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<\/a><\/p>\nSnow!\u00a0 It snowed on Tuesday, and on Wednesday and on Thursday!\u00a0 Lots and lots of snow!\u00a0 I think we received about 4″ in total snowfall.\u00a0 It was so pretty.\u00a0 I told ALL of my students how EXCITED I was about the snow.\u00a0 They were less impressed with it, and a little bemused by my reaction.\u00a0 That’s okay!\u00a0 I will be excited enough for all 300 of them.\u00a0 ^_^\u00a0 And we are supposed to have even MORE snow on Sunday!!!<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning, I awoke to yet another surprise:<\/p>\n
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<\/a>(in front of my door)<\/p><\/div>\n
My roommate, Lukas, decided to play St. Nikolaus the night before, and left fruit and chocolate in front of all of our doors, sitting on pretty squares of tissue paper.\u00a0 I was utterly charmed.\u00a0 In Germany, December 6th is St. Nikolaus Day, and it is traditional for German children to put a shoe or boot outside their doors, on the night before.\u00a0 During the night, St. Nikolaus leaves candy, chocolate, and maybe an orange in their boots.\u00a0 Only if they were good, of course!\u00a0 Bad children might find a piece of dry wood in their boots.\u00a0 I completely forgot to put a shoe or boot outside my door, but the good St. Nikolukas came, anyways.\u00a0 =D<\/p>\n
Thursday evening, I went to the fitness center to try a yoga class.\u00a0 The previous night, I had attended a Pilates class, and liked it very much.\u00a0 My impression was that Pilates and yoga are somewhat similar, so I was looking forward to trying yoga, too.\u00a0 I had no idea that this class was almost my doom.\u00a0 Now, I would like to be upfront and say that I have never done either Pilates or yoga, before, and I wanted to do something new.\u00a0 (Apparently, living in another country, on another continent, is not enough “new experiences” for me.)\u00a0 I should have paid more attention to the word “POWER” in front of the word “Yoga”.<\/p>\n
POWER-Yoga.\u00a0 Recognizing me as a new, unknown pupil, the instructor asked me to move close to her, front and center of the room.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Right in front of everyone else is exactly<\/em> where I wanted to be.\u00a0 That is why I originally laid my mat down discretely, in a back corner.\u00a0 The instructor, Nadja, was from Russia, and had so much energy, I swear she vibrated<\/em>, a constant hum of energy and alertness.\u00a0 For the following hour, she guided us through the class, barking out orders with a forcefulness that I drill sergeant would envy.\u00a0 Every other pose or action, I was doing something wrong, so she directed a lot of that forcefulness at me.\u00a0 Sadly, the combination of physical exertion and trying to convince my body that yes, it really could<\/em> fold that way, managed to mute my babblefish.\u00a0 Each time she corrected me only verbally, without demonstrating, I could only stare at her, blankly.\u00a0 I think at one point she asked me if I was from Egypt, but I’m not sure, because that would be a very odd question to ask.\u00a0 I mean, Egypt?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 (So far, Germans have mistaken me for Irish and Czech.\u00a0 And perhaps, Egyptian?)\u00a0 I was also terribly embarrassed, not just by the Russian Nadja yelling at me every few minutes, but by being surrounded by a bevy of middle-aged women, who were all executing the movements and poses with ease and precision.<\/p>\n POWER-Yoga is… much more intense than I was prepared for.\u00a0 Within the first 15 minutes, I was sure I was going to die.\u00a0 I wanted to crawl away, whimpering.\u00a0 Instead, I set my feet together (“SPANNUNG!” Nadja cried, for the nth time), and breathed.\u00a0 Einatmen, ausatmen.\u00a0 The minutes crawled by.\u00a0 SPANNUNG!\u00a0 Einatmen, ausatmen.\u00a0 Please, just let me die here.\u00a0 SPANNUNG!\u00a0 Einatmen, ausatmen.\u00a0 For the next 45 minutes.\u00a0 And then we were released, free to drag ourselves to our water bottles and collapse.\u00a0 I managed to do a good walking-upright-human impression, on the way home, rather than the expected mortally-wounded-crawling-human impression, so I was rather proud of that.\u00a0 And there you have it, the reason why this blog post is a day later than I originally intended: POWER-Yoga kicked my ass.\u00a0 However… I survived<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy Belated St. Nikolaus Tag! Okay, so it was yesterday, but yesterday, I went to yoga, and narrowly escaped with my life, so please forgive me for not writing this last night. Let me back up. On Monday, nothing interesting … Continue reading