Catching up

I had a great chat with Naomi last night--our first real conversation (besides email and chat, of course) since I left for Russia! So fun to talk with her and get caught up on everything! It was fun to be able to hear what is going on with her back in Los Angeles and to update her on some of my crazy stories here! When I got home, I told Irina that I had been talking to one of my friends in LA, and it suddenly struck me how far away LA...isn't. Technology is an amazing thing! Funny how our talk felt like I was just calling as usual from my downtown LA apartment to her West Hollywood one (even though we've both moved since!).

Then this morning I caught Tabby on line and she filled me in on pretty much the passed 2,000 years history of the middle east. She is such a doll! I love talking with her and getting her perspective on things. I was really grateful for her willingness to share her thoughts with me--I have always felt a little bit shaky with my knowledge of current events in the middle east. I am taking a class on news media and foreign policy this fall which focuses heavily on the middle east, so I asked her advice on how to get a good feel for what is going on there. She was so helpful!

So I spent a lot of today reading up on different things on that area of the world, finally watched ALL of Obama's middle east speech in Egypt, and then read up on the freemasons (hey, you find some pretty random stuff doing different searches on wikipedia!)