Spring is finally here!!

Spring is here! Over the past few weeks Winter and Spring have been teeter-tottering back and forth and finally, while we were away, Winter fell off and Spring planted it's feet firmly in the ground. Yesterday the temperature got up to around 15! Amazingly, there is still quite a bit of snow in the park (and ice) but most of the roads and sidewalks are all clear... though in many places the snow has been substituted by mud and, like I said before, the underlying garbage has been revealed. It's not everywhere but empty lots, bus stops, sidewalks, and most open areas that don't seem privately owned are littered with garbage... it's gross. I'm wondering, who cleans this up?! Someone has to... right? I also wonder how long it would take for all of the collected garbage to replace itself - probably pretty quickly. Anyways, we had such a great time in Athens seeing friends, being busy with full days and being back in a positive, vibrant culture, that the weekend high was followed by a mini-low. It only lasted for a day... finally the weather here is better and with the daylight savings time change, it is light until around 8 AND we only have one month left! And two weeks left in season! Crazy. We're still not sure what we're going to do after volleyball is done, but we have to wait until we know that they won't make playoffs to plan anything.

I had run out of books by the time we made it to Athens, so picked up a few from Carla (thank you!!) and also visited a fantastic English bookstore there where I bought Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It was amazing... it was one of those books that made me want to forego sleeping and read until I could read no more, until I had finished the book. I'd definitely reccommend it, and I'll be sure to check out her other novel when I get home.

On the subject of books... today is Internation Children's Book Day... and I loooove children's books. This section of the library or bookstore is potentially as dangerous as the fiction section (or the cookbooks section or wait.... as all of the other sections) ... I could do a lot of damage... and I don't even have kids! April 2nd is Hans Christian Anderson's birthday, and because of his indelible contribution to the world of reading and stories, this specific day was chosen to celebrate and inspire a love of reading, and children's books in particular. I found out about this special day on Wikipedia, where there was a link to a Children's Books page... where there is a list of of "Popular Contributions to Children's Literature" - it makes me want to go back and read some of my favourites - Jane Yolen, E.E Nesbitt, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume... and so many more. Yum, books.