen), but someone came into our garden and stole them. Well, they stole the two that were fruiting and left the one that looks like it is barely hanging on to life. To say we are disgusted is putting it lightly. Having had our car stolen in Egypt, we are no strangers to the feeling of being violated. Doesn't make it any easier to deal with.
--I am getting a bit, not antsy exactly, but ready for the summer trip back to France. I think the above anecdote has a bit to do with that. I just want to be in a place where I don't feel like I am being targeted. However! I am also starting to worry about leaving our place empty for so long, fearing we are going to go back and find it has been ransacked. :-/
--Inflation in Lebanon is crazy,* and people are getting (understandably) angrier about still not being able to access their money in the banks. There is supposedly a plan afoot amongst the high-placed bank people to move ALL money held in the banks into the bank presidents' personal accounts so that the international investigative team that might try to step in and put affairs in order won't be able to touch the funds. How is that for rumors and nefarious schemes?
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* The lira was around 27,000=1USD when we moved here at the beginning of last year. It took about a year for it to get up to 40,000LL=1USD; but in the last 6 weeks it has gone up to 80,000LL=1USD. :(