No Peanut Butter?!

Today was Day 1 of my more or less spontaneous Raw Food Challenge, to roughly overlap with the 2-week Pilates challenge.

My only cheats were two cups of coffee and some soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Here's how it went down:

Breakfast: circa 6 AM, up so early to drive Devon to the airport. Salad with spinach, carrot, celery, avocado.

Mid morning snack: micro greens bar and an orange.

Lunch: 11 AM, salad with chickpeas, lettuce, red bell peppers, and other things I devoured in 2 seconds because I was ravenous; apple; cold processed ginger lemon drink.

Random I'm-sleepy snack: 12:30 PM, another granola bar and a couple of ginger carrot nori crackers.

Post-nap snack: 4 PM, orange and tablespoon of raw almond butter.

Pre-climbing I'm starving snack: 5 PM, Raw-volution bar and sliced cantaloupe (only $2 at a market in the Mission!)

Post-climbing snack: 7 PM, apple and plantain.

VERY late dinner:  9:50 PM, salmon and hamachi sashimi with avocado instead of rice.

Final snack: 11 PM, pumpkin seeds, cacao nibs, apple.


So I'm not sure if I was eating all day just because I was out and about or if the nature of the food affects the way you process it.  You get full faster if you are eating a lot of produce, and I've heard that it takes more energy for the body to break it down. I started falling asleep a little after noon, and I'm not sure if this was related to getting no sleep or somehow related to the food as well.  I also felt incredibly zoned right around 9:30 PM before I got some food, but I imagine that could happen even if I was eating cooked food and put off dinner.  Overall, while I feel that I had to work harder to keep from being hungry and my body was talking to me more in terms of being fed, I would say that my blood sugar levels, if anything, stayed more constant and I had more of the fiber and roughage from the plants to tide me over in between meals.

I'm sure these patterns will become clearer as the week goes on!

Bottom line: I thought this would be much more of a struggle, but it appears that my main reason for eating cooked food is because I feel that I should eat cooked/warm food. I grew up hearing that it's not healthy not to eat cooked food, such as soups. Yes, soups may be healthy, but it is really liberating to eat everything I wanted all day without having to substitute something "boring" (AKA cooked) or "healthier" (instead of, say, a kind of nut.) I suppose the only more-or-less "unhealthy" thing I crave is ice cream.. homemade raw or cashew nut ice cream, anyone?

Also, I feel incredibly fresh, clean, and detoxed (not that I had that much to detox from.. multiple rounds of margaritas with my lovely Alaska friends last night..) You truly are what you eat!

Won't you save me San Francisco?

I've been here for two nights now and just like last summer, I love every inch of it. My send off was moderately dramatic (read: I bawled at the Phila airport in the security line.) I guess Philly IS more fun if you stay over, by "stay over" meaning never leave. Crying is not my usual form of expelling body substances at the airport; I am much more likely to throw up on an airplane. Well at least we didn't have any of that, but I do have two flights coming up this weekend, vse vperedi!

ANYWAY, I will save the reasons for that and how they worked themselves out for another entry, because they will fit in very nicely with the theme and witty title I have already through up. Good titling opps, for me, are few and far between, so I have to milk them for all I can.

I am visiting lovely Scott and Elisse, who fed me popsicles and took me bowling and provided fabulously cozy accommodations and two bonus cats to cuddle with.

Speaking of cats, I am NOTHING like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-92wriOZ-s

Just wanted to take the time to make that even more viral than it already is.

I missed a bus stop today and basically had a two hour bus tour of downtown San Francisco as a result. I love the bus so much more than driving. Running in Golden Gate Park makes the time pass so quickly because of the perfect amount of sunshine and the way that the tiles on the ground are somehow better sized for your feet...

Speaking of feet, walked a bit barefoot after my shoes started giving me mad blisters. It was one thing when I was carrying them in my hand, but when I put them away in my purse I think people were just confused.. (mind you, I was wearing interview clothes at the time.)

Now it is wildly windy and slightly chilly. I didn't realize how much I now enjoy being cold in the evening when I'm not under the covers, thank you Nepal. I'm hoping this wind brings some colder weather for tomorrow so I am not too overheated wearing my boots all day. Why can't I wear flip flops, you ask? I have a VERY IMPORTANT lunch interview that I am eyebrows to the sky excited about!

Suparatri,
.

I am DYING right now.

First, I find this gem in a series of "Only in Russia" photos:

"Yeah, does this bus go to Beryozovsky?"


Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/15-only-in-russia-photos


Then, the following exchange:
Mother: Where is this?
Me: Near Beryozovsky, clearly.
Mother: No! This is fake! They don't have buses that clean there!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not Sparta. This is Russia.

Growing up, but not really. And by "really" I mean "at all."

I alternate being amused and terrified at the fact that everyone basically assumes that I am my half-brother's mother when we are at the playground, but get a kick out of it either way. I told some nanny that I liked her jeans and she said that he has cute dimples. Yeah, it doesn't help that we look alike and that I look marginally old enough to have a 4-year-old (if you assume that I HAD HIM IN HIGH SCHOOL) and I'm not going to spend my time telling handfuls of random strangers my family history.
"Come on, honey, let's do this algebra problem in the sand, you already went to Mommy's algebra class when you were 1!"

In other news, how often do you apply for something and have the application become closed WHILE YOU ARE HITTING SUBMIT?! I accept that it wasn't meant to be, and I am grateful for the motivation to have different kinds of samples more readily at hand for the job application process.

I think that the opinions about the status and quality of the job application process are vastly different for recent college grads, especially when considering the country's current situation as well as the diverse opportunities we have upon graduation. From people with a cushy job to people who have switched jobs to people who are still waiting on a job that has any kind of benefits. Well let me tell you, giving birth when you are in high school is NOT the solution.

The mountains, they surround me...

Courtesy of Greg. MAN oh man, I will never understand how ANYONE can come HERE and see THIS and it will not make them question everything they have ever believed about the world and their role in it. This is so much bigger than anything I had ever encountered before. It turns so many beliefs and understandings on their toes. How do you possibly walk away without somehow incorporating this into your world view and reinventing your world philosophy to include things like THIS?!

Funny things that make me realize I don't know who I am at all

Such as realizing that just maybe, diving > climbing and pilates > yoga.

WHAT?!

I have been on this spirituality kick (very loosely defined) for a couple of years now, and I have been trying to figure out what it is about coming back from my trip that has made me realistic about the lack of real progress or success that I have been making.

I think that I expected to go to the east and find that most people's daily lives are filled with some higher realization of a spiritual presence. I felt it so much when I was in the mountains - my entire existence as committed to memory through my journal entries was so rich with meaning and the quest for more meaning. And while the religions in the east may be more attractive to agnostic idealistic westerners, they are, at their core, just other examples of religions.

So it follows that religion plays a similar role in people's lives, albeit a somewhat more inflated role than it plays in my family life, but when people are not involved with a religious activity, they just go about their life. There is still something about the MOUNTAINS that is so powerful and incredible and evolutionary natural and nourishing and a comforting majestic presence, and I just happen to interpret that as sensing a greater being. To me, that is real. If nobody else knows about something but it is real to you, that does not undermine your perception of it. Anyway, the pristine environment got me to start meditating for a few months, which was amazing and really rewarding - but once I was back in the "bustle" of things, it became more stressful to make time to find a peaceful place for meditating than to continue with it. I know that I will get back into it once I have a set routine, but I am taking a break for now - it's pointless and ironic to even try when meditation makes you stressed out just thinking about it.

Also, my mom pointed out that I had so much more TIME - was this time available because I had less responsibilities and more people doing stuff for me, or because I didn't have a pesky computer to eat away at hours of daylight? Maybe the computer is a nice distraction from the fact that I am taken from a place of so much human interaction to a place of minimal human interaction, isolation, machines everywhere. You pretty much only interact with machines when you are out and about, so you continue to turn to machines when you are home and feel lonely. Everyone is in a car on the road - no horses, bikes, people pushing carts along, people stopping to chat. This is slightly different in a city, but even there, everyone is so BUSY. Also, when I'm not a tourist, I am much less visible, and the fact that "OH HEY I STICK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB" is suddenly removed from validity and cannot retain its convenient place as an ice-breaker to start a conversation with anyone, anywhere.

Not that much of an ice breaker is needed to start conversations in some places in Asia. Places like public buses in Nepal are so tightly packed that you can't help but become best friends with the person you are sitting next to - and it's part of the CULTURE! I would see people get on the bus and talk like they were old friends, then I would be shocked to realize they just met and were chatting each other up.

Yes, that happens to some extent in the states. But everybody is so BUSY and so into their machines, so into their iwhatever's and what they are doing and not being late and using the most efficient methods to get things done. (Not that I am not totally like that.) I just wish that people could realize that they all have that in common and use it as a bonding experience, not as something that isolates them and makes them frustrated.

Anyway, pilates is kind of sort of actually better than yoga. As for diving and climbing - well, that is to be determined.

Suparatri :)

What is it about being in an allegedly first world country that makes cold showers feel so much colder?
The hot water heater in my bathroom decided that its services weren't really necessary anymore, and being a creature of habit, I have been refusing to use the upstairs bathroom - so I have been showering at people's houses and the gym or subjecting myself to 8-10 minutes of shivering per day.

With the way my body is now officially destroyed, the cold water actually feels kind of nice. How is it destroyed, you ask me?
-Shoulder I sprained two weeks ago yet continued doing stuff with
-Triple length ab session in June's yoga class on Friday
-My makeout sesh with the cement when I ate it trying to learn to longboard on Friday afternoon - thank goodness for helmets!
-Beer...
-Lead climbing at Go Vertical today

Yeah. Bruised my knee and elbow, scraped up my stomach, and got a temporary bump on my forehead yesterday mid afternoon. Entirely my fault and there are many ways it could have been more eventful or traumatizing, but I did take two ice packs to dinner yesterday and have spent a good bit of today feeling injuries/muscle soreness that I could attribute to three or four different potential causes from last week.

But I guess the cold water shower must not be so bad (you were the best I ever had) if I just keep going back to it, and could have its benefits too. My way of keeping Asia alive right in my home.

Tony teaching me to parallel park yesterday was pretty hilarious. Reversing down a narrow street towards the spot and having to repeatedly pull forward to let cars pass by. "These kids must be high!" I am much more solid on the boundaries of my car and the general concept, but there are still light years of work to do. Whoo cramming for moving to San Francisco!

The Big Trip is happening at the end of the month. Kimberly is coming and I couldn't be more excited about it. Whatever our shared space will end up being (STRESS), it will be fabulous and arsty and simple and practical yet infinitely beautiful. I can't wait for the adventures our minds come up with when we aren't busy cramming and stressing about schoolwork. And what an inspiring place to be for young people!

I am happy about driving cross country again. Road tripping is fake being outside, but all the while you are building more concentrated memories with the people you are with because you are sharing such a small space. One very vivid snapshot from our Utah trip was listening to the epic violin music while driving west through a two hour sunset from Utah to Arizona, watching the winding road disappear into the mountains into the horizon into the endless sun, everything descending so slowly and all together, our route creeping towards an end at the same pace that the daylight slowly disappeared somewhere - but daylight was so objective if you could just chase it until the end of the coast. Imagine flying with the sun on a two-person airplane, letting the violin sing your feelings and words for you and just floating there, your speed hanging you on a string in the whirlwind of the rotating earth.