I am a wannabe morning person. Before starting college, I hated waking up
before 7am to get ready for school.
Seriously, being forced to attend classes in the early morning when
one’s brain has barely even woken up is torture in my book. But there is something about the mornings
that I really do love and when I’ve had a good night’s sleep, it’s nice to get
up early (7 am), do some yoga or stretching, and have a yummy breakfast.
This
morning followed day lights saving.
I
found out that Cubans also change their clocks from eavesdropping on a
conversation in a Paledar (little restaurants attached to people’s homes) so I
knew that if I set my alarm for 7:30, my body would technically be waking up at
6:30.
There’s something sick about
getting up at 6:30 or earlier for fun on a weekend.
Seriously, who does that?
I tried.
Got up at 7:30, turned on the t.v. to check if my clock was right, and
went back to sleep.
When I got up again,
it was 9am which was just fine with me since the residency I’m living in serves
breakfast from 7am-10am on Sundays.
On
every other day, it runs from 7-9am.
Every morning, it’s a pretty standard meal: fried eggs, 2 slices of
bread with butter, oranges, papaya slices (sometimes), ham (almost never eat
it), orange juice, and oddly enough a processed and packaged mini cake.
Today there was a surprise
fruit…dudada…PINAPPLE! I was unripe and a bit sour but it was still pineapple
so I gobbled it up.
Enough about food
already.
I had a
pressing, difficult decision to make this particular Sunday morning. The t.v. in my room has a surprising number
of channels and streams a good chunk of them from U.S cable. In addition to BBC <3, I get HBO (yay), a
bunch of movie channels (mostly in Spanish), CNN (aka the celebrity obsessed,
soft ball joke of journalism) and the Fox News channel (yuck) All the movie channels are in Spanish but the
news channels and HBO are in English.
Although I’m not much of a t.v watcher, I’m a news junkie and even
though I’ve lost so much respect for CNN, I try my best to catch Farried
Zakaria GPS every Sunday morning.
Seriously I love that show!
So what fascinating international
news/political commentary did the brilliant Zakaria showcase on his program
this Sunday? Don’t ask me, I went to a
yoga class instead. A couple of friends
told me that there was a yoga class every Sunday morning in our neighborhood so
I was super excited to check it out. In
a stroke of genius, I brought my yoga mat with me on this trip in the hopes of
finally getting serious about the only form of exercise I really enjoy. The class is held in a Jewish community
center, a gray and white, modern looking building decorated with Holocaust
remembrance posters in the front lobby.
Fun fact: Cuba has a 1,000 or so strong Jewish population. When I walked in, a tall, thin man wearing a
white tee shirt and white gym pants was sitting at a table in the lobby. I found out at the end of the end of the
class that his name is Ricardo and he’s defiantly a candidate for the Nicest
Person in the World award. He had the
biggest smile and in the first couple words I uttered, he was able to pinpoint
that I was defiantly not from around here.
I nodded in affirmation that I was an American student after he listed
the names of a couple of my friends from my residency who attended the class
the previous week as he led me to the room where the class was being held. In a large, open room with a wooden floor and
a couple windows, about 30 people lay on the ground practicing breathing and
meditation exercises.
Looking around, I noticed a lot of grey
haired, older people and a handful of super fit young adults. Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting much
since the first 5-10 or so minutes I was there was spent on lying down and
breathing which although calming is not very strenuous exercise. Just when I thought this would be a piece of
cake, everything turned upside down.
Literally, we started doing what Tara Styles (the YouTube yoga guru I
always work out with) calls “Crazy Ab Workouts” where you position your legs in
a 90 degree angle upward and swing them downward and then upward so that they
are over your head. For about an hour or
so, we did a lot of different stretches: standard downward dog (perro hacia
abajo), cobra, child’s pose, etc. It was
a really great workout and I was shocked and super pumped to see so many old
people moving like that. Can’t wait to
do yoga when I’m 107! I’m definitely
going back next Sunday but I’ll make sure that I’m able to catch Fareed Zakaria
GPS at a later time. :p
Note: I went back today and I got to watch Fareed at 1pm! Hooray for CNN reruns. Tangent: Except for Fareed and a couple other shows, CNN totally sucks! It is officially a gossip/celebrity watch channel. Thank god for BBC.
The Jewish Center where the Sunday morning yoga class is held. The class is a beginner/intermediate level and I'm really becoming more flexible and more focused because of yoga. It is more than an exercise-its a lifestyle! :p
Also check out some of this graffiti on nearby buildings. Haban's architecture is very fascinating and is one of the first things that really stands out about the city. I plan on writing more about it later but for now, here are a couple teasers. It’s always
awesome to come across random works of art especially such brilliantly
beautiful pieces like these! FYI: the one with the old lady is that’s totally my future self at age 107. Don't you wish your future self was as hot as me? ;)
