Written December 17th, 2015 6 AM

Dear Mom and family,

It feels good sitting in front of the fire to have my breakfast and coffee! 

 

Yesterday I still did not find the energy to work on my messy house. I did wash almost all of the accumulated dirty dishes, so it was an improvement  over the previous day.

When I got to the Tempe Library for my Arabic lesson, I parked under one of the new shade covers which have solar panels on them. I am quite excited by these structures, because shade is always something people want more of, in this area, and maybe the solar panels can pay for all the air-conditioning used in the Tempe Library throughout the warm and hot months!
 
Here's a photo of my car parked under one of the shade-with-solar-panels structures (mine is second from right):

I had a good lesson. I found the will-power to force myself to speak Arabic (many stops, questions about words, awkwardness) for many of the little side conversations we end up having during the lesson. As we are both fluent in English, and only she is fluent in Arabic, it is very tempting for her to slip into English, and for me as well.

It is the extra money I have at this time in life which allows me to have a more relaxed type of lesson. I pay her for two hours, and have for the past two years. When I just had one hour, I was constantly concerned with not "wasting" a single minute of the lesson. I have come to feel that these little side conversations are not a waste, because they teach me so much about her culture and way of life, and of course if I force myself to try to have them in Arabic, and keep reminding her, "bil 3arabii, lo samik", they are even more valuable!

Arabic pronunciation tangent: (The "3" is like the vowel sound in "guy", but with an extra opening of the mouth chamber by lowering the back of the tongue,
and "ii" is how I transliterate the long "ee" vowel sound. The end of the word "Shi'3a" heard so often in the news, is supposed to have this sound at the end, and a glottal stop in the middle, if pronounced correctly. The word "Sunni" should have a sort of stop in the middle, "Sun-ni". Okay, I'll get off my soap box.)

Hakima gave me some food she had cooked, chicken with peas and carrots and onions and a mild curry flavor, all chopped up and cooked together, and eaten with pita bread. I ate it in the car, it was quite good. Often she gives me food which I fear to eat because it's been sitting in room temperature too long, but in this case I knew she'd had no student before my lesson, so the food had only sat out a couple of hours. When the food she gives me has been sitting too long, I taste a teaspoon of it so I can tell her honestly that I liked it, and I toss the rest.

I stopped at Starbuck's to check on-line and see if anyone had rsvp'd to my dance meetup. As an activity, I'd suggested attending the dance recital of a very well-known local dancer. I'd enjoyed attending the recitals of her classes years ago. No one had rsvp'd, but I decided to go to the event on my own, as it was on my way home, at the wonderful multi-venue Mesa Arts Center.

Reading my e-mail, I was so relieved to find out that my computer tutor had been sick Tuesday, so he hadn't driven all the way to Apache Junction just to have me stand him up! He offered to meet the following day, as he is better now.

After parking at the garage next to the center, I encountered a good-looking young man who was looking at the sign with a map of the place. It turned out that he was bound for the same studio I was going to. What a big place! I was glad to be able to just follow him. We passed large windows through which one could see glassblowing classes, pottery classes, and art classes. To our right was the main auditorium, the one where I'd gone to hear Rick Steves a while back.

We ran up two long flights of steps, and barely made it on time.

There was a really nice variety of dance routines. Yasmina is a great teacher and choreographer, so all of the classes' routines were pleasing to watch:

I was very pleased when Yasmina herself (she's the one in the orange) came over and said hello, "I thought that was you!" I used to come to all of her events, years ago, and once I sang, on the stage, during the period before the show started, when the audience was arriving.

One of my photos came out very good, and in that photo (above), the dancer closest to the camera was sitting two rows in front of me. I showed her the photo and she was quite excited, especially when I offered to e-mail it to her.


A few weeks ago when I went to see Rick Steves' talk, (he's the low-cost travel guru) I forgot to take my camera, and a nice lady acquiesed to my request that she e-mail me one of the photos she was taking of him as he interacted with the fans in the lobby after the talk. (She did, and the photo is below) So I will be "passing along" that favor to this other person.

When I got home, there was a card on the dining room table, which Dale Jr. had brought over to his dad's "man-gathering" last night. Inside the card were professional photos of all three of his kids.

Here's the card and the photos: 

Love,
Lennie