2014: A Year in Review PART I

Goodness me! Again, it has been ages since I've posted and again, I wish I were better at keeping up. But onward and upward! Since last year I only shared the wonderful news of our engagement, I thought I let you know what else we were up to in 2014.

The year started in Guatemala after the wedding of my dear friend Kamille and Chris, her lovely hubby (and they had a baby boy just 3 days ago!!! As we say in Uganda, Congs!). They got hitched on the 28th of December in Antigua, their home for the past few years after serving in the Peace Corps in more rural ares of Guatemala.  It was a beautiful setting for a wedding and great reunion of many good people. Fauna was there with her whole family, Jamie and her mom came, and my parents also joined us so it was like a little bit of old school Stillwater.

the beautiful bride

some of the Stillwaterians

After the nuptials, we stuck around to see a bit more of what the country had to offer. We visited Mayan ruins, went to the natural pools at Semuc Champey - where we climbed through caves by candle light and tubed down the river, we paraglided (I got motion sick) and we did some yoga. After clocking quite a few hours on the windy roads of Guatemala, I would say we saw a lot, but not nearly enough. There is certainly a lot more to explore. I am grateful that I got to experience the bit I did with those I did it with. It was great start to a pretty fabulous year.

from the lauch site of the paragliding over Lake Atitlan 

Lamu Yoga Festival was in March. Lamu is the most lovely little island off the northern coast of Kenya. As there are no motorized vehicles, there are a whole lot of cute asses walking around - donkies! of course ;)

Me and Leyla, my best yoga girlfriend, were both invited to teach at the festival, so we showed up early and stayed a little late to make the most of our time in paradise. While most of the classes were taught to expats, the majority from Nairobi, I was able to teach this gorgeous group of local school girls one day before the festival started. There was a lot of sunbathing, yoga 4 times a day, and fresh coconut water and seafood around every turn. I'm headed back in less two months and to say I'm totally-out-of-my-mind-excited is an understatement.

In April, I went to Turkey to visit Latasha.  Luckily, my trip overlapped with her darling parents. I haven't hung out properly with Randy and Donna in years and it was a true joy to be in their company for a few days, keeping rug purchases a secret from Latasha and styling 90s photo shoots on the roof together.  Katherine Ann, a real trooper, ponied up to Istanbul for a long weekend from New York! Who does that?!  I'm very glad that she does, because, as it's well known, she's just my favorite red head on the planet and even if I saw her everyday, it probably wouldn't be enough.

Ideally, all of these little blurbs would have an entire post or two to themselves. I mean, especially this one. The memories we created! The handstands we shared! But alas, if I were to go into every detail, we'd never catch up to 2015 and I have a good feeling about this year.

Besides trying all the finest culinary delights Turkey has to offer, we also managed to squeeze in danced parties, teaching yoga to Latasha's students, rug shopping, tea sipping, mosques visits, a cistern tour, getting scrubbed down then rubbed down in a Turkish bath, a quick trip to the Med at Mersin and really so much more. Latasha was a rock star, as always. Knowing all the cool places to go and the must sees Even though she had already done them all and had visitors for weeks on end, she took me to them any way. Whatta babe. I'm telling you - I have all the best people.

Amazing hostess at a lunch stop in Adana

Randy, Donna, Katherine Ann and Tasha with Muco, her Turkish brother 

Next up, another trip encouraged and inspired by the yoga goddess that is Leyla. Off to Kenya again, but this time only as far as Nairobi and Naivasha for a 10-day packed 200 hour yoga teacher training course with the Africa Yoga Project. The Africa Yoga Project has become quite famous for its work with local youth, providing them the tools and training to be yoga teachers in their communities. At our training, besides Kenyan participants, there were students from Sierra Leone, Mali, Uganda, Morocco, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania and many more. Lots of people from the US attended as well - their tuition subsidising the African participants' training. My tuition was somewhere in the middle since I'm a little African now, too ;)

The yoga we learned is a Baptist inspired Power Yoga which is really physical and sweaty and mostly done in a hot room with floor heaters. It was great strength training but a deep emotional journey as well. Through a lot of written exercises, we went through events in our past that might influence how we interpret our present situation and learned tools for untangling any negative implications that could have. Mainly we learned to take responsibility for our own stories and move beyond our past so we that we are fully present. It was intense!

Oh my gosh! We're not even to May, but this is getting pretty long and I'm dying to post something, so I'll send this off as the first instalment. There is definitely more to come, so stay tuned.