The weekend’s over

Yikes! The weekend’s over again. Yesterday morning I went out shopping and came home to make a salad for Fouad’s party at night. Then I spent the entire day finishing off my rough draft for the presentation I have to give on Feb. 28 about bike education programs in schools. I sent it off to Linar, who is gong to help me insert all the pictures I need in the PowerPoint. I’ll be speaking to about 200 people, so I really want to make my point.
Paul and I went to the party together and found the place with no problem. There was a pretty big group there and there was one girl there who was going to do a work-study program in New Jersey so she had a lot of questions about the States. We ended up playing a game called Heads Up, which is a little like charades, but with words. It got loud and boisterous and it was a lot of fun . We had some good laughs. Paul and I, along with a bunch of other people, left at a little after 10. It was long enough.
This morning I was up early because Anna and I had wanted to go to an art gallery to see the exhibit of Shemiakin pantings. He’s a Russian painter who had to flee during Soviet times and now lives in NY. I had never heard of him, but I really liked his stuff.   Before we went to the gallery, we decided to do a breakfast at Truffo, the French restaurant here in town. And it was like old home week. We had no sooner sat down when Matthew and Valeriya also came in to have breakfast. We had just ordered and Fahti and his wife came over and said hello because they had also come in for breakfast. And at the table across from us, there was a mom from school with her kid. The place was jumping with familiar faces.
After we ate, we walked about an hour across town to get to the gallery. We figured we had better work off the calories from breakfast. And work them off we did, because the temperature hovered at the freezing point and a lot of the snow was that grainy, half-frozen slush that’s like walking on soap. You took one step forward and slipped half a a step back. But the exhibit was worth the walk. I really enjoyed the pictures. There was a real biting humor to them.
 So, now lesson plans are done, I’ve eaten my pizza and I can get some studying done.