My new, not-so-routine, routine

I wanted to finally update all of you on my new routine, which I am discovering is not very routine or predictable. And this suits me just fine.
Look at one of the beautiful places I get to work!!

GOODBYE traditional work hours, being inside most of the day, and not working most weekends! And for that matter: goodbye (with mixed feelings) to clinical dietetics, white lab coats, ICU rounds and tube feedings.
HELLO to being physically active for my job, being outside a good portion of the day, being creative and imaginative as I plan out my classes/music playlists, and best of all: helping people achieve their health and wellness goals. I love it! What a welcome change for this phase of my life.
So, what exactly is my new routine?

• Teaching yoga 3 times a week or more for Buena Onda Yoga: It is a wonderful community of expats, travelers, students, and locals. The classes are in English and the style of my classes are primarily vinyasa flow. 
• Leading an outdoor boot camp fitness class for Boot Camp Buenos Aires (a sister company to Buena Onda) once a week... and it looks like I will be picking up more sessions starting this week.
• Writing articles about nutrition, yoga, fitness, etc. for Medios Lentos once a month (unfortunately, their site has been down this last week and they are working on getting it up and going again).
• Spanish tutoring twice a week with my lively and wonderful tutor, Mary Jane. And then trying to practice Spanish, read newspaper articles and easy books in Spanish, and basically getting over my fear of speaking Spanish!
• Being a "part-time mom" with Sofi and Martin when they stay with us on the weekends and a night or two during the week. 
• Working on developing a personal website to offer nutrition counseling and tie together my work with yoga, boot camp and nutrition. 
• Trying to maintain my own wellness and fitness. My goal is to have a daily yoga practice and also begin training for a race, maybe even the Buenos Aires Marathon in October!
• AND... living in a developing country with all that entails!! :) There's usually a daily surprise challenge to keep me on my toes.

Here are some other pics of the yoga studios where I teach:

The Las Cañitas studio

Inside the Recoleta studio:

View from your mat if you take a class with me! :)

One night, Fer and I did a little photo shoot so I'd have some photos for the Buena Onda Yoga website and a personal/work website that I am trying to get started.
Getting my camel on...

Having fun in side crow. Arm balances are some of my faves.

Preparing Nicoise salad for our dinner...

Yumm! One of our favorite dinners.

Thanks so much to all my friends and family that have supported me during these last few months of big transitions. I really couldn't be where I am today without all of you, especially my sweet Fer! Lots of love, Carolyn

End of January... OR: "Hello, my name is Carolyn and I am addicted to grocery shopping and cooking"

Well, another month has flown by since I last posted. I will try to catch up on the last bit of January... it seems so far away already!
I'm not sure exactly why but after we came home from Punta de Este, I was OBSESSED with cooking and grocery shopping. I think the yummy vegetarian food at my Yandara Yoga Teacher Training inspired me, as well as traveling for a month+ and missing my own kitchen got me motivated. Most days I would make one (or up to three) trips to get this or that food item. I made several trips to China Town for ingredients that are hard to get at the shops in our neighborhood. Basically, if you need anything besides the Argentine basics (white flour, sugar, eggs, milk, meat and basic veggies and fruits) you have to trek to China Town. I still get giddy when I find ingredients that I first thought were unobtainable here! When you love to cook healthy food it's the little things that excite: such as finding rye flour, pecans, new types of veggies and fruits, peanut butter, whole wheat pastry flour, good curry powder and pastes, spices, bulk quinoa, lentils, nuts and seeds.
And for Fer: delicious fish and seafood!

While Fer's parents were here for a few days we made the fish above for dinner one night. I can't recall the name of the fish but it was yummy!
Below: Raquel and Enrique about to enjoy my chocolate pie with secret ingredients (no sugar, only avocados, cocoa powder, bananas, dried fruit, honey and nuts)

Cute!

Below... my morning routine lately, inspired by breakfast at Yandara (+ decaf coffee w/milk). I love sitting on our balcony to enjoy breakfast while reading or catching up on emails.

Another kitchen adventure that Fer and I had at the end of January was making this delicious Coconut  red lentil soup from Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbook blog. 
The colorful ingredients:

I couldn't find yellow split peas here so I substituted regular brown lentils and it worked great!

We enjoyed our dinner on the balcony with the Easy Little Bread recipe from Heidi as well.

¡Buen provecho!

Punta del Este

The same day I arrived from the States in the morning I caught another flight that night to Punta del Este to meet Fer and the kids for a few days on the beach in Uruguay.  Every day the weather was beautiful and sunny, perfect for lounging on the beach, taking walks and relaxing. There was a wonderful fish market nearby so Fer and I made fish or seafood every single day- much to the kids' chagrin :)

Close to Punta del Este is Casa Pueblo, which was the home of artist Carlos Paéz Vilaró and is now a museum and boutique hotel. An interesting fact about Carlos Paéz Vilaró is that he is the father of one of the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571- remember the movie "Alive" about the Uruguayan rugby team? His son was one of the rugby players in the crash.
The view from Casa Pueblo is gorgeous and perfect for sunset watching so we went one evening to check it out...

 Sofi and Martin weren't as excited about it as Fer and I were :)

 It felt like a house in a Dr Seuss book

 One day we drove along the coast to check out some different towns and beaches. Fer secretly took pictures of Martin and Sofi playing in the cold water:

 Martin and I checking out an adorable old car. It didn't even have doors!

After a 5+ hour flight delay (I vowed to never fly Pluna again!) we made it back to Buenos Aires and were welcomed by Fer's parents who stayed with us a few days on their way back from Washington DC.

Yandara Yoga Teacher Training

I don't even know where to begin to describe the Yoga Teacher Training I recently completed at Yandara in Baja, Mexico. It was an amazing experience that is difficult to put into words. Some experiences/highlights:
-Connecting deeply with others at Yandara: my fellow 16-day ladies, the teachers, the staff, the other awesome folks in the 26-day training. In the relatively short amount of time that we spent together, we made deep connections. It was an honor to be with them and learn from them.
-Enjoying the beautiful surroundings: being able to hear the waves and see the ocean from my tent, seeing AMAZING stars every night, seeing the sunrise and sunset every day, watching the transitions of the moon, walking along the beach most days, beautiful weather and no rain for 2+ weeks
-The talented and caring teachers: Shane, Kate and Sara were our 3 wonderful, inspiring, loving teachers that shared much more than excellent knowledge about the physical practice of yoga. They truly live in the present and showed us how to apply the principles of yoga into our day-to-day lives off the mat.
-The food: It was delicious, it was nutritious, it was made with love and it was shared with others in a loving, fun community. What could be better?! The only other thing that made it even better for me as a dietitian was that it gave me such a nice break from thinking about nutrition and food: all of it was taken care of for me so I could simply relax and enjoy. 

Now for the photo tour...
This is the beach pavilion where we trained every day. It was a 3 minute walk to the beachfront from here. Beautiful and serene. 

 View from the beach pavilion facing some of the tents. Mine is just to the right of the small pavilion.

 One set of outdoor toilets and showers.

 My breakfast every morning :) I loved the papaya with lime juice squeezed on it.

 A typical lunch/dinner. The food was definitely a highlight. Let me re-phrase that: not having to think about planning, shopping for, cooking and preparing delicious, healthy food was absolutely wonderful.

 One of our last mornings together. It was so chilly at night! Once the sun set at 6 p.m. the temperature dropped about 20-30 degrees until 9 a.m. the next morning.

 My final "presentation" was to co-teach a 70 minute class to the whole group. Here I am after the class with my buddy Ximena, who was also my tent neighbor :)

 On our last full day, we walked a ways to an oasis where this huge fig tree has clearly been thriving for many, many years!

 Beautiful Kate, made us a delicious raw chocolate pie. It tasted divine.

 Our group the night of graduation

I miss this place and these fabulous people but I am excited about applying all the things I have learned into my life. The teaching principles will be put into practice much sooner than I thought: I start teaching at Buena Onda Yoga this Wednesday!! I couldn't be more thrilled! :) Right now I have 4 classes per week, at least one class at each of the three studios, so I have been prepping a lot and trying not to get nervous :)

Busy, busy December

Hello! I'm finally back from 5+ weeks of traveling and slowly catching up on life and this blog. December was a full month, both before I left and during my time in the States. The weather was starting to really warm up here, which I love! Almost every morning I wake up to beautiful sunshine and say to myself in almost disbelief: "ANOTHER beautiful day!" I am a lucky girl (of course for many other reasons than just the weather!) :)
The Polo finals are at the beginning of December and the fields are just down the street from us in Palermo. I had never gone to a match before so I went with my friend Laura from Spanish school. My favorite parts were the beautiful horses, crowd watching, enjoying a delicious beverage in the outdoor lounge between games and chatting with Laura. I had no clue what was going on in the game :) I was surprised at how quiet the crowd was, similar to a tennis meet. This is the absolute opposite of Argentine spectators at a football game!

Later that week, Fernando, Sofi and I went to a "closed door restaurant" (en español: "restaurantes a puertas cerradas") called Jueves a la Mesa run by my friend Meghan, who is also the co-founder of Buena Onda Yoga. There were about 12 of us total and we dined on the rooftop terrace of a beautiful home in San Telmo. It was gorgeous! The food was amazing as well!

After spending a day at our friends' home in the country one weekend we saw 2 adorable owl families on our way home. Here's one of them. The baby owls were precious! The only time I have ever seen owls has been in Argentina: that's 3 times in less than 6 months vs 0 times in 31 years in the States. I am taking that as a good sign that I will hopefully see many more during our time here!

Later on, Sofi and I made homemade marshmallows for these cookies, which are some of the kids' (and Fer's) :) favorites.

We ran out of chocolate, but that's probably a good thing since they are SO rich

From sunny, warm Argentina to... wintry Chicago! I was thrilled to be back in the city before the holidays. I loved all the buzz and holiday cheer. The weather was thankfully mild, although I did miss snow. Unfortunately, I took very few pictures during my time in Chicago. I think part of the reason for this was that my time was so jam-packed that I honestly forgot! From the moment my mom kindly picked me up at the airport to when she drove me to South Bend (isn't she the best?!) I was non-stop with friends. It was fantastic.
One picture I did manage to capture was of the adorable Norstrom family: Eric, Melanie and baby Lincoln. I had a lovely holiday dinner with them in their cozy Hyde Park apartment with our friend Suchandra.

This Christmas my side of the family all stayed at my parents' house in South Bend. It was a full house! I felt like I had lots of time to just be with everyone and have relaxed conversations and bonding. Some highlights: seeing all my nieces and nephews playing together, cooking together, lots of laughing, playing a hilarious game of "telephone" at dinner one night per my nephew Peter's direction, going on walks together, holding adorable babies, baking challah with Georgia and our little helpers, and having my Aunt Becky and cousins Tracy and Christina come the day after Christmas (unfortunately no photos of them).
Mom reading to some of the kiddos:

 Making challah with my favorite little baker:

 Georgia very patiently and kindly let Isaac, Peter and Sylvia help us

 Ready to bake!

 Dad on Christmas morning :)

 Cutie Theo

 Coy, beautiful Vica :)

 Issac and Peter became best buds

 Jenny reading to Isaac and Ellie

All of us! Except Fer, Sofi and Martin :(

Right after this full, wonderful time with family and friends I headed to southern Baja, Mexico for an amazing yoga teacher training course at Yandara Yoga Institute. More on that in the next post!