Since the last post in March...1/3

Once again, time has gotten away from me, but I will attempt to catch you up with some brief snippets...

B spent a week in France, having left just a couple of days after getting our passports back (visas) in late March! Whew!

Easter came and went. There were decorations at some local malls. Here is one: neon bunny heads!

The rainy season is finally ending- very late May into early June this year. We just had heavy rain yesterday again! This is very late compared to the last couple of years. Usually during the rainy season, the heavy rains have kept the air cleaner than when it doesn't rain, but not this year. As examples, here are two photos taken April 18, the other is June 4.

On the other hand, early in May we had massive storms one day and the air was really nice for part of one day. That's our apartment building peaking out- the taller building ! This sort of sky is indeed rare!

I have been incredibly busy with the American Women's Association. I am still training our latest President, handling the social media, being secretary and so on.  I have facilitated amending our Constitution and Bylaws and have split the job I was doing across 2 positions. I am no longer officially on the Board as of June 1. I will be training my 2 replacements who are both new to town and new to AWA but I will continue in my role as "special adviser to the President." We shall see just how fast I can fully step away.  It has been extremely time-consuming so I am need of a break. I will need to do some great training and our current President must accept the fact that the newbies will not do everything as I did. The majority of the Board members will take on their role once again for the new fiscal year and that will hopefully instill some stability which has been difficult to achieve with so many different people coming and going. I personally have worked with at least 7 different AWA presidents! Amazing! I will still volunteer when I can!

I was also involved in planning our spring charity bazaar. We tried a new approach for our bazaar raffle in April for AWA and I helped "decorate" the wheel we already owned. It was in storage. We discovered it when we did inventories of all of our publications and all items in warehouse storage. You paid the price for one spin, and you won either 1, 3 or 5 raffle tickets. You then could put your raffle tickets in small boxes for the prizes you wished to win. The drawings were held throughout the day. It was only somewhat successful as the wheel wasn't located in a good spot. I won a dinner for two. I know the manager so I will arrange with her when we want to go for our special dinner!

Did I mention before that I am taking bridge lessons with AWA? We haven't been able to meet very often lately so I am not making much progress but I am trying.

I have no idea what this is about but at least 100 men were living for approximately 2 weeks on the roof of this building we can see from our apartment. It is within the police station compound.

Here's a new spot in one of the local malls. There is a "snow" machine and there is even a small slope. The "snow" appears to be more like crunched up ice, but still fun for the kids. There is actually an indoor place that opened outside of the city that claims to have skiing and snowboarding, sledding, ice skating and other snow related activities. I can't imagine how it could be large enough to accommodate all of that and I don't know anyone who's actually been there yet. It's really set up for the kids just as this mall spot is set up for kids.

Practically no one buses their own tables at quickie food locations. Some say it would eliminate jobs so they use that as an excuse to just walk away. However, we noticed this sign somewhere. It basically says clean up after yourself- start a trend.

A friend from Norway returned to her home in April and another one of my friends is leaving July 11. Here she is with her finally finished tuffet! It was truly a group project to help her finish it! She returns to her native Austria.

I am still planning and collecting fabric for my second tuffet. I finally finished a scarf I was working on. Meanwhile I am still working on a wall hanging quilt with 9 blocks. Six are completed so far. This is very time consuming with so much embroidery. I have completely changed most of the embroidery patterns and am learning all sorts of new stitches. I am working on block 7 now!

Here is a acrylic painting I completed a bit ago. We will have it matted and framed but I did this digitally when I was playing around with a photograph of it so I thought I would share it. I have no idea what we'll select when we actually get to the framer shop but I will try to share the actual framing once it's done. We tried to go last Saturday to the framer but they were already closed for Idul Fitri. Ramadan ended June 5 and 6 so many small shops are closed for a couple of weeks. The banks were closed all this week. ATMs were still open unless they ran out of cash.