What about....

No matter where in the world you live, life takes on a certain daily routine. For some that can be a comfort, for others it can be oppressive. When I leave the routine I start to miss it. When I have been in the routine too long I hate it. My routine has become pretty set. Yoga twice a week, runs 2 – 3 times a week, very long bike ride on Saturday divided by an hour of horseback riding in between. Work takes up the lot of my day. Cooking, cleaning, hanging out with friends and cleaning their kitchens takes up the rest. For the most part my life has become predictable. This is what I loved and hated about the village, it was predictably unpredictable. Not knowing what each day was going to be like was exciting and strenuous at the same time. This level of unpredictability is what attracts adrenaline junkies to high adventure sports, I am not calling village life a high adventure sport but somewhere between that and everyday living. As I have come to learn, Lusaka is much more predictable than I could ever imagine and the unpredictable stuff is just inconvenient, not exciting. So as you might be gathering from this long diatribe, I have been a bit bored as of late and uninspired to write. That was until our trip to South Luangwa. I feel rejuvenated now. It was a wonderful adventure and has made me happy to be back in my routine and my daily ponderings. Many subjects have been mentioned and forgotten about; I just wanted to give an update.

Grad School

Courtesy: http://www.newenglandmagazine.com/university-of-maine/ 

Several people (friends and family) have asked me about my plans for grad school; I kind of just stopped mentioning it. There were two schools I applied to, UMaine and UWashington. I got into both. I got no money from either. I resided to the fact that I would not go to grad school without the school offering money. UMaine has allowed me to defer my acceptance for a year, UWashington has not. An amazing professor at the University of Maine has taken on the task of finding funding for me so that I may be a grad student in his lab, he is going to nominate me for a first year student grant and is looking for other projects. He was even kind enough to say that finding money for me was his top priority, I am assuming this is not entirely true (he is a busy man) but so incredibly nice. UWashington has advised me to find my own source of funding as the Marine Resource Policy program is a professional degree and grants are not given to professional students. UMaine encourages students to work on a dual masters for marine resource policy coupled with marine biology, I am thinking of doing aquaculture instead of marine biology making me the first student with that combination (according to one of the grad students I emailed). UWashington found a dual masters unnecessary. I find the dual masters pertinent to combine policy and science. As you can probably guess by now UMaine has become my first choice. UWashington came in a distance last, besides being in a great city close to friends and family the university has nothing to offer me, which is unfortunate because it would have been so wonderful to be so close to friends and family again. It now looks like I will be starting school in September of 2012, which means I will need to find a way to make some money between October 2011 and Sept 2012, if you know anyone that is hiring please let me know…I can do anything, or learn anything.

Not drinking…Coffee or Booze

May 27th was the beginning of my 90 day challenge. I am 42 days in and still going strong. I love it actually. I wake up clear headed every day, except for days I forget to drink enough water and have a slight hangover, dehydrated feeling. My head is clear because I don’t need caffeine to reeve up my engines or overcome my two beer hangover. I miss the taste of coffee. Sometimes I really want a cup of coffee when I am struggling through the late morning or after lunch coma. A cold beer would have tasted so good with the pizza I had for dinner last night. But the feeling of being “clean” is so much better than temporary satisfaction. Having self-imposed rules is great, I don’t have to ponder if I really want a beer or not and usually giving in to the general consensus of the group to go ahead and have one. The answer is just straight no. From the to the end of a day, an evening, a party, a work day whatever it is, the answer is no thank you, tea, water, juice, coke? Turning down liquid lubricant does make a night of dancing hard on the knees however. When I was drinking the booze dulled the pain in my knees while I was cutting a rug on the dance floor and 2 am would sneak up on me weekend after weekend. Now I am luck to make it to midnight, if I go out at all, and if I do the rumba room is not the first place you will find me but more likely in the geriatric wing outside sipping tonic water talking to some random person about something unimportant.

Getting Fit

This is my friend Amy Sanford (yogi, runner and woman extraordinaire), I stole this from her facebook page, I hope she forgives me. I think this is such a beautiful picture and it gives me inspiration to keep at yoga no matter how inflexible I am!

One of the big reasons to give up coffee and booze was to lose weight. I am not sure that has actually worked. Yu Jin’s pancakes, Ruben’s pie, and Great-grandma’s cinnamon rolls might be playing a factor in that lack of weight loss but I don’t want to point fingers. I don’t work out as much as I used to in the village and well I simply just eat too large of portions. In an attempt at self-control I will have to focus on cutting back and cutting out sugar. The bad thing about drinking tea instead of coffee is the urge to put in a smidge of sugar into my tea which I never would of considered doing to coffee. I am really tempted to try decaf but I am not so sure how it will go over. Supposedly decaf isn’t entirely decaf and I don’t know if it will leave me feeling as dehydrated as regular coffee but without the pep in my step. In the mean time I still do yoga on Mondays and Fridays usually; run on Tuesdays, Thursdays and now Sundays; with a quick workout on Wednesday or just a day of rest. This schedule is not set into as I went to yoga tonight since we had a holiday on Monday and I was busy on safari.

Learning to ride

Believe it or not I get really scared to jump right into something that I thin could be potentially dangerous, like riding a horse. I like to ease into the activity and slowly learn every detail. As my confidence grows in the new activity so does my fearlessness. This is proving to be my methodology of learning to ride horses. I am afraid to fall of the horse while riding, get kicked by the horse when milling about, or something else I haven’t even yet imagined. I am starting to get a little more comfortable on my new friend Jill, but when we start trotting my legs start shaking and they start to hurt almost instantly. Just when you start to think your legs are strong enough you find a weakness. Building up these muscles will be the most challenging part to learning to ride. I am getting more comfortable sitting on top of the horse in a precarious saddle; I am just having a hard time keeping up with the rhythm of the horse because my legs get tired so quickly. I have another lesson this Saturday, hopefully it goes w

Whinnying Weekend

Fall is in the air. For those of you above the equator it is hard to imagine the cool weather, changing leaves, jackets and shawls we are experiencing here on the other side. In fact it is probably hard for those of you not on the African continent that it gets cold enough in Africa to even put on a jacket. It does. And the longer you are here the more clothes you put on when it is a freezing 65◦F. It actually might get colder than this, but I don't have a thermometer nor do I look up the weather on line. There is no need. It is the cold season; it will be cold in the mornings and evenings and warmish during the day. Layer to prepare. In the hot season it is simply HOT. In the rainy season it is rainy and HOT. Wear clothes for the hot weather and bring a rain coat. Since we are in the cold season, layering is the best option for dressing. But I am not meaning to write about the weather, even though this is my favorite time of year. I am meaning to write about adventures, clothes and pumpkins.

I finally did it! I started my next big learning project. Horseback riding! I have mention before this desire but only in passing. It kind of seemed like an arbitrary thing to want to do. But I took the plunge and got on the back of horse on Saturday. Unfortunately I have no photographs of this funtivity so you will just have to take my word for it that it actually happened. Saturday morning I woke up early to replace the tire tube on my bike, clean the bike chain and lube it up for the trek I was about to make. I packed myself a picnic lunch of cheese and crackers. Dug up my salaula (second hand) jeans and cut up long sleeve t-shirt I stole from my brother. I headed to my friends' house on my bike, riding for the first time in 9 months, and met up with my new riding partner. I will spare you the details of all the delays, but we were an hour late starting off for our destination. Somewhere in the midst of the delays my bike went from a smooth ride to completely dead weight, giving me a harder workout in 1 km than what the other 15 km offered. My buddy figured out the problem, I only know how to change a tired on my bike, and we took off up Leopards Hill Road towards Eastern Province. Because we were running late hitching to the country side seemed like the right decision. A canter truck carrying flatware to the American International School picked us up and took us part way. From the American School we carried on biking to where the tar road ends and the dirt road begins. We were looking for the second gate on the left after the tar road ended. All said and done we were only 10 minutes late but arrived very dirty and a little tired.



Picture by Ryan Keating. Thanks for the contribution!

  Patrick met us with a smile and laughing at the thought of us having ridden some 15 km out into the country to go horseback riding. Patrick is himself an avid biker, but not so much anymore because he has horses now. Turns out it only takes him 30 minutes to bike the distance that we had just come (it took us an hour and ten minutes including the dragging tire riding, fixing the dragging tire and the hitch). We got changed into our horse riding gear, I once again donned my bike helmet and we met our horses. Jill was the pregnant mama horse that I would be riding for the day. I can't remember the last time I was on a horse. Maybe high school. Maybe my birthday party in middle school when we went on a trail ride and my brother got knocked off of his horse. The saddles looked different. The horses didn't seem as tall. But I was still a little nervous. Ok maybe a lot nervous. I clambered on to Jill and sat awkwardly in my English style saddle feeling like an idiot sitting precariously on top of a horse in my snazzy bike helmet just waiting for the moment I was going to fall off. With me holding on for dear life on top of Jill, Evans led us to our lesson. Patrick stood in the middle of the kraal while Evans led Jill and I in circles letting us get used to each other. She actually couldn't be bothered. She was more concerned about the other horses passing by, whinnying at them every chance she got. After a while I got more comfortable on her and we moved on from the kraal to a yard that had obstacles. We were not ready for the obstacles. However, we were learning up-down-up-down movements to ride the horse in a standing trot. My god, were my knees and thighs killing me after 15-20mins of this, and yes my butt too. To rest these very unused body parts we went for a leisurely walk through the woods. And then the lesson was over. It went really fast. It wasn't quite an hour. But we were late to begin with and I was tired by the end of the lesson. Buddy and I sat on the steps of the equestrian shop eating our picnic lunches. Buddy's girlfriend packed him a lovely lunch of a toasted sandwich, carrots, tortilla chips and walnuts. My cheese and crackers paled in comparison. It was beautiful out though and so nice to have a rest before heading back. The ride back only took 50 minutes, door-to-door. An afternoon nap was in order to rest up for people coming over for dinner and to meet up with the "British Chicks" for an evening of dancing, and no drinking for me.

On Sunday I was up early to get the house back in order and to do laundry before people were coming over to meet up with the tailor Winnie we have recently commissioned to realize our fashion dreams. Alex, Ruben and I had an impromptu and awkward fashion show for all the guests. (Sorry there are no pictures of us in the outfits, it was really uncomfortable having people stare at us that were not participating. At least I know now that I don't have the stomach, in more than one way, for modeling as my future career). But here are the clothes I had made: 2 skirts, a wrap top, and a long dress.



New additions to my wardrode: two skirts, a dress and sleevless blouse.

 Before everyone came over Ruben and I were busy making pumpkin pie, cinnamon rolls and pumpkin soup (I suppose this could be the other reason I don't have a stomach for modeling!). Geoff and Ruben had both bought pumpkins while up country, traveling for work. I boiled Geoff's pumpkin donation down the other day after making roasted pumpkin for dinner. Ruben's pumpkins were used for making the pies, mine was far too watery and stringy. Mine made a fantastic soup though. It was a day full of pumpkin. Pumpkin pie for lunch. Pumpkin soup for dinner.



My pumpkin pie





Pumpkin Soup

 It was a very successful and productive weekend. Hope the week is as good as the weekend was.

Horses.

I need something more in my life right now. My mother would probably suggest that a boyfriend/husband/kids are the missing ingredients and she has a point. But for the time being those ingredients are hard to come by so I will have to explore other options. As you might have read, I recently gave up booze and coffee for a variety of reasons. Loosing weight was a major incentive (for the booze), plus I felt like that was all I was doing. Going out on weekends, staying out late and dancing. Its fun occasionally, not every weekend. The coffee was because I was way too addicted and that has become apparent with my moodiness this week.

To find fulfillment elsewhere I have decided that horseback riding is going to be my next new hobby. After doing some investigating and accusing random women of looking like a "horsewoman" I finally have an "appointment" to meet with a teacher tomorrow. Patrick, a lovely gentlemen on the phone. He couldn't take my phone number down because he was on a horse...using a cellphone. When I mentioned that I was thinking of riding my bike out to where he teaches (maybe 25k from my house) he got a real kick out of the thought of that, I suppose you could say he was laughing at me on the phone. Rightfully so, I haven't ridden a bike since sometime last August and now I want to go 50k round trip. Ha. I am going to be dead tomorrow. And, suffering from a sever lack of coffee.