Yoga!!!

Finally, after nearly two months, I made it to yoga this morning!! I was really sad that it didn't work out for me to go during the whole month of January. The teacher I love only teaches two days, Mondays and Thursdays and after classes started I can only go on Thursday.

I have a hard time, actually, it's impossible for me to work out by myself. After I purchase this ADHD course I've been implementing little things here and there to make me a more productive person, so I have been doing stretching exercises (basically yoga poses) to strengthen my lower back practically every night before bed, which is great. I know I can also work out and be more active in a consistent manner, but I'm not there yet, I'm trying little by little. In the meantime, I will continue to try to go to at least one yoga class a week.

My yoga teacher is AMAZING! There isn't one class in which she doesn't have us do at least one pose of a modification of a pose that is 100% new to me. I have been going to her classes for five years now, and even though I don't go as often as I'd like (I really cannot afford it, I wish I could!), I know for sure that she's always learning and adding more poses to her own practice and she plans her classes very carefully. It's truly a gift to do yoga under her guidance.

In any case, I enjoyed every minute of it and I'm going to try my best not to be so sedentary. I'm truly in horrible shape! (I'll try to share more about that later).

P.S. Thanks for your supportive comment to my previous post, What Now? I don't think it's a school thing at all, my colleague was just being "hirself." Sigh... I should have known better and not done the presentation. It's ok, and I defended myself from the very beginning of our talk, since this particular class is NOT representative of how most of my classes go, so I'm not really in the wrong. It was just annoying to have to sit there and be preached to by this person who is younger and more inexperienced than I am and who actually doesn't do anything for the program except chime in once in a while to say what I should do -- which I actually appreciate, even though it's much more work for me. In Spanish, everything, syllabi, exams, everything but individual classes/lessons is planned by "higher ups" so the graduate students and lecturers can teach uniformly. Thankfully, s/he says s/he's not required to share the evaluation with anyone, it's just between hir and me -- it's not part of the dossier they send to the dean for my renewal. That is good!

5 Excellent Exercises to Prevent Back Pain -- "bookmark" :-)

I'm embedding this video here as a bookmark because I want to be able to easily go back to these exercises! I should totally do this more often, or save links by writing blog posts. In any case, I'm pretty new to exercising regularly, so I guess I will learn more effective ways to do it as I go along! I found this video in a Time magazine "newsletter" article about Leg Cramps! They also have a good video about the benefits of jumping rope which I'm not embedding here.

Week 4: Exercising and Helping Refugee Family

This has been the most intense week yet, bordering CRAZY intensive!

And I just had to create two new labels: Exercising and Helping/Volunteering. The second one is already a HUGE part of my life as you may recall from last year's post about my "'indiscriminate and reckless' helping," but this year the helping is quite difference and more practical.

OK, so thanks to my friends Laura & Cali I worked out SIX DAYS this week, starting Sunday, and for four days (Sunday to Wednesday) we did it at SEVEN IN THE MORNING! I never, ever, EVER even wake up at 7 am, only when I'm in a trip and have to. I'm a night owl, so I love sleeping in. I did, it though! And I've enjoyed working out a lot. It's mostly Barre led by our friend Laura, mixed with some Pop Physique (yesterday and today we actually did it with Pop Physique DVDs).

Starting Monday, I began to make and drink a green leaves (Kale, Collard greens) + frozen fruit + orange juice smoothie after I got home because I need the calcium. I am bound to have osteoporosis, given my slight frame and the fact that my mom has it really bad, so I need to do this: strength training (Time magazine from last week) and calcium rich foods.

I was really tired on the first few days, particularly because I didn't sleep much one one of the nights, but I've been getting enough sleep and also taking my medication some days (Wednesday and today), which helps with staying alert. I'm glad that many of our friends have been joining us in exercising, so I think that I'll be able to exercise a lot and be in incredible shape by the time we travel to Florida. This will be the first time in my life that I'll actually be pretty fit at the beach!!

I also helped the newly arrived refugee family this week a lot. They are from Congo (but lived in a refugee camp in Rwanda for the past 17 years) and have six kids, aged 20 to 6 years old. Last Saturday I drove them home from church (in a large 15 people van -- I hated driving it) and spent time with them walking to a local park (after we gave them a used soccer ball). Then I visited them Tu, Wed. and Thu. On Wednesday I also went grocery shopping for them, in addition to helping them learn how to use the cleaning products in the house and trying to teach them how to use a washer and drying (they still can't do it on their own).

Everything is new for them and they don't speak the language (only the dad speaks some French), so it's overwhelming both for them and for me. I hope to write more about this later, I need to go clean my house now, it's a wreck! (also because my husband has been working like crazy with summer teaching and we've been watching movies too).