Work is progressing on the house. The tiles are finished in the kitchen and now we need to get the cabinets and countertops designed, made and installed.

Another view of the kitchen with Jenna and Ibrahim. One part of the kitchen will be a work area with the sink below the window. Typical Libyan kitchens have the sink facing the wall - I really hate that. Who wants to look at the wall while they are washing the dishes? The other part of the kitchen will have a seating area.

The verandahs will have this green tile. I have been living for so many years in an apartment upstairs without bars on the windows - living with bars is going to take a while to get used to. You can see the shadow from the bars in this picture.

Aside from the kitchen and the rooms outside the house, the rest of the house will have marble floors. They're almost finished putting in those.

The kids bathroom. Next we'll be working on the plasterwork. Libyan houses have plaster decorative mouldings around the edges of the ceilings. It's called 'jibis'. I'm a jibis minimallist - I hate the stuff, but hubby thinks jibis is just great. I see big fights and arguments in the very near future!

This is Yusef taking his dogs for a walk on the road behind our house. Everything's nice and green. Yusef plans on having about twenty dogs when we move out to the house. I'm not so sure about that! 

nothing too exciting . . just everyday life

The weather has been wonderful. This afternoon I walked up to the shops with Jenna and we had a nice time looking around at all the shops. Jenna bought a pair of bright orange sneakers. Somehow, I think bright orange sneakers are ugly, but she is happy with them and they are her feet after all, so I let her get them.

I walk fast and Jenna was doing her best to keep up with me. Finally she asked 'Mom, when you walk this fast does it hurt your sides?' I told her 'No. Are your sides hurting?' She said yes and I decided it was time to slow down.

I'll have to walk for exercise by myself. Everyone that goes out for a walk with me complains. Google Earth has a nifty tool that will measure out the distances for you. I have walks mapped out for 1km, 2-1/2km, 5km and 6km. I decide how far I feel like walking and head out the door. We're still working on the papers for my car - I think they will be ready tomorrow. I wonder how much walking I will manage in the future.

Computer woes for me again. I installed a program that made a mess of things and then had all kinds of trouble trying to straighten it all out. I had some stuff that I hadn't backed up and I didn't want to lose it so I called my friend/student Hiba to see if she could help me out. We tried to hook up the hard disk to my old computer but it was too big for the motherboard. In the end she took my computer home with her to see what she could do. Happy news! Hiba says she managed to straighten it out and I will have my computer back tomorrow morning. THANKS HIBA! I LOVE YOU!!!!

Mustafa told me that he thinks my computer is my second husband (the one I love the most). Hmmmm . . . lately with the way he's been behaving that just might be true!

My life and some new blogs

I've had a few busy days.

On Sunday I gave a presentation at the ELTEX conference an Education Exhibition and English Language Conference with my colleague Alea. We did a presentation about how we got our students to improve their writing and reading skills by posting them on a blog we created for our school. We were supposed to go on stage at 8:30pm but one of the speakers had to cancel and so we took his timeslot at 5. Actually it was better, we got it over with sooner and could then enjoy the other speakers and the exhibition.

We first had to explain what a blog was since blogs and blogging are a new idea in Libya. I got some good feedback from many of the people there and the director of a school in Benghazi is going to create a blog for his school and then we'll link our to school blogs together and try to get the students to do something together. I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

Yesterday afternoon was spent at the conference and today was spent at home. Mustafa has been pouting and complaining that he's been neglected. Ugggh! I've made tons of sacrifices in my life for that man, you would think he would be nice, shut up and eat tuna sandwiches once in a while and let me do something for myself for a change. My God - there is only one English language conference a year in this country. . . It will take him about a week to get it out of his system. In the meantime I will do my best to tolorate him. I really think he's my oldest child and not my husband sometimes. . . sigh . . .

Two new blogs to mention today. Rambling a new Libyan? blogger who I guess is from Tripoli and Big Damn Heroes an expat living in Libya. Warm welcome to you both. I'll put their links on my sidebar for easy reference.

More on the sandstorm

Remember that sand storm we had recently? I'm still trying to clean up the dust in my house. I wipe up the dust and it seems like in only a few minutes it looks as if I've never dusted. NASA's Earth Observatory has some really interesting pictures and commentary about the storm. Click on the image above to have a look. It's really quite fascinating!

Something old, something new . . .

There's a huge crater that was recently discovered in the Sahara Desert on the border between Egypt and Libya. Click on the image of Gogle Earth Blog above to see more.

PhotoFriday - Feminine

Photofriday - Feminine
I've been out window shopping - one of my favourite hobbies! One thing that I've noticed lately is mannequins that have their heads removed. I thought it might be an Islamic thing since Muslims are not supposed to make graven images. But nowadays I've been seeing blindfolded mannequins. Is this supposed to make them look kind of kinky? hmmm . . . . Frederick's of Tripoli . . . hehehehe . . . Maybe it's a new kind of khimar (face veil) for the modern and trendy set . . .

Wheels!

I've got wheels! Yes, finally after living here for 17 years (and having a Libyan driver's licence for all that time) I finally have a car. Well, nearly - we're still working on getting the papers and insurance etc. for it. But hubby assures me that it will be mine.

It has a temporary licence plate on it and we drove it out to the farm and washed off the sand from the resent sandstorm. It isn't brand new, but nearly - and it has snow tires on it because it came from Canada. We have to change those as we've obviously got no snow here.

I will be happy when I can finally take off and drive it where I please. Of course my wandering spirit is one of the reasons why I haven't been allowed to have a car at my disposal all these years in the first place. Hubby knows only too well that if I get the urge I will just jump in the car and take off. For example: If the thought occurs to me that I need some new couscous dishes I'll think nothing of heading for Gharian to get a bargain. Why not? It's only a drive to the mountains after all and that's where they make the dishes, isn't it?

Hubby is all worried that I won't be able to handle driving in Libya . . . . but I've got plans . . .