Oaxaca, briefly

- the grasshoppers are caught in nets, sorted and roasted in a variety of ways with varying spices, giving them unique colours and flavours
- the outdoor market is amazing - row upon row of fruits, vegetables, meats, grasshoppers, chiles, arts and crafts, clothes... - I am hoping that I will work up the nerve to ask the people selling their wares if I may take some photos... wouldn't you like to see a whole stand of dried Mexican chiles or mounds of grasshoppers ready for snacking? I just don't want to offend anyone.
- tequila is made from the blue agave plant, mezcal from any type of agave and is the local drink of choice
- mezcal has the same smoky aftertaste as scotch
- having a siesta after lunch is awesome
- eating vegetarian is basically impossible - I gave up on trying to sort out the menu at lunch yesterday and just ordered something from the "local Oaxaca" section. When my meal came I gulped... a tortilla baked with a layer of black beans and local cheese, topped with avocado and tomato... ok so far so good, but then on top of all that there was a thinly pounded piece of what I can only guess was pork - deliciously seasoned, but also nearly bigger than the whole tortilla itself. I ate about a quarter of it and then shared the rest with the others at the table. I love trying all this local food but I'm really surprised by the lack of vegetables! My spanish isn't nearly good enough to order a custom meal... and I kind of enjoy exposing myself to the local culinary delights.
- Oaxaca is surrounded by mountains and nestlend in at the intersection of 3 valleys
- Oaxaca is a mountain town with an elevation of over 1500m (5000ft)
- this means it's a bit colder than what I would have expected of Mexico... although yesterday mid-morning the sun finally came out and it's been wonderfully warm since with a slight breeze carrying along all sorts of delicious smells
- this also means that climbing up the hill from the town to our hotel leaves me breathing heavily. We've done this ~30 minute walk several times now and after spending all day wandering around the streets in town I am more than ready for the afternoon siesta.
- margaritas in Oaxaca taste better than margaritas I've had anywhere else
- being redheaded and fair-skinned makes me stand out like a sore thumb. Doesn't help that I've usually got a camera hanging around my neck either.
- children on the streets trying to sell you candy won't give up or let go of your shirt even after you've walked into a restaurant and sat down
- La Carrera Panamericana is a car race that starts today or tomorrow in Oaxaca. It goes ~3000 miles and ends somewhere in Texas. There are a lot of racers staying at our hotel and their fancy cars are parked in the lot. Apparently only 25% of cars actually finish the race.
- yoga in our villa in the morning is wonderful
- not sure how I'm going to get my training runs done, but I am sure that I'm nearly walking the equivalent of what I need to run each day
- successfully made my first transaction in the local farmacia... 4 pesos for 4 bandaids (that's about 40 cents - 10 pesos to the dollar)

Arriving in Oaxaca (Wa-ha-ka)

Luke arrived this morning at 9am and checked into our hotel - the lovely Hotel Victoria which sits up on a hill and overlooks the city. I left Vancouver last night at 11pm and flew to Toronto. Left Toronto this morning at 9am and arrived in Mexico City just after noon. Had a lengthy stay in the airport where I was able to dig into a new book (more about that later) and finally left for my last leg to Oaxaca at 5:45pm. Got to the aiport where I was hoping to see Luke, but unfortunately he had mixed up his time zones. Oops! I was able to get myself a taxi and 30 minutes later I was relieved to be showering off the travel grime in our lovely villa.

Had an absolutely wonderful night. 4 of us went for a walk down to the Zocalo (literally "town square"), which is where everyone seems to congregate. The city streets are beautiful and the churches amazing. I'm really looking forward to spending some time walking around and exploring. We met up with a friend of the retreat organizer who has been living here for many years and had a wonderful dinner and fantastic conversation. We started off with the mezcal blanco and some grasshoppers. For dinner I had prawns with mole and Luke had the tuna special. Enjoyed a 2nd type of mezcal, some more exciting discourse and then onto dessert... coconut flan and "chocolate" (hot chocolate, Oaxacan style). Amazing. Wish I had brought my camera but I'm sure there will be more opportunities.

Off to bed for now. Got a bunch of sleep to catch up on. Buenas noches!

Warm inside

I am sitting on the couch watching the tree outside the window twist and turn in the wind. Slowly our patio is being covered by leaves. I can hear the rain and the busy traffic and yet inside it is warm, dry and quiet. I have so much to be thankful for; good health, happy and inspiring relationships, a wonderful family, the freedom to do and say as I please... I am very fortunate. I look forward to finding more ways to use my unique talents to help those around me and to share the love I have within. Happy Thanksgiving!

Another reason to to go veggie...

"Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/nbeef119.xml

I love a good filet mignon, but come on! People are bulldozing the rainforest to make more room for grazing cattle. Illegal immigrants are put to work in meat processing plants and when they are injured by the crazy machinery and a production line that is moving way to fast, they don't have the health care to cover their medical bills and because they are usually taking uppers to increase their speed on the line, the company claims they are not responsible for the unsafe conditions.

So you take the bus to work, or carpool, you recycle, have energy efficient appliances and switched all your bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent... maybe you should take a look at what's on your dinner plate. Eat local, eat organic and for the love of the planet, cut out the beef!!

Busy busy

this seems to be the first week in a while with no plans. nice to look at the calendar and see 5 empty days in a row. so far it's off to a good start. i just got back from Mysore this morning. i was able to bind in Marichyasana D twisting to the right, which I've never been able to do on my own before. my left knee is a bit sore, but it seems to be coming from a tight left IT band. rolling my left outer thigh on a ball seems to help loosen that up and boy does it hurt! it's a good hurt though, there's obviously some deep tightness in there.

so i'm sitting here now planning out my week and enjoying a tasty smoothie: 1 banana, 10 almonds, ~1 cup rice milk, 1/4 tsp vanilla. blend! yum!

these are the things i want to do this week:
- finish Anatomy of the Spirit and maybe write the exam at the end of the week
- go berry picking
- grind it up
- go for a hike - since the weather forecast is so freaking awesome I was thinking maybe of trying Mt Cheam, Mt Gardner or Garibaldi Lake. we'll see.
- go to kits pool
- book a limo for Nicole's wedding
- sew new curtains for the van

i'm so super impressed with my roses this year. they are flowering like mad and they smell wonderful. as i was walking home from yoga this morning i could smell them from about a block away. every now and then the breeze coming through our apartment carries the scent in too. my sweet peas are blooming now as well and i am in flower heaven.

victoria this past weekend was a ton of fun. had a great visit with my granny and spent some quality time with the girls. went to the silk road spa in victoria and we each had a super relaxing treatment. the pampered chef party was a huge success and i think i will have made enough to pick myself up a super sweet zoom lens. :)

i'd better get moving so i can start crossing things off that list... happy monday!

July already?

Happy belated Canada day and welcome sunny weather!! I'm having a hard time blogging regularly. I doubt I'll get much better while the weather is nice and there is so much to do that doesn't involve computers.

So I took my prednizone for 4 days. The swelling is gone and the blisters too. The skin on my palms is just really dry and rough now. Glad that's over with.

I finished my Nutrition and Mental Health course last week and started today on the Anatomy of the Spirit course. From what I can tell so far, this course discusses the control we have over our health and healing through positive thinking and overall outlook on life. I agree that our attitude affects our health, I'm not so sure about how far that can be taken... the author of the textbook discusses a case where an HIV positive patient was cured of AIDS. I need to see more information before I can fully accept what she's claiming.

We had a wonderful weekend camping in Manning Park. Aside from the torrential rain on the way up we had beautiful weather. I've put up some photos here. I was hoping that my new wide angle lens would have arrived in time, but it didn't. I had a call from FedEx today, and it will be here tomorrow. As soon as I got out of the car at our campsite on Friday I was instantly reminded why I like Manning Park so much. It smells wonderful up there. Ok, so I think it smells wonderful in most of the forests I've been to, but there's something a bit different about Manning Park, not sure what it is. We went for a couple nice walks and on Saturday morning before anyone was up I found a nice quiet space for a wilderness yoga session which was very nice.

Did the grind today with Nicole in an hour and 14 minutes. It still kind of surprises me how much harder it starts to get when it's hot out. I didn't make it up last week so maybe twice this week?

We bought a van today. It's a Mitsubishi Delica and it's pretty cool. Looking forward to taking it camping. Here's a photo. Runs on diesel or biodiesel, has sunroofs, an icebox/hotbox, and built in karaoke! It was kind of an impulse but we're pretty happy with our decision. With Luke being able to work from anywhere with internet, and me being away from work, we're pretty flexible and having a car makes it easier for us to be more mobile. We realized this summer that we were going to have to rent a car nearly every weekend and with me home during the week we've been using the co-op a lot more too. Anyways, we've got a 2002 scooter for sale now. Excellent condition, just tuned up, comes with 2 helmets and a large trunk, all for $2000. :)

What's next? So we stopped and bought some berries on our way home from Manning. Going to have to get back out there and do some picking soon. Raspberries are ready now, blueberries should be ready in a couple weeks.

I'm heading to Victoria this weekend to do 2 Pampered Chef shows so that should be fun. I have to say I'm really disappointed with the Pampered Chef recipe collection. I have to choose a PC recipe to prepare during the show, but I'm having a hard time finding easy, quick and healthy recipes. There are very few vegetarian options and it just seems like so many of the recipes call for premade croissant rolls or blocks of cream cheese.

I haven't had much time recently to work on my website, hopefully next week. I'd like to get the recipes section up and running and get this blog fully transferred over.

I've planned out my Anatomy of the Spirit course and I should finish this week or early next week. I'm looking forward to the following course which discusses the business side of things and talks about the legalities of giving nutritional advice and setting up a consulting practice. Once that course is over I'd like to spend some time working on my case studies and then I'll be halfway through the program!

One thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is the idea of hiking solo.... I've got a huge list of hikes to do and not enough weekends to fit them all in. Is hiking alone a terrible idea? I think maybe I'll try something familiar on my own first and then maybe work up to an overnighter. I think it could be really fantastic as long as I'm ready and prepared to handle whatever might come up. I'd like to get back up to Manning Park for the summer wildflowers and I'd love to take Luke back to Black Tusk and try to get to Panorama Ridge too - maybe a 2-night trip. I also would like to do the Musical Bumps again while the flowers are in bloom. That could also be worked into an overnighter by heading up to Russet Lake and staying at the wilderness site there. We'll see. There's so much to do, I'm so glad I'm not working right now. I'm really looking forward to the August long weekend. That's when we did Black Tusk last year and I think this year we might go to Golden Ears.

That's all for now. Kind of a random update, but better than nothing I hope. Got to get settled into a routine. No time for that now though. Maybe in the fall. :)

conflicted

i really feel passionately about the whole body approach to health. i think that many of the chronic illnesses that plague our society today are a result of poor diet and an unhealthy lifestyle (heart disease, cancer, atherosclerosis, etc). i think the trouble most of us have, is when we are knocked down by bugs, stress, or whatever, we want a quick fix. we go to the doctor, get our prescription and head home feeling better already. how much of that is psychological? it takes a long time to notice the effects of a change in diet and lifestyle, so long that we often get discouraged and lapse back to our old habits.

i've been really trying to get to the root of the skin problems i've been having - a couple rashes around my wrists - and i've been seeing a naturopath to help me along. a lot of the dietary information she's been giving me coincides with what i'm learning in my courses and i find it really interesting. i really want to follow her guidelines, but it is hard sometimes, especially not knowing if i'm going at the problem from the right direction. are the bath and beauty products i use irritating? is it allergies?

less than a year ago i had an allergy test with a conventional allergy specialist. a few skin scratches later and i was given the all clear - no allergies. a few months ago now i had an allergy test (blood from a finger prick was tested) from my naturopath. i reacted strongly to dairy, sesame and strawberries and to a lesser extent to wheat, olives and cinnamon, of all things. who do i believe?

i'm not a milk drinker. not since reading fast food nation and learning about how dairy cows are treated, the hormones they are given to increase yield, and the antibiotics they are given to treat the infections from irritation to the udders from the increased milking. there is pus in your milk. yuck. not to mention the fact that humans are the only creatures that consume milk post-weaning. cheese is my weakness, i can buy organic and feel ok about it, reduce my consumption and maybe lose a couple pounds too! great! i can avoid dairy if it's going to clear up my rashes, but if it's not? how long do i wait before i try something new?

the past few days i've been dealing with another outbreak on my hands (this is different from the rashes on my wrists). what the hell's the deal? the aches and pains, chills and sweats i've been having indicate to me i had a virus, which is how these flare-ups usually start. the timing was suspicious though... a big bbq, ate too much, had a bit of dairy... which led to digestive system upset on my part. did that weaken my immune system so that i was more susceptible to any roaming bugs? or did it send my immune system into overdrive and confuse it enough to start turning on me? this is an autoimmune problem... i just don't know.

what i do know is that prednizone is my fix. i went to the clinic up the street yesterday and the doctor wouldn't prescribe me any because she felt the risks were too great. risks for who? was she worried there would be complications and didn't want to be held responsible? for me, if i don't take it, i basically lose the use of my hands for about 2 weeks and that's not a risk i really want to take - especially with a super camping trip coming up this weekend! my hands swell (i barely got my rings off this time), they itch and they burn. then the blisters appear... tiny little patches, the blisters get blisters on top of them. eventually they dry up and crack and then a thick layer of skin peels off - it hurts and the new skin is very sensitive. prednizone can be dangerous, but it's dangerous for people with chronic conditions that are forced to take it daily for years to deal with their symptoms. prednizone is a steroid and is used to treat a ton of different ailments. i take it for 5 days and i'm done.

i'm conflicted though. i rarely take medication. have a headache? drink some water. back aches? use a hot pad. i know that's not for everyone, and that's fine, but i really think my body is trying to tell me something, and just dealing with and masking the symptoms isn't getting at the root of the problem. however, when my hands flare up, i'm first in line to see the doctor asap and i probably won't bring up my recent dosing with prednizone to my naturopath. she probably would have some suggestions, but as with any holistic treatment, i need time and time is not on my side when i'm trying to bring down swelling and prevent what i know can turn into a miserable 2 weeks.

so pick and choose your remedies? find what works best for you? i still think diet is key and that disease prevention through adequate nutrition isn't given the attention it deserves. and who really to promote this idea? well i hope to do my part with my new website (jencloss.ca is under construction), but who am i up against? there is a lot of money in drugs. pharmaceutical companies will make a lot more money treating someone for life than for curing them with one pill. of course it's not always that easy, i realize that, but i really think the focus should be on fixing the diet and thereby giving the body the nutrients it needs to repair and maintain itself, rather than just treating the myriad of symptoms that pop up, treating the side effects of the drugs with more drugs and so on.

my Mental Health and Nutrition course takes the controversial opinion that mental disease can be cured through proper dietary adjustments and supplements. that's a bold statement to make, but not entirely unreasonable when you look at the supplements suggested and how the nutrient and chemical balance in the body is affected. we aren't made up of separate organ systems and tissues; everything is connected and reacts together to stimuli. we really truly are what we eat. i think the holistic approach to nutrition and to general health deals more with looking at the body as a whole. a rash may not just be a rash, but may be an external manifestation of an internal imbalance.

which brings me back to my present conflict. i'll treat my most irritating symptoms with the harsh prednizone, but at the same time be sure to nourish my body appropriately so that it can efficiently process the drugs and heal itself and bring itself back to neutral. perhaps over time, as i get better at figuring out the right and wrong foods for me, good stress management, and just generally maintaining the right balance, my outbreaks will become fewer and farther between and i won't have to make this choice as often. :)