Peaceful Saturday Night…

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I’m sitting here after having enjoyed a spaghetti dinner that was made from scratch with sourdough garlic bread (not from scratch). It took the sauce about 2 hours to fully simmer together, but it was worth it and I now have enough marinara sauce for the next 2 weeks (ha). I wish had this much time to invest into cooking our meals during the week day, but I am just so tired when I get back from work that sometimes I just want to pass out in my bed as soon as I walk in the door. Now that the weather has gotten rainier, windier and darker, I find it more difficult to get my energy up for those everyday things. I can’t wait to be able to set my own schedule and work my own hours!

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Yummy!! We all deserve indulgences from time to time!

Anyway, I’m going to finish up my hot chocolate with marshmallows and head to bed. I’m sitting next to the window listening to the wind blow through the trees and I am so grateful for what I have. I often think about how things can be different which can be a good motivator to change, however, I don’t reflect often enough on how far I’ve come and truly see what I have.

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Desert Queen, by Janet Wallach

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This book holds the balance between an informational, historical, romantic, and suspenseful story so effortlessly that you forget that it is a biography. Now, I rarely read biographies — I can’t even remember the last time I read one — but if they read anything like this one, I need to start making it a more common occurrence. The book chronicles the life of Miss Gertrude Bell, a fiercely intelligent and unabashedly gutsy Englishwoman who “explored, mapped, and excavated the world of the Arabs.” She lived in tents, crossed the desert on camel back with Bedouins, negotiated talks between dangerous warlords, got captured as a prisoner in the process, but also left time to update her wardrobe with the latest fashions from Europe. She basically drew the borders for Iraq and Jordan and helped nurture the governmental foundations of those two countries in the 1920s. The National Museum of Iraq, known in her time as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, was formed due to her love of archaeology and passion for Iraqi culture and history. It houses artifacts of one of the earliest known civilizations in the world — the Mesopotamian culture and Babylonian Empire — and while the museum was looted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it reopened this year after much refurbishment.

I chose to highlight just a couple out of her many and impressive achievements, but I think they give you a taste for the adventure, passion and influence Bell brought into the world. The story is so skillfully written, that it’s hard to believe that Wallach so seamlessly connected Bell’s life by little more than her letters and diary entries. Of course, as a voracious writer who was acutely aware that her words were recording history as it happened, Bell had left behind thousands of pages of material, but nevertheless, it was no simple undertaking for Wallach to flawlessly meld such a rich and tangled history into this unified book. I highly recommend you to read about this marvelous lady who is now my personal icon. I share so much in common with her: our love of languages, history, Sumerian archaeology, fashion, and we even have the same birthday! *Sigh* Of course, I have yet to create the political framework of a country or head a national library — but there’s still time while I’m alive!

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Book Review: Mastering Arabic 1, Second Edition

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I have been studying Arabic from the book, “Mastering Arabic 1”, by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, and this morning I just completed the final lesson. I thought a review could be useful to someone planning on learning Arabic from this book so here are my thoughts. I have organized my opinions into pros and cons for ease of reading.

Pros

  • Relatively simple to follow for those planning on self-studying: The pace of learning from lesson to lesson is appropriate and while there are certain areas that I wish the book had spent more time on (more exposure to the different verb types and more grammar lessons) these are my personal areas of improvement, and they don’t correlate to any lapse in explanation or content within the book.
  • CDs and pictures: There are 2 CDs the come with the book which are extremely useful as you are learning to pronounce the language. They also help to develop your ability to understand the spoken language instead of just reading and writing, which was one of my goals. The pictures break up the text from becoming one grammar lesson after another and provide visual stimulation to those who learn well from visual aids.
  • Varied and interesting lessons: Many of the lessons in this book are actually fun to complete. They cleverly mix memorization and grammar with recordings, comic strips, diary entries, etc. There was a lot of thought put into these lessons and it shows,
  • Provides a solid foundation of beginning to early intermediate level of Arabic: The lessons are fast-paced but easy to follow. You may have to spend longer on one lesson than another to fully memorize and easily apply the information within, but after only 20 lessons you will be able to speak/read/write in present, future and past tense, count, tell time, possessives, negatives, and create plurals.

Cons

  • Spelling and grammatical errors: There were a few typos that I was able to find in the exercises as well as in the answers to exercises. This was confusing and frustrating at times because I incorrectly thought I had misunderstood something when in fact, after verifying with a native Arabic speaker, the book was incorrect. If you have someone who can verify these errors for you it may just be a minor inconvenience, but if you do not have access to such a resource, this could be very confusing,
  • “Dictionary Work”: This is a certain type of exercise that is featured in several lessons that involves the use of a dictionary. The aim of this exercise is to help the student learn to use an Arabic dictionary and also learn the plural, conjugation of verbs, meaning of words, etc. by filling in a chart. Firstly, I do not own an Arabic dictionary and I don’t intend to purchase one because of the number of free dictionaries online that look up the word for me, Also, filling in a chart is a very dull and unexciting method of learning the very dull and unexciting subject that is grammar. There are a number of great lessons in this book that can easily replace all of these “dictionary work” ones, and I hope the authors do in future editions.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you are a first-time Arabic learner. It is appropriate for self-study, but having an native Arabic speaker would be useful for clarification for some typos. The lessons are well-thought out and varied and the CDs and visual aids help keep things interesting. While, the book is fast-paced and covers a lot of different subjects in a short space of time (I finished this book in 3 months), just make sure to keep up with the lessons at your own pace as some areas will need to more self-study beyond the lessons in the book. No one language book can fit the needs of every individual, so additional study beyond the book is and will be necessary for me to feel 100% comfortable with all of the material that was covered in the book. I will be continuing my studies in Arabic and I am searching for another book to increase my vocabulary, comprehension and writing skills. If any of you have suggestions for my next step, please let me know!

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Book Review: French Women Don’t Get Fat

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I am sure many of you have heard of a very popular health and cooking book called, “French Women Don’t  Get  Fat”. It was an enormous commercial success amidst a transition in the diet and health industry towards favoring a holistic,  pleasurable, “slow food” approach to long-term health and weight loss, in stark contrast to the obsessive calorie-counting, restrictive, puritanical tone to achieving your ideal body that had dominated the weight loss industry. If you have not yet read the book, I highly suggest you do so.  It will shift your attitude towards your ideal body, the traditions and ritual of food preparation and enjoyment with the larger goal of discovering and cultivating your little pleasures.

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Giuliano writes this diet book within the context of her own weight loss story after some late adolescent weight gain after a study abroad trip to the states. The experience of reading this diet book is so different from any other you may read because it is a story that Giuliano tells so charmingly well. It is an incredibly liberating and enjoyable experience to see the subject of food and weight loss presented in such a way that puts back the ritualistic and sensory pleasures of dining. There is no mention of calories, counting, fat, carbs, gym memberships. and the endless other unpleasantness that are found in any other weight loss book. Just sensible portions, fresh and seasonal ingredients, some light walking and other slow and easy shifts in your habits is what this book is about. A distinctly French method that emphasizes pleasure over deprivation and shuns the “no pain, no gain” approach to living in and loving your ideal body.

Although the concepts are simple enough to remember and apply in my daily life, and while I may not eat certain staples of the conventional French diet such as wine, cheese, or bread, I still find myself reaching for this book every once in a while just to enjoy Guiliano’s storytelling. I find that this book is more than just about weight loss; it’s about getting to know yourself and cultivating your own pleasures in not just food, but also in life. I think that we all work very hard to create the lives we want to live and between the demands of schooling, work, and family, this book has helped me to learn how to take my moments to take care of myself and perhaps its can bring about that same shift for you. 

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Are you a planner or…?

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Are you someone who plans their day out? Or do you prefer allowing the day’s events to unfold and seeing where they take you?

For me, I cannot be truly happy about a day without a plan.

It probably has to do with my hectic, extra-curricular activity filled upbringing, but it is difficult for me to feel content with a day’s events without having made progress in the majority of the following categories: work, studies, fitness, and my various pastimes. When I was a child and I hated summer vacation because I loved the structured day that a normal school day and after school activities created for me. As a working adult, I don’t have summer vacations, but I don’t like the weekends. For me, it’s just a really long stretch of time that I try my best to fill with my activities just so that I can go back to the structure that the work week gives me. To avoid feeling like the weekend was a waste of 48 hours, I need to plan out what I will be studying, reading, and writing. Needless to say, I get a lot done. However, my husband and other family members comment on my incessant need to be doing something, that I find myself wondering if I’m missing out on something that the rest of the human race seems to look forward to.

I tried not planning to do anything on a weekend once. No studying, no writing, no educational reading, no exercising, no errands, just doing whatever my husband did whenever he did it. Throughout the day I felt anxious and slightly irritated that nothing was getting done. I found myself overcome by the deep feeling of stagnation that I found stifling. I ended the day feeling unaccomplished and thoroughly un-relaxed. And that was the last time I tried to out the “no plan is the plan” approach to my day.

Perhaps there’s some sort of deep-seated psychological reason to why I feel the need to always be working on something, whether its my schooling, learning a skill, writing something, or whatever, but if it makes me feel happy and fulfilled at the end of the day then it must be fine.

What about you? Do you plan your days out like me? Or no?

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