The Gallivanting Grasshopper: CERTIFIED YOGI! -- Calle del Infantas

I am writing this post from the fourth story of a small apartment building in the center of Madrid. A couple I met on couchsurfing agreed to put me up for two nights, and I'm so glad I decided to take the risk and couchsurf as opposed to booking a hostel. Couchsurfing is so much more personal and the people you meet really want to spend time with you and make you feel as comfortable as they can. I spent the last forty-five minutes chatting with a lovely fellow named Jakob from Denmark. Copenhagen, actually. I seem to be meeting people all over who just make me miss Alex more. Jakob is a young film director who works as an English teacher as he struggles to find work in the film industry. Everyone in Spain struggles to find work in any industry these days, though. His girlfriend, a girl from Arizona named Kelly, should be back from work in a couple of hours. I'm looking forward to meeting her. Her couchsurfing profile says that she once played guitar hero until she had blisters on her hands and that she makes a great veggie lasagna.

In other news, I am now a 200 hr certified yoga instructor! I still have a lot to learn before I'll feel comfortable teaching a yoga class, but I'm well on my way. My plan for the next few months is to develop a really strong personal practice, cuing each asana transition verbally so that I develop a strong sense of the language I'll have to use. Also, as some of the farms I'm volunteering at teach yoga, I'm going to ask if I can practice my assists during scheduled classes. I found a couple of books on yoga anatomy and teaching that I can download onto my kindle, and I'm going to videotape my practice to see what I can improve in myself.

I made some really great friends at Lalita, and I'm going to miss living in an environment wherein I share so many interests and values with the majority of the people around me. I want everyone I met to come to Wednesday night dinner. I just want Wednesday night dinner to be a carnivore fest. I've been out of Lalita for four hours now, and I have yet to put some meat in my system.

A few things I learned in yoga training:

Mosquitoes hate incense, so burning a stick is the yogic way of smoking them out. After the first few nights in Lalita, the entire dormitory was a thick haze of herbal smoke.

The most expensive bottle of wine in Acebo was four euros. The least expensive was ninety cents.

Due to something called Bone on Bone Compression, only one out of ten people will ever be able to do the splits, regardless of how flexible their muscles are. As of now, I am thoroughly convinced that I'm one of the unlucky nine.

There are programs all over the world for traveling yogis. You apply to teach at a resort for three months, they provide food, housing, and a small stipend in exchange for a couple of yoga classes a day. I plan on taking full advantage of this particular opportunity my certificate has opened up for me.

The most refreshing soup I've ever had: melon, mango, and mint. It tastes like a chunky virgin mojito.

Fresh figs are just about ripe this time of year. I found a fig tree on the outskirts of Acebo, and gorged myself on the gorgeous, mostly ripe fruit every chance I got. Now I really understand why the pope outlawed them for good catholic consumption. Something as sumptuous as a fresh fig must be from the devil.

I know this isn't a very long post, but I'm going to call it good for now. So much has happened during the past couple of weeks that I'm feeling overwhelmed and don't even know where to start. In the future, I'll do my best to post every three or four days so that I don't get stuck sorting through a myriad of interesting experiences and trying to figure out which ones are the most interesting.

A few pictures from training before I head out on my quest to find some Tetilla cheese: