Mardi Gras 2021

Mardi Gras is the ultimate street party – at least in a normal year. In 2021, with travel restrictions, lockdowns, and social distancing, traditional floats and dancing are out of the question. But creative people will always find an outlet, as in these uniquely 2021 Mardi Gras celebrations.

7 Virtual Mardi Gras Events

New Orleans: House floats / Yardi Gras

Guadeloupe: TV and radio programming

If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out my photos from Nice Carnaval 2013.

And as always, I have multilingual vocabulary for my fellow language lovers:

Mardi Gras

Introducing … Lawless Italian!

After many visits to Italy and years of thinking about creating an Italian site – but failing to actually, you know, learn Italian – I’ve gone ahead and created Lawless Italian. By drawing on my French and Spanish knowledge, I’m able to read over various Italian lessons and create my own.

But since this is certainly not guaranteed to be error-proof, for the first time I’m collaborating with another person, who reads everything I write to make sure that I have understood the uniquely Italian concepts and created appropriate examples. She’s also making the sound files, which is something I hate doing in any language – so that’s an extra bonus!

Anyway, enough chit chat. Interested in learning Italian? Head on over to Lawless Italian – ci vediamo!

Lawless Italian

Green Heron, Blackbirds in Guadeloupe

We are visited by tons of birds every day: large numbers of birds and many different species. While we see blackbirds and at least two different kinds of doves every day, this green heron is only an occasional visitor, so I feel lucky to have gotten him on video, however briefly.

Rare sighting of a beautiful green heron, plus lots of blackbirds, including a youngish one squawking constantly to be fed.

A Quick Update

Hello visitors! As you can see, I’m terrible about keeping this blog up to date, but here’s a quick update …

Since I live in Guadeloupe, which is part of France, I’ve been in lockdown for over a week. But it makes no real difference to me since I work at home and rarely go out anyway. 🙂

I’m still working away on my sites (French, Spanish, English, veggie).

I do quite a bit of cooking and have a vague notion of maybe doing some videos one of these days. Still waiting for my kitchen floor to be finished before I can even consider doing that safely.

Other than that, I’ve been learning Greek (off and on) for a couple of years, and spend part of the last two summers in Athens, which was incredible. I was planning to return this summer but of course now that looks extremely unlikely.

That’s it for now. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home!

An Iguana Tail Tale

Iguana in a flowering tamarind treeThis is the story of an iguana in Guadeloupe. Iguanas come and go on our property – some we recognize for a while then never see again, while others are anonymous creatures that we never get to know. Sometimes they wander in our front door – and then usually get freaked out when they see us and hide in ridiculously small gaps behind appliances and furniture for a day or more, then sneak out when the coast is clear. Other times we barely spot them racing across the driveway or hanging out on the periphery. Generally speaking, they are extremely shy (though there are exceptions). Despite their sometimes fearful appearance, iguanas would much rather take flight than fight. Continue reading →

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