Inhale Yoga Exhale Yoga

With Phil off galavanting around China, I've been at the Buddhist retreat teaching yoga English and conversational English with students who are like puppies when it comes to learning yoga. The first day I got here started with lunch. Every other sentence began with, "Rachel, what's this?" Lots of requests for me to provide the English words for lunch. Lunch lasted for about 2 hours due to our nonstop conversation. Don't worry. I'm also getting the Chinese words. It's pretty funny. I have an okay food vocabulary in Chinese, but my conversational skills leave a great deal to be desired. :) Hey, it's the priorities in life. :) One student keeps pulling out crazy advanced poses and saying, "Teacher, please help me." She's been doing yoga for about 4 months and assumes I'm a sage yogini. I explain what I know and tell her when I don't know. She seems to have some crazy yoga teacher that stands on her, squashes her up against walls, and uses what I consider forceful means to get her into poses. Being very safety conscious, he sounds like a nutty yogi, but I guess it takes all kinds. I think she's expecting me to lay on yoga teacher hands and magically transform her into a famous and beautiful yogini. I wish!

I love the food here. It's all vegetarian where I'm staying and wow, are they good with tofu! Very exciting. I've discovered that I'm not really a fan of dumplings in any variation. I'll eat them, but I don't look forward to them. I've also discovered that I like Chinese breakfast. I've never liked breakfast for most of my life. Cereal is boring and I'm hungry 20 minutes later. The Chinese have this great flat bread that looks like a combination of Indian nan bread and tortillas. But it's infinitely better than either. They also make a kind of rice soup with some sort of brownish red rice and a tiny bit of sugar. Since nothing else is sweet here, it's very exciting. I am planning on making Chinese breakfast foods when I get back home. No more food crashes at 9am for me!:)

So I can tell time in Chinese (for the most part), ask what things are, say I'm full, say I'm going to take a nap, and I'm learning the body parts (critical for yoga). Why else would you need to know the words for heel and ball of the foot, palm, and diaphram? Anyway, I'm having a great time. Languages are a delightful puzzle. The Chinese are always shocked when I pull out one of my phrases on them. They don't expect me to speak any Chinese. Then I have to quickly explain that I speak very badly. Then they stop babbling at me. Whew! I'm making progress though.