The Water's Fine

So let me hit you with an Absolute Truth: I am lazy as fuck.  Returning to Mongolia was a strategic move that I needed to make in order to have both the time and money to finish grad school...but it came with the added benefit of enabling my laziness.  I live at school.  I can afford to take taxis again.  I can order in food again, because I can afford both to eat out and to order delivery.  When the weather was still what counts as "nice" here, I made at least a token attempt to fight my laziness, but those days are gone, along with any sort of sensation in my thighs if I walk outside more than 5 minutes.

That said, I'm self-aware enough that I know these are not sustainable life choices.  Coming home from school each day to order Songo and watch anime in the dark for several hours...

...speaking of which, yeah, instead of my usual photography you're getting (mostly) anime swimming gifs today instead.  You're welcome...

...before falling asleep way too early is pretty much guaranteed to wreck both my body and my mind.  So as my November payday crept closer, I resolved that I would join a nearby health club that had a pool.  The pool is important because we're coming up on the 10 year anniversary of my feet being shit, and even though I spend less time on them on any given day here than I did at any point in Japan, they can still be a bitch.

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Back to being lazy as fuck, one of the ways in which Mongolia beats Japan most days is that things are relatively simple.  For example, rather than a long winded bureaucratical nightmare if you need a phone in Mongolia, you just drop in on Mobicom with your passport and you can walk away with a SIM card.  However, I knew from previous experience that joining a gym - or at least, one with a pool - involved a doctor's clearance...less for my own sake than for the fact that I might bring something communicable into the water.  However, this damn doctor's clearance was what kept me from joining a pool in the five years I was here before, because it required a pap smear, and on general principle I refused to do it.  Since you can't get an STD from a swimming pool, I failed to see how the state of my vagina was any of their business. 

Well, I still object, but since I haven't had a proper checkup since I lived in Shanghai I wrote it off as killing two birds with one stone, and went and got it done.  And then waited around for two weeks for payday so that I could afford the membership fee.  And then promptly got sick, so it was almost three weeks before I finally got into the pool.  I’ve never really thought of swimming as hard work, so it said a lot to me that in my first lap I could already tell that my muscles, such as they are, were getting beat up.  I kind of thought I was going to be swimming for like an hour every day, but after that first excruciating lap, I knew I’d struggle to finish 30 minutes.  The upshot to this is that I slept like the dead those first two nights.

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There are other challenges beyond the shape I’m in (ie, round).  A big one is the fact that I live by Songo delivery, and I often skip lunch.  It was tough waiting til I got home to eat, and involved a balancing act of ordering in advance and hoping that the driver shows up when they’re supposed to.  If they get there too early, I’m not home yet.  If they arrive late, I’m so hungry that I actually want to bite the driver, I’m that angry as well as that hungry.  I've been better about cooking since winter break, though, especially since the quarantine...which is a topic for another blog.  A logistical nightmare of a different stripe is getting home with wet hair.  Before I started actually going this was my biggest fear; that on the 5 minute walk home my hair would freeze and break off (I may need to get it cut, but not like that!).  This has been a ridiculously warm winter, so I've gotten away with just bundling it up, which is good because I didn't particularly want to torture my hair with a blow dryer, only to turn around and shower as soon as I get home.

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However, after my first night swimming I had to upgrade my biggest fear.  About halfway through my swim two middle school boys got in.  They were speaking English, and though I was trying to pretend they didn’t exist, I made eye contact long enough that I’m pretty sure I recognized one of them as an eighth grader from my school.  I was kind of prepared for the fact that I’d run into students there at some point, but when I got out of the pool fifteen minutes later I realized someone had left the doors of the women’s locker room open.  I obviously closed them, but I’ve been terrified ever since that some dumbass will leave them open when I’m changing.  I don’t know who would be more traumatized, but considering how awkward it was when a female former student came in while I was getting dressed, I’m going to say everyone.

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So my (more or less) nightly swim's not perfect.  But the water is warm and with my earplugs in I can't hear the shrieks of the little monsters whose parents send them there without any supervision.  As I glide through the water, I do feel a little more peaceful, like my worries are floating away in my wake.  Walking back to the apartment, the moon greets me in a light, night sky, limning the hills in white and transporting me to a different place.  And I have to admit that this has at least been one new experience for me in Mongolia.

Like Riding a Bicycle...

Of all the things I miss about Shanghai (and contrary to my general attitude about my two years there, I do miss a few things about it), it turns out that the one I miss the most is the nice, flat-as-a-pancake, topography.

A couple months back I wrote about my ambition to be an elf when I grow up.  I haven't been a total slacker when it comes to this goal, although the progress is slow going, partly because my feet suck.  Seriously.  My feet are awful, and they have been since I let a friend talk me into a run - sheesh, almost four years ago.  I've tried giving them a break, I've tried working through it, I've taken Celebrex, but I have yet to fix the problem.  Undoubtedly this means I need to work harder, but I hate doctors, so I've sorta been at an impasse.  Well, lately they've been getting worse and worse, and I've found myself empathizing with Socrates' chronic body problems - different body parts, but no less frustrating.  I could continue this monologue about the lead up to yesterday afternoon, but let's jump to the chase: in order to get exercise and still stay off my feet, I dropped a cool mil on a bike.

I haven't biked much since leaving Shanghai.  It's cold a lot - A LOT - of the year, and when I interviewed with the principal before I came here, she didn't seem to think it was very safe.  Well, after a year and a half, I've decided if I can bike in the bloody Emirates and freaking Shanghai, I can handle the Mongol hordes.  So I walked to the Trek shop, found a bike I like, balked at the price a little, and eventually rode away on the beauty pictured above.  It doesn't have a basket, or a light, or a bell, although it does have a kickstand, since I realized it was missing one before I left the shop.  I might be able to remedy the first two while I'm in Shanghai in two weeks, but I think I'll be better off getting an airhorn - nobody's going to hear a bell here, since everyone either drives or has their music in their ears.

(Speaking of music in my ears...)

I hadn't biked that far when I realized how out of shape I really am, but I didn't let it stop me from biking into town and having a bite of lunch.  I was dying by the time I made it home - my back was aching and my tailbone was bruised.  Later that night when I got out of bed my knees were protesting too - it's strange to think that maybe I'm getting old!?!  But they were good sorts of pains, and they served to convince me that - along with a multitude of other things on my plate this spring - I am going to make this happen.  Try to forgive me if there are a lot of posts about biking in Mongolia coming up.

Getting High

One of the things I found most intriguing about my new school was the national park that is, basically, our back yard. Yesterday was the first time I went hiking there, though - some of the other teachers were going, so I decided to join. Now, I am not the fastest hiker, and in fact, I have found myself wondering in the last few months if I actually like hiking or if I just feel like I should like it (my Swiss mountain goat ancestors talking).

I was questioning this again halfway up this hillside - the boys of our excursion were cruising and the female PE teacher (my next door neighbor) was keeping me company, and I was just more interested in taking pictures (you can't blame me - it's pretty awesome to see everything spread out below)...

So I asked her not to wait for me, that I was planning on making it up to the trees and then heading home. And so I continued huffing and puffing my big butt up, one step at a time. Til I decided to cut across the hill I was on to get closer to this dead tree where these big birds (crows???) were roosting. And once I got there, I looked up, and found myself wondering what was on the other side of the ridge.

So I headed for the saddle, determined that I'd head back after I saw what was on the other side. The problem, of course, was once I'd seen that, I decided I needed to hike a little further, to see what else I might see.

And when I saw how low-lying the clouds were, I just could NOT resist getting closer, so I could have the opportunity to tell my dad that actually, I DID have my head in the clouds.

And so I kept hiking, and hiking, and hiking. I didn't make it as far as my fellow explorers, and they actually caught up to me when we were almost all the way home. And the moral of the story was that actually, I don't particularly like hiking, but I love the view from the top, and if hiking is what it takes to get high, then I'm all for it.

Pounding Pavements

This is the seventh night Socrates and I have gone walking since last Monday.

Our whole walking thing was a lot more convenient when he was living upstairs from me. The only effort required was one of us phoning the other and suggesting it. (This was not the only convenient thing about being neighbors - it was easier to convince him to bring his movies down to watch on the projector when it was a matter of taking the stairs rather than a taxi. Oh well). Now one of us has to go across town to meet the other. One of us being me. Don't go hating on him, though...I volunteered for it, and not just because I am so selfless that I will go all the way across town just to be sure he gets his exercise. Partly it's because I want the extra exercise of riding my bike over to his place, partly because I eat dinner over there every other night or so, anyways, and partly because afterwards I can stop at Coldstone's, if I'm feeling it. Okay, maybe the trip to Coldstone's negates some of the positive effects of walking for one and a half or two hours...but then, since I rode my bike over and back, I reckon I'm still ahead of the game.

And yes, I said one and a half or two hours. We never walked that long in RAK. Usually we made it forty minutes back then. Of course, there really wasn't anywhere to go in Ras al Khaimah. No sidewalks. Sand in your sneakers. Assholes driving up and ogling you. None of that's a problem here (okay, actually I get stared at quite a bit but I've just accepted that as a fact of my expat life, and I don't mind it when Asians do it), and there are endless tree-lined streets to beat. We've wandered the streets north of his place. We've wandered them all the way to my place. We've even wandered ones that we didn't know the destination of and, thus, ended up getting turned around to the point that neither of us were quite sure of where we were. It was fun...well, up to the point where he had a hypoglycemic episode on the ring road without a convenience store in sight. That was a little scary...as he was swearing and talking to himself about where the next convenience store was, I was having visions of carrying him piggyback up to the walking street (and so yesterday I stuck a pack of candies in my purse just to be safe, tonight he carried a can of coke).

Is it a pain in the ass? A bit. I haven't had the time/energy to work on Kashmir in a week and a half. But I'm enjoying the time with him, and I'm REALLY enjoying the fact that my clothes fit better - whether it's from the walking, or just plain old Asian magic, I can't wait til the next time I weigh in at the sauna!

Capital Improvements

I know the truth about the size of my body (how can you not, when you've been half-clad and shared a stage with Asian girls on more than one occasion?), but I've managed to put my insecurities far enough aside to get on with life. I do have insecurities, but in spite of being surrounded by girls the size of chopsticks, Korea did a lot for my self image. I could, for example, eat whatever I liked and still lose weight. There was also the fact that I worked for a man who was NOT one to spare your feelings, and when one night at the Beer Halle my Dark Lord and Master told me I was NOT a "big girl," I had to believe it.

And then I went back to America and gained 50 pounds. Life hasn't been the same since, so it was not a complete surprise when a person of my acquaintance called me - not too terribly long ago - a big girl. Still, I'm as human as any of you, so as you can guess, the insecurities were thrust back into the limelight, and now I find myself scrutinizing when I walk past a mirror.

What can you do? Well, I'll tell you what you can do. You can give up pop. Again. (Third time's the charm, right???) And I have - it's been a week since my last soda. You can stop eating chocolate bars for brekke and start eating two nice eggs with a little salsa for flavor (again). Okay, go ahead and laugh, tell me that of COURSE I've got some wobbly bits if I eat chocolate for breakfast, but it's been a staple of my diet. Ask any teacher from GDA between 2004-2008 about the Rebecca Teacher diet and they will tell you snickers and coke are breakfast foods (as I said before, I can eat whatever I want in Korea). But the fact of the matter is, I'm 31 years old now. Although at the rate my life is going I should have lived enough that I'm ready to die by the time I'm 60, I probably will not (as has been pointed out to me...I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or engage in other risky behaviors). And I don't want to be crippled and unable to enjoy sweets guilt-free if I do. Thus the changes.

I've been biking a lot this week, as well, but since most of those bike rides involved a stop at Coldstone's, the positive effect is kind of negated. And last night I went for yet another belly dance class. I've actually been to three teachers' classes now - a week after QiQi's performance class I went to the beginner class taught by Julia (pronounced Yu-lia), who is Ukrainian. She figured out at some point during the class that I was not, in fact, a beginner, and afterwards asked me how long I'd been dancing before suggesting that the following class with Tanya might be better suited to my level. This was the plan all along, so last night I finally (due to holidays and vacation) made it to her class. She's another Ukrainian if I'm not mistaken, and I've got to admit, I was not expecting to be impressed with any former Eastern bloc dancers. What can I say - I lived in the middle east, and except for Katia of Cairo, I've never seen a Russian dancer that was a dancer. If you get my drift. I still don't quite understand what they're doing here, but both Julia and Tanya were pretty decent teachers; whether or not they know all the fascinating cultural stuff that Azhaar knows, they can dance, that's for damn sure. Hell, Tanya put me through my paces so well last night that I've been sore all morning. And it's good to feel it.

On the Ground in Munchkinland

I'm back in the states, back to the places where I came from...for all intents and purposes: home. It's been almost two weeks since I got here, but I can hardly believe it's been that long. Two days after touching down at Eppley I was on the Duncan farm just west of Wheaton, Missouri. A week ago tomorrow we drove back to Iowa. Four days back I started working at B&N again. Today I went to church for the first time since leaving RAK.

And as of today I have 29 days until I leave.

I always feel a little bit of disconnect here. People's lives go on while I'm gone. I finally got to hold my niece, the Princess, the evening I got back. She's too cute for words. Saturday while I was floating down Sugar Creek, Shaggy was moving her, his wife, and the cat and dog to Utah. (Ugh.) I saw my cousins for the first time in seven years at the reunion, and it was good. I don't feel like I have to pretend to be anything but what I am with them. Sarah and I shared a canoe for the traditional "float trip," and I went to Roaring River with Dad, Matt, Micah, and Uncle Wayne last Monday morning, where I hiked up Deer Leap trail, fed the fish, stared into the depths of the spring, and poached wifi from the lodge while munching on peanut butter m&m's (ahh, the good life). They, on the other hand, fished. I used to try to fish, but this year I didn't even get a tag. As I was watching them reel 'em in, I thought of the day before, when my dad had shown us what a killdeer does when its nest is threatened, its frantic cries as it risked its life to save its babies...not knowing that he was just kidding. I guess I'm getting soft in my middle age, but I couldn't stand to watch, and I felt a little bit of the same for the fish.

It was sad, leaving, since this may be the last reunion. We celebrated my great uncle's 80th birthday, the last of his five brothers, who all died (in birth order) before their own 80th birthdays. I have a lot of love and respect for JD - we've had lot of common experiences, fifty years apart - and the thought that he might be gone before I come home again was another strand of sadness.

But life carries on. I've worked three days at the bookstore, and mostly I'm happy to see everyone again. Things haven't changed much. I haven't been in kids' at all, which is weird, and a little hard, because I always knew what to do back there. Out on the book floor there are long stretches of boredom. At least I know that I'm leaving in less than a month, and that fact makes the temporary annoyances a little easier to handle. (Borrowing books makes it MUCH easier to handle).

And my greatest fear - the idea that I might gain a bunch of weight whilst home??? I'm fighting it with everything I've got. I won't lie to you; I was AWFUL at the family reunion. The best I can say for myself is that I stayed off the pop, and that I borrowed The Fat Flush Plan (a diet book...which I will NOT, it seems, be following to the letter because I'm lazy, but it DOES have some ideas that I can easily integrate into my life) from my aunt Barb. Wedding cake, birthday cake, cookies, biscuits, cheesie poofs...all down the hatch. But since getting home I've managed to be a bit more in control. Not perfect, by any means, but I joined the YMCA for the month, and have been using their gym and pool, I took a walk with Babysis around Glenwood Lake Park, haven't had a single sugar cookie from work (because I know once I do, it's ALL over), and managed to avoid temptation a few times, in addition to using those Fat Flush ideas and having something light for one of my meals each day.

So I've not gone mad yet...but there are four weeks and a day left to go, so the potential still exists. Luckily I'm in New York City for my birthday with the Glamwhore in another three weeks time, and have only a week after that before liftoff; there is a very good chance I might get to Shanghai with my mind and my figure intact.

Lazy Day

It is 3:36 PM and I have yet to leave my apartment. I talked for two hours this morning to Tori, then read, slept, read....etc, with a little chili cooking thrown in....until coming in here to look at plane tickets. Here's the score:
18 days without pop.
6 days of exercise:
Sunday: Belly Dance practice
Monday: Biking and jogging
Tuesday: Swimming
Wednesday: Biking
Thursday: Walking to the Sailing Club and back
Friday: Swimming
And we'll make it seven once the sun goes down a bit more - maybe I'll dance in here a bit before heading to the pool.

The problem is, I don't feel like anything's happening yet. The scale tells me nothing's happening yet. This is one of the reasons I didn't have any success at getting things started last year - I'd have a few really good days but it's hard to keep going without results. But I'm determined to keep going til I leave this country, so I have to get some results at some point. Especially if I add more good habits into the mix. Next on my list is to start packing my lunches again, and then to quit eating out. My mocktails experiments this past week were not wildly successful and as I've been told, juice doesn't have any less calories than coke, so I think those are out, but I'm going to keep the tang and lemon barley water, just to satisfy my sweet tooth and give me a little variety. I think I'll also fast tonight over it. I really want to be healthy again.