Fox on a Boat

Island Cat Tonight is my last night on Ilha Grande. Tomorrow I head back to Rio, where I shall spend the night, before flying back to London via Sao Paulo on Wednesday night. If all goes accordingly, by Thursday evening I should be at home enjoying a nice cup of tea with my cats. The weather here was wonderful today - hot and sunny. I had planned to go to the beach, then to lunch, then possibly the beach again, but then I remembered the natural pool that I had not yet swum in. So there I went. To get there, one must follow the seafront road, heading right if you start from the pier, facing the town. After a few minutes, you'll see a sign marked T1 - this is the first trail. (There are trails going all around the island). The first part of the trail forms a loop - to the right Praia Preta, to the left, the pool - but of course either way will get you to both these places, it will just take slightly longer. By Lucas César Felicíssimo Mendes, via Wikimedia Commons Th...

I recently spent a weekend in Barcelona. It unfortunately rained most of the time, but that didn't stop me from gallivanting around town, sniffing out culture like a young poet, fresh off a night bus from Toulouse... Anyway, more on Barcelona will be coming soon in another post, but for now, it's blog-gallery time! By the harbour In the metro In the metro By the harbour

Stargazing in the Sahara Desert wind pushing hair strands We adjust our scarves, pull hoods, lie back, muscles stiff from the climb. Metres high with sand in our socks, Gaze at the tents, tiny below, Stare at the stars, tiny, above. -- Prompt from Imaginary Garden , also shared with NaPoWriMo. Feel free to link up your blog here

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Moubarak Ouassat, Mahmoud Darwish Arabic Poetry in Translation Marrakesh If you are a new reader on my blog, you may not know that I love Arabic, and am currently learning the language. The above picture was taken in Morocco, when I travelled there two weeks ago with two friends. It made sense for me to continue on the Arabic theme and share some Arabic poetry today. Moubarak Ouassat The first poem I am linking to is   Perplexité . The poem is available in Arabic, with a translation in French (translated by the poet), but an English one does not seem to be available. Here is a quote from the poem: Et de quoi peut rêver  Un oiseau Que peut l’arbre Après que la pluie Ait été reportée Now, here is my (rough!) translation for you non-French speakers: And of what can dream A bird What can do the tree After the rain Has been delayed It's a pretty rough translation - the first line is not great, grammatically, but I w...

Ten Must-Sees of Morocco Koutoubia Mosque At the end of February, I travelled to Morocco with two other bloggers: Chloe and Joy - we all currently live in the same town. Morocco had been on my travel list for quite a while, so I was very excited when the plane landed and I realised I was on Moroccan soil. I will of course be writing about various aspects of our trip, but this post will concentrate on the highlights - ten, to be exact. Enjoy! I'm in Morocco! What now? 1  If, like us, you arrive late in the evening (thanks, Orly technical glitch, for the hour and a half delay!), you will need to have dinner. Luckily, eating out is nice and cheap. Since you are saving so much money, I'm sure you won't mind slipping a few morsels of food to the local cat. I'd like extra sauce on that chicken, thanks. 2 After a good night's sleep, you don't want to linger in your hotel room! Get your camera ready and go have a stroll in the gardens...

It's been a while since I last updated.. I spent the holidays with some good friends and of course wanted to make every moment count, so no blogging.. Since then, it seems the days are going quite quickly, even if they don't pass as quickly as the holidays.. I'm already looking forward to my next holidays, where I'll be landing in Morocco - so will definitely write about that! I've not been writing much save for December's poem, but I've been drawing a lot more, and painting digitally. Here are some of the pieces I created in the last few weeks. And some sketches..

In the past two weeks, I've gone back to painting in acrylics, and produced these three new paintings of lighthouses. The first one I am quite happy with, though of course it could always be improved. For the other two, I had set myself a small challenge. I only used a palette knife to paint, and I only used two blues, black, and white. I'm not entirely happy with them but I was glad to have worked on a new technique. -- To read specifically about my year abroad, please visit my side blog here.