It's the small things that keep you going...

For example, a box of Hobnobs in the middle of the day. Or seeing the top eight tennis players in the world at the Women's Tennis final. Or seeing Robert DeNiro at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Sometimes, a good Hobnob is all you really need. But other times, catching a glimpse of Robert DeNiro at the DTFF is where it's at. Check and check. The last few weeks have been busy as usual with teaching the small ones the next few letters, "f-f-farm!" (Why are we teasing them with farms? That's like saying "s-s-snow!" or "c-c-cloud!" to these children) and "g-g-garden!" (Again, what? Who wrote this textbook?) But my extracurricular life is finally filled as well. Doha is a nice place to live but it's not exactly the busiest city in the world (there is one museum and no library). Generally our fun comes from browsing the shopping malls...how very Gulf of us. But finally, some things to do...all in the same weekend. Rather unfortunate but beggars can't be choosers I suppose, and at this point, I am ready to beg for entertainment. The films showing throughout the weekend were fantastic. I saw four (there were 51 but they all played in four days and generally only after 8 pm and that doesn't fly with my 5 am wake up time sooo) and three of them were incredible. The opening and closing nights were free and opening night was a film called Hors la Loi, (Outside the Law) and was about three Algerian brothers living in Parisian slums during the Algerian Revolution. You would think that after that thing known as my thesis I would never want to hear about Algeria again, but it was just enough time away to LOVE the film. Not exactly brimming with sunshine but very well done.

And sometimes, kids really DO say the funniest things. I took my glasses off to polish them on my shirt last week and suddenly all the kids started laughing hysterically. I put them back on and they go "Off! Off! Better off." THANKS KIDS. Here I was thinking I had no reason to be impressing anyone, and the three year olds are suddenly beauty critics. Today, I wore my contacts just to give them a thrill. It was like my own personal Halloween.