New Year's Resolutions

A few quick sidenotes before I actually begin talking about my resolutions of 2011:
1.'Tis the season of the "SOLDES" (Sales) and all of us assistants are broke. (Minus those who have been lucky enough to receive their CAF assistance already. Mine is yet to come and, though I've been hopeful that I will soon see those 1,000 euros soon, my program coordinator does not have the same confidence in the French government, and she's French...which depresses me a bit). These sales do nothing for that learn-how-to-save-money thing I've been trying to do. Crap.

2.For those of you who have been worrying about my homesickness, I think I can safely say that it's gone. I'm getting into a groove I wish I had been able to get into months ago, but better late than too late! It is so beautiful here! I was walking back from a friend's house the other night quite late when all was quiet and dark and the general ambiance was absolutely magical. The beauty around me on a daily basis is a lot to take in and sometimes I get overwhelmed by the fact that so much history and, well, europe is around me. I think that is what will be the hardest when I'm back in the U.S. U.S. architecture is so modern and, though beautiful in its own way, not so awe-inspiring. (I will also miss having a bakery on every corner, but I'll think about all of these things in April, not now. For now I'm just trying to appreciate what I have here on a daily basis and soak it in while it's around me.)

ATTENTION READER: You may feel some nausea due to the incessant optimism and cheerfulness exuded in the following entry. Please enter with an open and positive mind and understand that we all deserve to be the best that we can be!

Now, to the New Year! Usually I make New Year's Resolutions that I don't actually intend to keep and I've decided that this is the year to end that (particularly since it's the last year of the world ;) no, seriously, I'm kinda scared bout 2012, but I digress). I've made 4 resolutions this year, and they are as follow:
1.Read/Watch the news everyday.
2.Do yoga. (Starting with a Mon, Wed, Friday, Sunday routine.)
3."Jump into the French pool"
4.Maintain a healthy diet.

1.News. For years now I've felt far behind when it comes to knowing what's going on in the world, and it's 100% my fault. I never used to watch or read the news, but always wished I would just finally get into the habit. It seemed like so many of my friends were able to fit it into their schedule somehow; listening to the news on the radio on the way to work, watching the news while eating breakfast or dinner, reading a newspaper over lunch or a coffee break. I am literate, have access to any kind of news I wish to read/watch, and have absolutely no excuse not to know what's going on in the world and it was getting ridiculous. Therefore, I've "bookmarked" BBC live on my computer, set the BBC world news page as my homepage, and equipped my cellphone with a New York Times application, which I update on a daily basis. It's been a couple of weeks now that I've been watching BBC everyday (I turn it on as soon as I wake up in the morning and listen to the reports as I do my morning routine and eat my breakfast) and then sometimes I read the New York Times to get some back-home news on the tram to/from work. There's a LOT of news in the world, but I feel so much better knowing that I at least know the basics of the main reports, and it hasn't been difficult at all to follow this resolution, as I made a point to fit it into my daily routine. Happily, it's becoming a morning habit!

2.Yoga. Keeping myself physically healthy is not something I can say I've done a good job of since my freshman year of college, when I worked out 6 days a week. After a summer of not working out after that first year, I never got back into it and fell back into the same lazy guilt I've kept myself stuck in ever since. True, when i was living in La Crosse I used to walk/bike all around town, but that was out of necessity, and I didn't push myself to go much farther than where I needed to be. I had tried yoga a few times, but always gave up...I've never been much good about going to exercise classes and don't much like doing physical activity in public when I'm completely out of shape :-P I'd always shy back and say "I can't do it," embarrassed about how heavy my breathing may be or what my butt looked like in my workout pants. Well, my body has had enough of this lazy crap! I've got a makeshift yoga mat that a friend of mine picked up for me in a town near by, I've downloaded "yoga for weight loss for beginners" from yogadownload.com, as well as a yoga breathing exercise from yoga-vidya.org, and I've been following my routine since Monday. Yes, that means it's only been two days of yoga so far, but just try and tell my abs that that hasn't done anything...ouch! (but in the best possible way!) I've also been doing some Chakra meditation on the side, which has been really good for balancing my energy and making me feel a lot calmer with my CM1 and CM2 classes, lol.

3."Jump into the French pool." On the train on the way back to Orleans from Paris after Christmas break my friend Tara and I ended up sitting next to a Frenchman (a bodyguard who was Tina Turner's bodyguard for a few years!) who chatted us up during the hour-long ride home. We talked about lots of things (well, mostly he talked...he was chatty, but really nice, and we had a good time talking with him!), but what ressonated most with Tara and myself was an analogy he made about being in another country/culture with a different language. He said it's like a swimming pool and you have to jump in the pool when it's full of water and not wait to jump in until after they've already drained out the water. What he meant, if it isn't obvious, was that we need to throw ourselves into the incredible opporunity we have here to learn the French language and about the French culture, and not to hesitate, because in a few months our opportunity will be gone. My resolution I guess is to take any opportunity I can get to speak French and to put myself into it whole-heartedly. I've been reading a lot lately, but not in French, so today I went to the library and checked out a copy of "Le Petit Prince," which I'm going to start when I finish this entry.

4.Food. This is the easiest for me of all of the resolutions. I began this resolution almost a year ago when I picked up a copy of Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet" at Barnes and Noble and gave vegetarianism a second try. Since reading her book I've become more aware of what I put into my body and why it is or isn't good for me. I'm since become really interested in what it means and what it feels like to have a "balanced diet." Since living in France I've definitely gained weight and had changed my diet a bit and been buying foods that left me feeling fatigued and depressed. No. Good. That's over now and I'm trying my best to eat what my body asks for and what I know my body needs instead of what my boredom tells me it wants.

Basically, I LOVE these resolutions and I'm 100% dedicated to making sure they get the attention that they need because I've felt great for these first couple of weeks and each day has felt like the "first day of the rest of my life" instead of just another day. I hope your resolutions (if you made any) have been going well!

Lots of love <3 Meg