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We have left humid hot Florida and now are on the west coast, with some really cold days.  I think missing winter last year in Peru has thrown me off.  Spring in FL was my summer, now all this cold weather makes me feel like it’s fall….but summer will come.

We spent a week with Matt’s parents, playing wii, cards and relaxing.  We had a nice family gathering one day so we got to share our slideshow and catch up with everybody.  We now are in Portland staying with friends and seeking employment and lodging.  It was really cold when we arrived but the past few days have been sunny and beautiful.  Maybe we’ll just stay unemployed to take advantage of all the fun things there are to do.

Matt and I finished a 3 day liquids fast and are now enjoying the pleasures of cooking and eating once again. I always feel better after a cleanse and don’t feel like I’m carrying around any extra crap in my body. At least for today! I documented our fast on my food blog if you are interested.  I also wrote a little how-to day by day what we eat, what we do, if you want the details the entry is here.

One of my goals during the fast was to do yoga every day. I do yoga, but very rarely. Usually only when we are at a yoga center. For some reason, I can’t get into it on my own without a live leader and other people around. If I do it alone I just feel like I’m stretching and end up cheating or getting distracted. I’ve never tried the videos before. We’ve been checking out different yoga DVDs to see who we like and if any of them are worth repeating. So far the most intense one (and longest) is Power Yoga by Rodney Yee. Both of us break a sweat during the session and when I’m finished I feel relaxed, stronger and more flexible. It seems to be the most productive video we’ve done so far. The easy, slow ones are nice but I am very easily distracted and if I can go into a pose that’s a little harder, my mind stays there. So I’ve been doing yoga and enjoying it and it helps me go into meditation much easier.  Matt got a book called the Heart of Yoga, explaining a lot of theory behind it.  Perhaps knowing it will help me appreciate it better, and maybe do it more?  We’ll see.

Meditation is something I always intend to do and put it off.  It’s frustrating, I get distracted, bored and my mind races incessantly.  I know it’s good for you and all that but I’ve always avoided it as much as possible.  While in Peru at the yoga center I read some books on meditation and the like.  The one that impressed me the most was The Power of Now.  It’s a great book and has really good exercises for quieting the mind and making meditation easier.  And I think the author is Oprah’s new best friend. By the way, has anyone heard that Oprah is eating vegan, gluten free and sans booze for 21 days?  She’s doing a physical/spiritual cleanse and I think it’s really cool someone as influential as her is publicly talking about veganism.  The world listens to Oprah, not the little people.  So if she is looking into where her food came from and what it does to her body, perhaps more will not only follow but be educated.

Our time in Florida has been a mix of relaxation and adventure. We visited the Everglades and saw too many alligators for my comfort level. We went to Sarasota and watched dolphins play in the water and pelicans doing some marathon fishing. We went to Sunday night drum circle on the beach and enjoyed the mixing of ages and cultures. We’ve been spreading the Wii love with our families. We swam in the ocean, enjoyed the beach and had some quality family time.

We lucked out and had a little friend time, too. My trapeze partner was in Florida for a few days and we spent a day at Disney together, VIP style. Her brother works there and was generous enough to get us in for free and we barely had to wait for any rides. We went to Animal Kingdom (a first for me, I really liked this park. Animals, roller coaster, and a fun safari ride). My favorite new animal is the Bongo antelope, part zebra part deer part cow. A white rhino was less than a foot from Matt and the lion king was taking a snooze. We also popped into the Magic Kingdom, did the classic rides and popped into MGM (which is now called Hollywood Studios) to ride the Tower of Terror, easily one of the best rides in all of Disney. At one point we were dropping and a window opened and my glasses were off my lap, floating in front of my face! It was fun to hang out at Disney and not stress about the lines or where to go. We were happy to follow his Disney’s Best Hits tour. Thanks guys! It was so good to spend time with you!

Now we’re chilling with my parents and taking it easy. We drove our rental car on the beach on its last day, which was pretty classy. We’ve visited a few farmer’s markets and have been eating really well, thanks to my mom. We ate at a vegan raw restaurant one day and it rocked my world! It was the best raw food- taste and presentation-wise that I’ve had so far. I’ll post a review on my food blog one day. We were treated to massages one day at the massage college and Matt had a really deep knot worked out of his shoulder. I think so many toxins got released that he now is sick again. We can’t seem to get well since we got back from Peru. We’re sleeping a lot but there must be some Peruvian parasites still hanging on. Regardless, we’re keeping busy with my dad’s movie collection, reading, going to the pool and cooking. I even started a sweater with my alpaca yarn and frogged the whole thing last night and have started over (too big).

We have arrived back on our native soil.  The flight was fine, except for the second security check before getting on the plane in San Jose (and it was NOT thorough and a disruption of our movie watching) and the lack of a meal without pig on the plane.  We packed food and were fine, but seriously, the options were pasta with ham or chicken with ham.  We requested a veg meal and they told us they don’t do ANY dietary requests.  Well, we have returned to a country that sometimes cares about customer service and attempting to garner repeat business.

And it is nice to return to something familiar.  I remember being homesick while is Spain, but this is a completely different situation.  We aren’t having too much reverse culture shock and the biggest thing I have to retrain myself to do is to flush toilet paper.  I keep looking around for the bin.  It’s nice to wash my hands with soap and not fear intestinal anger.  There are things I miss about Peru, and it was a great experience, but right now I am enjoying being able to walk barefoot, stretch out on a couch and see family and friends again.

We’re spending some time in Florida, working on our awesome tans.  Our plan after this is undecided as of yet.  We’re thinking of looking for jobs in Portland, Oregon and see what happens.  It’s smaller than Seattle, has a really foodie vegan scene and tech jobs, so there will be room for us to grow and learn there.

Our Florida visit was not as jam-packed with activities as our time in CT, but we did get some quality family time and some fun adventures. We spent a day at Discovery Cove (luckily the rain held), a controlled, limited number of people interactive sea world situation. They only allow 1000 people in a day and they are very concerned about the animal’s health so they do not provide lids, straws, or paper towels (cloth hand towels in the bathroom). They give you special sunscreen that won’t clog the filters or hurt the animals, but it was a little hard to apply and soak in. All day you’d see people with white paint all over their bodies, we were quite a clan from our name tags to our matching wetsuit vests. Matt and I were signed up to a dolphin swim so for about 40 minutes we were part of a group in the water feeding, touching, kissing and interacting with our buddy, Rex. There’s a lazy river that goes through the aviary, which was fun to enter and exit via a waterfall. There’s a staff: guest ratio of 1:4 but since it was the slow season; it was about 1:2. By doing the Cove experience, we had a free pass to Busch Gardens for the next 7 days. I think 1 day was plenty; we got to ride one of the top 10 roller coasters in the country, Kumba and experience a 90-degree drop on SheiKra. It was fun to go on roller coasters again and I’m impressed Busch Gardens is making a visible effort towards conservation, animal education and environmental awareness. Something good can come out of crappy beer (oh, 2 free beers for everyone at Busch Gardens).

We spent some time on the Gulf Coast visiting my other grandma (we brought lightening to her town, too). We spent the remainder of the week at my parents, relaxing, watching movies and getting ready for Peru. There were also thunderstorms almost every day at my parents. When it wasn’t raining, we got in some swimming and the obligatory stop to Ritter’s for some frozen custard. It’s much creamier than ice cream so Matt and I had to share a small scoop. I think my addiction to ice cream is diminishing. I don’t crave it as much (it’s been almost 10 years since I was eating ice cream every day at my high school job as a scoop-tress). It’s weird, I never could imagine life without ice cream but I think it has just transferred to dark chocolate. Mmmm, Dagoba.

Our last few days in the US were spent with Matt’s aunt, uncle and cousin who live in Fort Lauderdale. It was fun to see them all and see southern Florida. There were lightening storms our whole bus ride down to see them, but luckily our first day with them was sunny and beautiful so we spent it at the beach, bobbing the waves and walking on the beach. I haven’t spent much time at the beach since I moved to Seattle, where it’s a couple hours away and not as warm or swim able. So it was fun to have a Florida lazy beach day where you can spend all day in the ocean. We had quite the exciting experience at Jaxson’s ice cream parlor, all old school homemade ice cream in a building filled with tons of antiques and monster sundaes. They have a sundae called the kitchen sink. When someone orders it they turn on a siren, light sparklers and it’s a party. We didn’t get to see one, but heard the siren. Minimum of 4 people to share this monstrosity. Matt and I shared the Chocolate Peanut Gargantuan, which we finished with a bit of a stomache-ache…but it was yummy. We visited the Calvary Chapel and a home-church with them, shared a lot of meals, good stories and walked around Miami and the beaches together. Matt and I visited Natural Vibes on our last day, a vegan Jamaican take-out style restaurant and that was lots of fun. Everyone that worked and ate there was Jamaican except us. We shared some soy chicken stew, yams, green bananas and dumplings, collala? (a collards dish with okra and peppers) and a bean dish with beans I’ve never had before. It was all hearty and full of flavor. We had some home made soursop juice, which was quite thick and refreshing. We also had irish moss smoothie, with irish moss, pumpkin seeds, hirish walnuts and so many ingredients I can’t remember. It tasted like a thick pumpkin shake. The owner said the sour sop was good for the nerves and the irish moss was good for the irishand he pointed at Matt with a knowing smile). I’m not 100% sure how it will help Matt, I’ll keep you posted.

Off to Peru!