la pura vida

This past week has gone by terribly slowly. I've decided I'm not the type of person that can be unemployed because I waste many hours on the computer. I have been practicing some yoga for exercise and centering myself and reading for mental stimulation, but my life is still pretty mundane while I wait for May to arrive. I will be leaving for Peru May 13. It was the only ticket I could purchase with airline miles which means they are pretty brutal flights. I leave at 6am and arrive Lima at 930pm only to spend the night in the airport and catch a 5am flight to Iquitos. I have been thinking a lot about Iquitos and my anxiety has dissolved. I'm very excited to the point of literally dreaming about it every night. There are still a lot of unknowns that I will have to work out before the term begins. I need an apartment and I have to meet with the professors I will be assisting. To be quite candid, I don't know the first thing about teaching English as a foreign language and I can assure you this will be a bumpy ride.

In the meantime, my mom and I are planning a last-minute trip to Costa Rica. 7 nights and 8 days of vacation..YES! :) She needed an escape before she starts her new job and I just want to travel, travel travel! We contemplated Puerto Rico because the tickets were dirt cheap, but decided Costa Rica would be well worth the extra couple hundred dollars. In discussing this trip we are discovering how different our styles of travel are. We have only been abroad together once, to Europe, which was when I was in high school and she still paid my way. Oh, the tragedy of growing up. Money will be a sensitive subject for me since I only have a fixed amount and need to avoid frivolous expenditures. It's also difficult to conceptualize this Costa Rica trip since Iquitos is very inexpensive and my mind has been wrapped around that place. The idea of staying in $100+ hotels in Costa Rica seems ridiculous when you can get the same thing in Iquitos for $15-20. I'm trying to figure out how to do the traveling I want without seeing the numbers in my bank account drop! Any tips?

Ok, slightly random and silly note...I was in the Burlingame newspaper. Front page with a huge picture! See the article here: http://www.theburlingamedailynews.com/article/2008-4-19-dog



So I'm venturing out and testing Bikram yoga. The nice thing about Bikram is a) the heat that I've become addicted to through CorePower yoga and b) the same postures and sequence every time make it easy to monitor improvement and translate into a home practice. I enjoyed the classes although I did miss the chaturungas that have finally given my ballet body some arm strength. For an artistically minded person, I found these Bikram classes to be a bit on the militaristic side with an elitist air. I'm not sure if that is a product of the teachers or the style itself. Nonetheless, my muscles are sore today--one of the best feelings in the world.

Other than planning for the future when my 'yogic wisdom' tells me to be present, my mom and I had a great weekend. Saturday night we caught some great live music, had some beers, went to a piano bar and then hopped over to a local bar where we ran into some of her friends. Despite a mild hangover, we got up early Sunday and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast while listening to people speak Spanish. We played with the dogs for a bit then did some shopping. I found a fabulous bright green dress that I thought of for the graduation party in Peru. It was Betsey Johnson and fit me perfectly, but alas..I sadly left it on the rack. (I'm already going to stand out ridiculously, do I really want a dress the color of a traffic light?)

That's all for now. Check back in a couple weeks for pictures of Costa Rica!!!

Much love.