Versatile Blogger Award

This post, exceptionally, will be in English, to thank Kelly who nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award.

Am I really versatile? Maybe, I talk about various subjects. Mostly I am new to the game, since I created my blog less than a month ago, and I feel fairly proud to have been chosen like that by a good friend.

I am happy to nominate in my turn the blogs I most enjoy reading for the Versatile Blogger Award!
Here are the 15 blogs and bloggers I wish to nominate myself:

1) A great thank you to Kelly, whose blogs I follow since I opened my Twitter account, a year ago. I admit I was glad she moved back from Asia to Archaeology, because it is my favorite subject.
Lots of original ideas and interesting facts in her brilliant blog
The Archaeology of Tomb Raider

2) I want to nominate in priority
El Chilam Balam
I would not have called this wonderful site a blog myself, but as its Maya editor do, what can I say? I find deeply interesting and enjoyable his posts about the Mayas from yesterday and today, and I am proud to have recently been recruited to translate the blog in French.

3) I have several excellent other blogs about Mexican or Maya archaeology or civilization to recommend:
- Mexique Ancien by Bertrand Lobjois
- The Mayanist, a blog from the USA
- Ancient MesoAmerica News Updates by Erik Boot (Leyden)
- Maya News Updates by Erik Boot
- Mayistas, a collective blog in Spanish
- Literatura y mundo maya by the Mexican writer and researcher Claudio Obregón Clairin

4) I want to nominate also two exceptional blogs dealing specifically with Maya epigraphy:
- Maya decipherment, the blog by David Stuart
- Maya Glyph Blog, the blog by Erik Boot

5) Last but not least, here are blogs by my Maya friends
- Literatura maya, both in Yucatec Maya and in Spanish, by the Maya writer Feliciano Sánchez Chan
and two fascinating personal blogs,
- Un poco de agua, by José Natividad Ic Xec
- Zafnat-panea, by Carlos Hampshire

6) I can't end this list without alluding to my old passion for Greece and Egypt and nominating also these two excellent blogs
- Graeco Muse
- Egyptiana emporium

If you have just been nominated for the award and want to do as I deed,
- thank the person who nominated you and include a link to his or her blog
- select the 15 blogs you like most and want to nominate, including in your post the link to the blogs
- share 7 facts about yourself with the bloggers you nominated
- don't forget to give the link to the Versatile Blogger Award, and, optional, add the blog button to your blog...

And I must not forget to let you know me a little better!  Here are these 7 facts I want to tell you:

1) As the title of my blog shows, I love owls, any kind of owl, big or small, from everywhere in the world. Some dear memories about owls: the tawny owl that lived near my home not so long ago, and that I met in person; the Asian owl in a sweet movie that was a fisher (I love eating fish); the huge eagle owl in the nature reserve of the Zwin, with which I had a long conversation...

2) I can't have an owl as a pet... In fact I don't have a pet at all (no time, too many traveling, allergy). But at the moment I am fascinated by the big animals from the Mexican jungle that I read about: the rattlesnake carrying the Maya calendar written on its back, the lovely peccary, the impressive and beautiful jaguar...

3) I have fed on ancient languages. All my life I taught Greek and Latin, and even a little Egyptian. I specialized in the Isiac Cults, and Isis with her sistrum had no secret for me... But that was in another life: now I am more interested in the Maya glyphs.

4) I like modern tongues and literature. I talked reasonably well Italian, but I am trying to forget it so as not to mix it up with Spanish... I publish translations from English and Spanish, and I love it! I even dare now to translate TO English and Spanish (see my blog): be indulgent please!!! A few years ago I learned Dutch, and participated in workshops for literary translation, mostly poems from the Netherlands: a fascinating experience...

5) As you have already guessed, I am a pure "highbrow": I like nothing more than to be seated in front of books, papers and the computer, with good classical music. Not many outdoors activities for me... However, I enjoy long walks, either in town (Paris, Brussels), or in the countryside, and I like swimming, slowly but lengthily.

6) I am a town girl, being born in Paris. But as soon as I spent time in the country, I loved it. When we first came where I live now (25 km from Paris), I saw a man ploughing with a horse, right in front of our house!!! And there were strawberry fields everywhere... Things have changed a lot!

7) I have been fascinated by Latin America since I was very young: I dreamed about Peru when I was 8, I studied the Aztecs at 12. But now that I have discovered the Maya civilization, have Maya friends  in the Yucatán and am learning Yucatec Maya, I fell fulfilled and it is not going to change...