Summer Weekends and Belated FMM

I had a wonderful summer weekend. A day spent up island and Shawnigan Lake and another day spent lazing in my friend’s sunny backyard while we celebrated her 30th. As much as spring and fall are my favourite seasons, summer definitely does have its moments.

I made sure to go for a swim while up at Shawnigan (in amongst drinking the incredibly strong drinks our family friend poured. I don’t think the man knows what a short glass is) and it reminded me that a) swimming really is an awesome workout and b) I really love lake swimming. There’s not much left of summer but I’m motivated to try and make it out to Thetis for a few morning swims. (Early is the key for Thetis before the crowds descend on it.)

I was back to my scheduled workouts this morning and got a rude reminder halfway through my run why you should always make sure you're well hydrated. Both my calves cramped up and felt like they had turned into rocks. I stretched them out by walking the second run section but let this be a reminder to you: as much as you feel like hitting snooze, get up and drink that pint of water you planned on before going for a run!

Yesterday was Friend Makin’ Monday (guidelines here).

The theme was letter to your future self and as much as it made me giggle to contemplate leaving:
Dear Future Self,
I hope you got your shit together.
Sincerely,
Me
I figured a proper response with some thought behind it was the appropriate thing to do (no matter how much I like to giggle). As a result, I’m a day late but some thought actually went into this so I guess it was worth the wait.

Dear Me-Sometime-In-the-Future (let’s say 10 years),

I’m not going to lie, I’m struggling to be the person I know you deserve me to have been but I hope that you’re happy with where we ended up. Remember that 10 years ago from when I write this, this is not where I thought I would be either but the journey’s been awesome so I’m happy with it.

I hope the adoption went relatively smoothly. What country did we end up deciding upon? I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a West African Country to open up their adoption laws so you can keep the child immersed in their culture through Mohammed, Manimou, N’nato, Abouboucar and the extended MoonDance family. How about the possible plans for a second adoption? Yeah? Nay? Still debating?

I hope you’re the regular multi-day hiker that I want you to become. That’s something I always assumed I would become as a child, and it’s a dream that I don’t want to give up on. Not yet. Not until my knees give in. Or my back. Or some other required body part. And have we climbed Meru yet? Or at least made plans to head back that way?

Did we ever run that marathon? Even more important, did we travel somewhere for a really awesome marathon? I'm keeping my fingers cross that we've done the Drei Laender marathon. I mean, come on. Three countries in one race? Kind of awesome! Built in excuse to hangout with the Hostettlers, Fuchs and Villigers? All awesome!

This is Bodensee (or Lake Constance) that you run part way around for the Three Country Marathon.

My friend's adorable boys are not included in the race package.

And you know how much I love the apartment I’m in right now but please, please tell me you’ve got yourself sorted and have a house (rented or otherwise) with a yard and that you’ve gotten a chocolate lab from the SPCA and named him (or her) Murphy. Because Murphy is just the perfect name for a chocolate lab and beer drinkers will get the joke. Scratch him behind the ears for me. Oh, and maybe make some of those treats that Ian said Thompson loved so much. Don’t argue with me, just do it. And don’t let him terrorize the cats too much (if they’re still around in 10 years).

Doesn't the Chocolate Lab look like a tall pint of Murphy's?

Please don’t have lost your amazement at the wonders of the natural world. Does thunder still make you smile? Do pictures of lava flows still excite you? Does a starry night still take your breath away? Please say they do.

And please tell me that you still sing to yourself when you think no one can hear you and that you bust out the dance moves when the feeling strikes you. Don’t worry about embarrassing your children when you do this in front of their friends. You grew up with your dad doing that and you survived. So will they. In fact, it might even help to make them even more awesome.

Also, have you single-handily negotiated peace in the Middle East yet? No? You should get on that. I’m too busy to deal with it right now.

Sincerely,
Me (from 10 years ago, which is really right now when I write this, but not when you read it, you know what? I’m just going to assume that we’re all on the same page with this and close these parentheses.)

Tackling the Healthy Living Mountain

Normally I'd do a little ramble prior to starting the Friend Makin' Monday but today's topic excites me and deserves it's own post because I get to talk about my favourite subject: ME! Tanzania (and travel). So, without further ado, it's FMM!

Guideline: Answer the question on your blog, link to it in the comments over at All The Weigh and then comment on other peoples. So simple the Geico Gecko could do it!

FMM: Defining Moments

Was there a defining moment in which you realized that you needed to lose weight? If so, will you elaborate? (If you experienced this moment in some other area of your life, please feel free to share that too!)

My plane touched down at Kilimanjaro International Airport at 10:30pm. Once we left the lights of the airport, the absolute darkness of the place hit me. There were no street lamps and the only thing we could see was what as illuminated by the headlights of the Landrover. I thought the excitement of my first day would keep me awake but after two days of travel to get there, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Kara and my shared room until the volunteer quarters were completed. (I was the far bed.)

My first real look at my surroundings was the next morning when I rolled out of bed at 6:00am. I groggily wandered my way up to the Baby Home (fancy word for orphanage) for my first day of work. The first thing I saw was Mt. Meru beyond the compound walls.

Hand's down, this is the picture that most makes me ache for Tanzania.

Meru in the background, Baby Home on the right.

Every morning I looked at Mt. Meru as I made my way to the Home and I'd smile. It was my morning ritual. Even once we moved into the volunteer quarters and could cut into the home through the back door, I still walked the long way around so I could see Meru. It became my mountain. I searched for it from bus windows when returning from my holidays. I stared at it while contemplating life over a Coca baridi (coke cold). I wondered what the view was like from the top. While tourists to Tanzania talk about wanting to climb Kilimanjaro, I dreamed of Meru. For the first time in my life, I had to choose not to do something specifically because of my weight.

View of Meru from Deb's house. Her property ends at the start of Arusha National Park.

The kicker is that there is a very good chance I could have climbed Kilimanjaro but Meru was definitely beyond me. Kilimanjaro is not a physically difficult hike but it's a high hike. I am not saying it's a walk in the park, you still need to be relatively fit, but 90% of the time it's the altitude that does people in. If you have altitude experience and/or you take it slowly, you'll probably succeed.* Meru, however, is a difficult hike. The snob in me knew that for climbers, there's more climbers cred (if that actually exists) in saying you've done Meru than Kilimanjaro. This is one time I wanted to be a snob.

Mt. Meru and Jacaranda from roof top bar in Arusha during a day off.

When you summit Meru, you do it just before sunrise and then watch the sun rise over Kilimanjaro. I longed to do that. I still long to do that. And then I'll hug the ground and whisper sweet nothings to my mountain. You think I'm joking but I probably will do just that.

Unless there happens to be a nest of siafu near by. In that case, I'll whisper sweet nothings from the safety of my hiking booted feet. I've been bitten by them and they hurt!!

Every once and awhile, when I get into a 'why bother?' mood, I pull out my pictures of Meru and go through them. I honestly don't know if I'll ever get back to Tanzania (there's just so many awesome places I want to go to) but I want to know that if I do, I won't have to let Mt. Meru pass me by again.

Sunset on Meru

*My biggest piece of advice for climbing Kilimanjaro is this: each day you spend on the mountain raises the cost of the hike by a ridiculous amount (park fees alone are $100 per person for a 24 hour period) BUT it also greatly increases your chance of making it to the top. If you do not have a lot of altitude experience, take your time and choose a longer route. You may balk at the extra money the longer route costs but if you don't summit, then all your money will have been for nought.

If My Unmarried Biological Mother Hadn't Gotten Knocked Up...

I've just returned from my completely unplanned over-a-week-long non-blogging holiday. In short, oops! I'd love to say that the lack of blogging was due to being insanely busy and always on the go and just not having enough time to sit down and put pen fingers to paper keyboard, but I've already admitted elsewhere that this is not the case.

I even missed this week's Friend Makin' Monday... which is okay because the question was about your fourth of July plans and I'm Canadian, so... my plan was to spend it like any other Monday (crying in a corner wishing I was 20 years younger and had no responsibilities).

I did, however, keep up with running. It's been nice to have a running partner again, both for the social aspect and the accountability. (Speaking of social, I should probably get her a blog name... I know tonight's topic of discussion!) During Monday's run she mentioned that she never would have believed a year ago that she'd be running. This got me thinking about the decisions I've made which have landed me at this point in my life.

(I'd like to say 'great minds think alike' but really, coincidences occur in the blogging world. Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point wrote about this same idea this morning.)

Eventually, it became a fun game for me and I've started going back to look at some of the larger decisions in my life and things they have yielded which I may never would have otherwise discovered.

For example:
If I didn't decided to move to Tanzania four years ago then
I wouldn't have looked for an African community in Victoria to be apart of when I returned then
I wouldn't have found MoonDance then
I wouldn't have learned about Matoto then
I wouldn't have met AC then
I wouldn't be going to a baby shower in two weeks.

If I didn't accept an invitation to meet a guy in Switzerland (who ended up being my first real love) then
I wouldn't have studied German in university then
I wouldn't have met E then
I wouldn't have had someone to hike around Thetis with two weeks ago.

If I hadn't decided to blog then... well, the unknown results of that are still being discovered :)

How about you? What unexpected or interesting end results have your decisions brought you?

Fit In OHS!

Operation Hot & Sexy (OHS) had its first meeting on Thursday. We set up in the office of one of the members on our lunch break only to find out that the scale had gotten knocked around and was out by roughly 10 lbs. I know what you're thinking: maybe all of you just weighed more than you thought you did. Well, we were all consistently 10 lbs heavier than we thought and I know that if I was actually that weight, I wouldn't need a belt on my current pants. (Not that I use a belt, I just walk around pulling up my pants constantly.)

In trying to pick a gym with a pool for knee friendly exercising, I had completely forgotten that April was Fit in Fitness month. Access to 14 fitness centres for $25? Sign me up! Oh, that's right, I already did. Over all, my knee has been feeling much better with the stiffness and nagging moments of pain coming and further and further apart. Still, I like the idea of sticking to low impact workouts for the moment. Better safe than in pain!

My fitness activity for today is an hour long walk to The Blue Nile for dinner before catching the Salmon Kings' last game of the season. The only down side to tonight's plan is having to say no to a delicious Tusker beer.

Matoto's Ten Day Event

For those of you who don't follow both my blogs, I am on the (volunteer) Board of Directors for a Victoria-based non-profit called Matoto Multicultural Arts Society. On Monday, we started our Ten Day Event to try and raise $10,000. We are almost done building the school in Kubian, Guinea that we started last year and now we need to fill it with chalkboards, desks and teachers. I have linked to our Ten Day Event on the left hand side (that over sized button that you can't miss) and you can read a more indepth post about it here. I am on the Team Moondance if you want to donate directly to a team, but you can also donate just to the event in general.

From myself, the members of Matoto, and from the villagers of Kubian: i nu wali. Thank you.

Nostalgia is the best seasoning

I know food is a big issue for me and I need to strive to make improvements in this area. I'm usually a fairly decent eater who loves to cook things from scratch, but I'm too willing to give into my cravings. A little bit here, a little bit there and it all adds up through out the day/week/month. My department at work is notorious for our food days, something we do almost bi-monthly, and as healthy as many of us try to be there's always someone who forgets and just picks up a bag of chips on his/her way in to work. Potato chips are my weakness as I love savory. I like sweet; I enjoy sweet. I love savory; I crave savory. To combat this on our last food day, I brought in nothing so I ate nothing. Well, that's not totally true; I was badgered into trying some guacamole. "It's the best you will have ever tasted." "It's heavenly; you have to try it." My coworkers were falling over themselves to compliment the guy who made it, and after the fifteenth time of being told to try it, I gave in. It was mediocre, at best. I faked an 'mmmmmmm', returned to my desk and was more than happy to ignore the table for the rest of the day after that waste of my taste buds.

So I know that food is an issue that I have to work on and what am I eating as I type this? Rice. White rice. Which I fried in oil after I cooked it. I have taken the unhealthiest rice option and made it worse. Why didn't I just serve it on a donut while I was at it? I have brown rice in the apartment (I actually prefer the taste of brown rice, I find white fairly bland... like the guacamole I mentioned above), but it had to be white rice and it had to be fried. I am having a nostalgia meal, and this meal takes me back to Tanzania and my roommate, K.

K and I met volunteering at the same orphanage outside of Arusha, TZ. We were roommates and immediately hit it off. When it came time for her to leave and continue on her travels, I took two weeks off to join her for part of it. We had a great time and by the time we hard parted ways, we had spent 51 days together. Because we were roommates, there was only 2 days that we were not together for 24 hours. Oh, how I wanted to go all the way to South Africa with her and when she extended the invitation it pained me to say no, but I had made a commitment to the orphanage that I had to honour. We've kept in touch through emails and the occasional letter, especially lately as she's thinking about coming out to Victoria/Vancouver this summer. In the meantime, she's off on another adventure; she's been in Egypt for a month and is about to cross into Jordan, and will make her way up to Turkey. After an exchange of emails about things to do when she's in Victoria (I suggested surf lessons up in Tofino, she thought that would be great... what have I gotten myself into?) I receive the following: We had so much fun travelling in Tanzania, why don't you come meet me in Turkey? That was it; just one simple sentence and I spend days dreaming about the idea.

I can't go to Turkey, not that I don't want to, but I've got school and a glaring lack of money staring me in the face. I turned down the offer and instead took a trip down memory lane. Not as exciting or glamorous as just packing up and heading off for adventure, but much cheaper and just as smile-inducing. That's were the fried rice comes in. See, we didn't have a microwave in our kitchen and K and I both had a horrible habit of cooking too much rice (they don't have brown rice in Tanzania... at least, not readibly available at the market. You have to go to the expensive "western shops" to get it), so breakfast often ended up being fried rice with a fried egg and a fried tomato (although I was the only one who had the fried tomato... Irish family) all cooked in Blue Band "spread" (a margarine product, what ever that means).

The good thing about K coming out to Victoria is that she's a very active person and it's giving me an added kick in the pants to get the food thing sorted and to stop letting exercises slip just because I'm doing something else (not nearly as) active. Now not only do I have the Juan de Fuca trail to do this year (in a matter of months--eek!) but now I'm probably going to have to do a pop-up on a surf board. That would be a heck of a lot easier if I'm carry around less weight. Come on self, you can do this... as soon as I finish my rice and fried egg dinner.

Addendum: K, incidentally, makes the best guacamole I have ever had. She'd make it and we'd eat it on toast for dinner.