Almost dusted off

At last I'm on week 2 of the final promised land of Brazil peace and quiet and recuperation from crazy new york double yoga studio manager life. We finally moved into our apartment around the second week of August, and for another month proceeded to live with the construction work. We were so desperate to sleep in our own bed and get off the floor at Max's (the bugs in the country were starting to make us crazy) that we didn't even consider much less anticipate what a pain in the ass it was going to be to live in a torn up apartment with all the construction dust.

We did crazy renovations on our apartment and all of our stuff finally arrived out of hawk from the port in the midst of this (a lost of wheeling and dealing and under-table payments finally procured it), and amazingly, everything arrived from the container in one piece, nothing broken!


It truly is amazing, because as you can see from this picture, some highly unskilled workers at the port schlepped, no, threw, all of our stuff out of the container so that a custom's official could inspect it to make sure we weren't drug smugglers or something. But after C waited around all day with our stuff baking in the sun (thank god no rain) the custom's officer never showed up and they schlepped, no, volleyed, it all back into the container. Still can't believe nothing broke.

BUT I have since managed to break quiet a number of things (including my new ipod -- can't even write it without getting nauseous) as I shuffled them around from room to room in a desperate but failed attempt to keep one step ahead of the construction dust.

Anyway, they wrapped up the renovations just last week, and I was finally able to start unpacking! A mere, 4 months, after I finished sealing up the last box! Here's some before and after pictures of the renovations so you can see just what madness there was to this whole thing.


Can't say I've really delved into Brazilian life here. And just when things are starting to resemble something of a normal pattern, we're coming back for almost a month.

So I've been lazy about working on Portuguese, (and C is no help here, mr. 17 years in the states english speaker) -- but I'm my own worst enemy...when the internet is working well, I've been listening to NPR.... which actually started out in the good conscious that I was desperate to be informed as to what the hell was going on there in the wake of the hurricane -- the last one, not the upcoming one. What a heartbreaking infuriating mess.

I've been practicing yoga and noticing how much my practice changes when I'm not doing it around a teaching schedule. So much of it for me in the past was geared towards discovering things in the practice so that I could teach them. Now it's becoming more about discovering them just for the sake of discovery. And my practice is a lot slower and gentler. I've kind of lost interested in getting to the hardest poses. It's also a lot harder to keep focused when you have nothing but your own noisy head to contend with!

I've been getting a chance to catch up on reading (I just finished a Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving today. Have you ever read it? One of the first good reads I've had in a while that made me literally laugh out loud and sob like a baby.) Yes, I know, I should be reading in Portuguese, and not English newspapers or books, but... well, I just hate making it seem like a SHOULD, like I should take my medicine.. and not a natural desire...

But I am definitely planning on getting a teacher when we get back. We'll be getting into New York on Oct. 4th and staying until after the concert on the 23rd. Not sure what date we'll fly out on exactly, but given how expensive it's going to be for us to be in New York, it will probably be pretty shortly after. Can’t wait to see everyone!