a day well spent

A few of you may know that I used to do a little trapezing back in SF. As I have yet to find a place to continue my training, or found a spot in my house to hang a trapeze from, I have been feeling a loss both emotional and muscular. There's nothing like hanging upside down by your ankles and twirling above the ground on a thin bar! I dream about it almost every night. Despite doing nearly nightly sets of situps, pushups, etc., I feel my arms and stomach have gone a little soft.

At a friend's suggestion, I decided to drop in on a "Yoga-Fit" class today.
I thought surely it would be a walk in the park compared to my grueling training sessions, and I've always been a little put off by yoga; it seemed to be engulfed in an air of pretentiousness (at least in California). This class was a fantastic challenge that worked my shoulders, arms and legs in a way that will make me happily sore tomorrow. The teacher was amazing— and she was kind enough to correct my posture in English so I could understand what I was doing wrong. I also learned some new words in Turkish, which I hope I can remember the next time I go back. I had a great time.

On the way home I decided to try taking a dolmuş, or minibus. These bouncy little vehicles run all over Istanbul, and if you know the general direction of where you're going, you can get around for about a dollar. Fares are based on how far you are going, and luckily I knew the name of the town I wanted to go to, the expression for "how much" and my numbers. It was a fun ride I desperately wanted to sketch on but was afraid of missing my stop, and I don't know how to say "May I get off here?" yet. I hopped off at a stop in town just as the müezzin was singing out the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. I've always enjoyed listening to the voices echo in the hills, and it made for a lovely stroll through town.



When I got home, I received a package from Laura Ansa, one of the talented artists in a Moleskine Exchange group that I belong to— Moly-X13. In the package was the almost complete sketchbook of another group member, Emma Kidd. I'll explain the whole Moly-X project tomorrow, in the meantime feel free to click on the links on the right to check out the work of some exchanges I am a part of. I'm off to bed to read one of the twelve books I plan on reading this year. It's a 2009 resolution of sorts.