Thursday, April 10, 2008

A Sweet, Happy Day

P's away overnight so I am at home alone with Coco. I'm not sure how she'll make it through the night without her 'daddy' around to snuggle up with. Somehow we'll survive I guess.

Today was one of the first really warm days though it wasn't very sunny. I think it must have been about 22 Celsius and it didn't rain! Hurray! I had my painting class in the morning and we tried our hands at portraits, which was a huge challenge but fun and I like my end result.

Then a little group of us had a light lunch on the top of the Sky Tower. The view over Tirana is awesome and this has to be the best place to see the city. The painted buildings are fabulous and it would be such a different picture if everything was gray. I've also spotted a few new painted buildings this week and I'll try to get out to photograph them soon.

In the afternoon our friend Smiley Sam invited a few of us to her place for a real "British Tea"! Scones with cream, cucumber sandwiches, fruit cake and a very special tea from Hong Kong! We laughed and laughed all afternoon and told rude jokes and silly stories. Such a nice thing to do on a lovely spring day!

Being a warm evening the kids in the neighbourhood were finally outside playing football until sundown. Is there anything more wonderful than the sound of happy kids outside your window?

All in all... one of those sweet, happy days :)



6 comments:

Rowena said...

22°?? I am envious. Those temps are what I need to be able to transplant my little seedling babies outside. It's still too cold (8°) in the mountains.

Kim, if you do give the recipe a try you might want to cut it down even more ;-). I should've also added a link pointing to a video of a bunch of grandmas "arguing" on how the ciambella is done. Hilarious, but only proved that you can do as you want as long as it comes out firm enough to be dunked into vin santo or coffee!

swenglishexpat said...

Hi Kim - The sound of happy children playing is truly wonderful. I just loved your favourite "I Owe My Mother" in an earlier post! :-)

GMG said...

Hi Kim. Glad to land here again...
Paintig class, tea and scones, you cannot complain... ;)
Love the window and the stunning sky with the tree! Classical music by the garbage makes sense... ;))
Thanks for your comments at Blogtrotter, where you may now see the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Hope you enjoy it!
Have a great weekend!
Gil

Anonymous said...

For me too, the sound of children playing outside in the courtyard is one of the sounds of summer in Yerevan. As is the sound of the ticking of backgammon stones when old men are playing somewhere on a balcony or in a courtyard on a summer evening. You don't see them, you only hear the stones being moved. I love that sound.

Beth said...

Ah, a proper British tea! Lovely. The last time I had one of those was while I was visiting in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
(Of course, I could always make one myself...)

Di Mackey said...

Reads like a lovely day.

I miss the sounds of kids playing here, double-glazing and less of a street scene in the neighbourhood I live in actually makes me quite sad.