I just finished making an apple crisp and juicing three and a half litres of veggies and thought I would take a few moments to update the blog. I considered watching more “human misery” shows on TLC, as Jack likes to call them (ahem, My Strange Addiction, Hoarding: Buried Alive, and Extreme Cheapskates, ahem) but thought I would be slightly more productive this afternoon. This past month has been helpful in the R&R category of goals for my sabbatical. I have indeed been sleeping in, and watching mindless, entertaining shows which I’ve enjoyed a lot! Ian asked me the other day if I was bored, and I said, heck no! I enjoying vegging and get to watch these shows guilt free. Haha. 🙂

In any case, since I got my visa to India, I have been planning the trip. I will be volunteering with an organization called IDEX (India Development Exchange) in Jaipur for four weeks. I’ll be in Delhi for a week of training first, and I’m looking forward to that. Then I’ll be heading to Nepal for four weeks, and things are still up in the air as to what I’ll be doing there. Originally I was going to continue volunteering for IDEX there, but now I’m interested in doing a journalism-related volunteer placement. I haven’t heard from any of the papers I contacted yet, so I don’t think that will go through. For safety reasons, Ian wants me to continue with IDEX but I kind of want to venture out on my own and get to know Kathmandu. We’ll see! Then, I’ll be heading to Bhutan for five days and am in the process of setting that up. The only way to get in is to go through a tour company, so I’m dealing with one now and working on getting a visa for there as well.

On the reading side, I decided to finally start on my reading list. I’ll be starting with 419, by Will Ferguson and hoping to have it completed before I take off on Feb. 15. I’ll be bringing Book of Negroes, Unaccustomed Earth (thanks Charlene!) and Bridget Jones with me on my travels to keep me company. I’ll be back with the reviews. 🙂

And, lastly, on the photography side of things, I was in Milton for my niece’s second birthday on the weekend and got to practice with the new camera. A friend has the same camera and showed me a setting called “creative auto,” which I absolutely love! It does cool things without the photographer knowing too much technical stuff. (That reminds me, I should also be reading my Canon Rebel for Dummies book!) I have to say, I loooove my camera. It is a major step up from all the cameras I’ve ever had and I looove the creative auto function. Here are a few samples that I thought were pretty neat. I used the standard CA with a blurred background. They worked well on “portrait”-like photos.

I’m off to do some reading. Hope everyone is keeping warm!!

–Bea