Travel Plans

Today is the day: I'm leaving for Bali!!! Well...my flight is at 2 a.m. so technically it's tomorrow, but I'll go to the airport before midnight so I'm calling it today. The good thing about a flight that late (or that early depending on how you look at it) is that I'll be really tired so hopefully I can sleep for most of the flight.

It's a 12.5 hr flight to Taipei, Taiwan where I'll have a 4.5 hr layover, and then another 5 hr flight to Bali. With the time change, I'll end up arriving on Friday at 3:15 p.m.

Our training starts Sunday afternoon so I'll have a little bit of time to get acclimated and see some sites. There will be about 40 of us in the training and I don't know anyone. One of my favorite things is that people are coming from all over the world: San Francisco, New York, London, Prague, Berlin, Cairo, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, and more! Over the past month I've had fun chatting with some of the others on facebook so it will be fun to finally meet in person! Six of us are going to stay together the two nights before training starts in Seminyak, which is a beach town on the west side of the island. The training is near Ubud (central Bali) so it will be nice to hang out on the beach before heading inland.

Well I better get back to packing...I've been procrastinating all day. The laundry is done so that's a start, but now I need to actually figure out what to take. We will be living in a hotel and can have laundry done each week so that's nice. However, with all the different classes I'll probably end up changing multiple times a day, so I'll still need a lot of stuff. I will be rooming with another person...I don't know who yet...hopefully she will be a neat freak like me :) It will be like college all over again, yay!

I'll try to post when I get there. Hopefully I'll have a good internet connection but I won't really know until I'm there. Love to everyone - I'll miss you!

Philly

I wrapped up another trip to Philly. It was just a quick work trip - I wish I had more time to visit my family that lives nearby but unfortunately I didn't have any extra days to spare. Next time!

On Monday I was a panelist on two sessions of a compliance conference. They both went pretty well considering they were the last two sessions of a long day. I only saw one person sleeping...and in my defense she fell asleep during the person before me so I don't think it counts. LOL!

After the obligatory networking, I escaped to an evening yoga class at Philly Power Yoga. It was a cute little studio - there were maybe 25 people there. One guy was grunting like a tennis player, pretty hilarious. It was hard to keep a straight face, but I actually thought it was great that he could let go of inhibitions or caring what others thought and he just let it all out there. I think most of us, myself included, could stand to cut loose like that.

Other than that, I wandered around the historic downtown area. I'm going to nerd out and admit that it's pretty cool to walk the streets that John Adams, George Washington and other presidents used to stroll. In school if we had focused more on learning about the lives of historical figures instead of memorizing dates I would have appreciated (and remembered) it a lot more. Oh well, it's fun now :)

Here is the Liberty Bell - taken through the window because the building was closed. The same thing happened last year when my brother and I were here. At least this year I didn't get chased away by the security guard...I still claim innocence - not my fault that the gate happened to be open.



This was a cool sculpture that had words cut out in metal and then the light reflected the words onto the sidewalk and surrounding buildings.



Old paddle boat down at Penn's Landing. You can see Campbell's Stadium across the river - last year Carey (my brother) and I saw a Phillies game there.



I squeezed in a little bit of shopping before my flight home. This looks like a church but it's actually the inside of Macy's. They had someone there playing live organ music - a step up from the Nordstrom pianist I suppose. Macy's also had a 10% visitor discount for anyone traveling from out of state - random, but nice surprise.




Now it's time to get ready for Bali...I'll post about my travel plans next...

T-minus 1 week

One week from today I leave for yoga teacher training! I'm going to Bali which is going to be amazing!!! I think a lot of people hear Bali and imagine that I'm going to be on vacation just relaxing, doing yoga, and hanging out on the beach. Yes, I'll get to do those things, but most of my time will actually be a pretty intense schedule of learning. Yoga Alliance requires a minimum of 200-hrs in order to get a level 1 instructor certification and the program I am doing is over 300 hrs. The curriculum will include: techniques of yoga; teaching methodology; anatomy and physiology; yogic scripture, philosophy, ethics and lifestyle; group practicum and presentation skills.

Here is a sample "day in the life" of the teacher training:

6:00am – 7:00am	Meditation and Pranayama
7:00am – 9:00am	Vibrant Living Yoga Class
9:00am – 10:00am	Breakfast
10:00am – 1:00pm	Lecture, discussion, techniques.
1:00pm – 4:00pm	Lunch/Break
4:00pm – 6:00pm	Lecture, discussion, techniques, practicum, asana.
6:30pm – 7:30pm	Dinner/Break
7:30pm – 9:00pm	Satsang & special activities (guest lecture, film, kirtan)

If you want to read more, you can check out the Radiantly Alive web site.

In other exciting news, I have been working on my flexibility every day after class with extra stretching and today I did my splits on both sides!!! I haven't done that in probably 15 years so I'm super happy :)  

another one bites the dust

Well I added wheat and soy to my list of things I don't eat anymore. Turns out I'm allergic - who knew? It's been two weeks now since I cut them out and I'm feeling great! Luckily Seattle has tons of good gluten free options so it's easy to do here. My body is loving me - after a month of no sugar or alcohol and two weeks of no wheat or soy, I've lost 7 pounds! I have just over a week before I go to yoga teacher training so I'm excited that I'll be feeling my best when I get there.

I also found out I was deficient in vitamin B12 which wasn't surprising since a lot of vegans have low B12. What I discovered though is that B12 supplements can be made from two different sources: methylcobalamin or cyanocobalamin. From the research I did online (which of course is always reliable), I found that apparently the cyano- version has a small amount of cyanide. huh??? Um, none for me thanks. I'll take the methyl- version which is more bio-available for your body to use. My naturopath also mentioned that the B12 pills aren't digested well so she recommends taking drops instead. So there you go...more info than you probably need or want, but now you have it :)

no Labor, all play

Three day weekends are the best! That one extra day makes such a difference to have time both for activities and relaxing. Labor Day weekend is always bitter sweet as summer starts turning into fall, so we made the most of being outside. Friday we went to a BBQ at Marc's classmate's house. Marc is half way through his MBA program at the UW and his small group (of 5 people) is changing for the second half of the program. His group got together to celebrate as they go their separate ways. The best part about Marc being in school is getting student tickets for football and basketball! Saturday was the season opener against EWU and we were right in the middle of the Dawg Pack. It was a crazy game right down to the last few seconds when we barely pulled off the victory! Glad to get the win, but we'll have to do better next week if we want to have a shot against Hawaii.

Sunday and Monday we were up at Camano soaking in the sunshine. After multiple failed attempts over the past few years, we finally caught our first crab in the crab pot! I don't eat crab so I could care less, but Rob, Ka and Marc were pretty excited so I was happy for them. I had my fun at the farmers market and then got adventurous and threw an avocado on the BBQ. I just cut it in half and placed it faced down on the grill. Marc tried to talk me out of it because he thought it would end up melting and making a mess, but it actually turned out good! Even though it was a holiday weekend, there weren't too many boats out on the water. It's so peaceful up there - now I'm thinking about maybe getting a paddle board for next summer. So if anyone needs a birthday or Christmas idea for me...! :)

Sailing the world

Yesterday my brother was in town and we went to see an acrobatic boat show! A couple from France was in town performing two free shows at the Elliot Bay Marina over in Magnolia. Since 2004, Franck and Delphine have been performing acrobatic routines on their sailboat "La Loupiote" in different cities and marinas while sailing around the world. Quite an amazing life! They use the mast, boom, rigging and other parts of their sailboat to perform aerial acrobatics choreographed to music. It was a fun show to watch and it made me want to go take another trapeze class!

Girl's camping

This past weekend was our annual girl's camping trip - one of my favorite weekends of the summer! We had a small group this year because unfortunately a few people couldn't make it, but we still had a blast with just the four of us! We stayed at Ft. Ebey which is on Whidbey Island. Sonia and Anya drove down from Bellingham, and Yael and I came up from Seattle. The ferry ride to the Island was beautiful

However, when I reached the campsite, it was all fogged in and freezing cold. The girls jumped in my car and we set off to chase the sun. We drove into Oak Harbor and found a beach where we spent the afternoon.

 

When we returned to Ft. Ebey the sun was out so we had fun exploring the old bunkers and walking along the cliffside.

Thanks ladies for another fantastic weekend and I can't wait for our 10 year camping anniversary next summer!!!