Another Busy Weekend

Another weekend filled with lots 'o stuff is approaching....

My relatives from CA are flying in tonight, and my cousin will be staying with me tomorrow night (need to clean the house and grocery shop!). Saturday morning we'll head to the Farmers' Market, then I'm teaching kickboxing at the Broadview Y at 8:45. At 1 pm, we'll start making our way to MKE with some family members for tailgating at Miller Park for the Brewers game! For the past 4-5 years, our family goes to a Brewers game in the summer. We divvy up items for tailgating, as well as carpooling and where/how we'll meet up. It's quite the production! But it's always fun and something I look forward to every summer.

Then on Sunday, my other cousin and her new husband are having a wedding reception (they eloped in Vegas in March).

Yikes! Hopefully next weekend will be a little more low-key...

Gatlinburg in September

I'm VERY excited that I will get to attend the ARSL (Association for Rural & Small Libraries) Conference in September. I attended this conference last year, and it was one of the best! Every session I attended was worthwhile, and that's not always the cases at conferences. We serve a lot of "rural and small" libraries in our system, but I found every session could be applicable to any library.

Not only is it a great conference, but it will be held in Gatlinburg, TN, among the Great Smoky Mountains. It looks like an absolutely beautiful city, and our hotel is nestled right in the mountains! My library friend, Jen, will also be traveling and rooming with me, so I'm happy about that as well. Last year I went by myself, and although I was fine, it will be nice to have some company. I think she will enjoy the conference, too, and will get as much out of it as I did.

Of course, there is a winery about 1.5 miles from the hotel, so I will have to make some time for that, too. :)

Fun Weekend

Had a busy, fun weekend! Went to Brillion and listened to my nephew's band for their Relay for Life....worked out and did the Farmers' Market on Saturday morning...headed up to Crooked Lake to hang with Tara, Steph, Shari and Guido....got together with the fam and celebrated Father's Day yesterday. Dad looked a little tired, but it's hard to remember that he's 69 and just not a spring chicken anymore!

Be Creative in Morocco

This morning I did my first "Be Creative in Morocco" program for the Gillett Public Library! This is one of 7 I will be doing for area libraries this summer on my experiences in Morocco. We had close to 80 people (the room was packed!) and it was TONS of fun! More pictures are available on our flickr page!

We talked about some Morocco basics: size, language, population, etc. Then I passed around some souvenirs that I purchased there, as well as did some demos on wearing a hijab and how people say hello (the kiss-kiss...which I did on my niece, so it was ok!) Here I taught them some basic words in Arabic (hello, yes, no, please, etc).

I had some children volunteer to take around the green tea and spices for people to smell. I also showed pictures of food we ate and had the kids try to guess what they were - some were obvious, and some were not. They also learned how to sing "Happy Birthday" in Arabic.

At the end I showed them pictures of some things we did (rode camels, went fishing, saw goats in trees), but I think what impacted them the most was learning how some people have to travel a LONG ways to get water for their families. They were also surprised that books could not be checked out of the libraries. Hopefully it will make them realize how fortunate we are for abundant water, as well as libraries with FREE programs, FREE internet and FREE materials to be checked out!

At the end, Cindy served raspberry tea and cookies, and some kids came up and asked me questions. A few of them even liked the music I was playing (Moroccan), so that made me glad.

Overall, it was just an amazing experience! My parents brought my niece and nephew, because they only live about 10 minutes from this library. I was so glad that I got to share some information about Morocco, provide a fun, free program at an area library, give their staff a break and do something good for our system (work place).

If even ONE person walked out of that room with a different perspective on Morocco or experiencing a Muslim country, then it was well worth my time. :)

I Miss Blogging!

Holy cow! Four posts in 2009?!? Blogging has really taken a back seat in my priorities, and I miss it....desperately. I need/want/have to do more of it, and now more than ever.

One thing I loved about being in Morocco was posting to my travel blog. It was so great to share the photos, videos and everything that was going on with people back home. Doing that made me realize how much I missed blogging.

Other web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked In were getting in the way of my blogging the past few months. I believe those are all great tools and social networking sites, but I want to focus more on what I love to do - write, express, make friends laugh/think and share my thoughts. Feel free to also "follow" my blog by using the widget on the upper right side of the screen!

So...here's to blogging!