dilemma 7/30/05

My 070 class has been studying various modals, so as a wrap-up on Thursday, I did an activity called "Dilemma". I presented three situations and students had to pick one and give advice, opinion, suggestion using the modals we have studied. There were two more, but all of them wanted to work on MY dilemma. It read something like..."Keiko is recently divorced. She is happy single and she is afraid of starting a new relationship. She also has financial problems and definitely is not ready to get married again. She has a lot of guy friends, but they are all married or have girlfriends and none of them are romantically interested in her. She feels alone sometimes and would like to have fun with guys. She is moving to a new city in a week and starting a new job." So students became very sympathetic with me and gave me all kinds of suggestions. Since all of them are Spanish speakers (Mexico, Cuba and Colombia), a lot of suggestions were about going to night clubs and going dancing. So I 素直に followed that advice and asked three Mexican girls to join me to a club last night. Boy, we danced. I can call THAT workout, I hope.

left ankle 7/29/05

I seem to have injured left ankle during Will's yoga class on Monday. It was noticeable enough that I decided not to take a walk with the dog that night. I was wearing flip flop and I thought that was why. For the last couple of days or so, once in a while I feel it. In class, there were some standing poses as usual, but I hadn't done any for a while, so I probably had gone too deep in the lunge. I don't think it is going to be anything major. I have been walking pretty good.

I gave away this URL to a few people recently now that I leave Albuquerque pretty soon. I realized that this is a good thing for remote people to check on me. I hardly have time to write e-mail these days and the diary does reflect quite a lot of what I am up to. So if you are a new reader, welcome and check out what I have been doing in the archive!

3pm 0 steps! 7/28/05

Today was the second to last day at Sears (yes, I will leave, yes.) and as usual I ran around since 6am. I came home to look at the pedometer and everything says 0, 0, 0! I forgot to take it with me. I was busy thinking about bringing a digital camera and have it on me this morning, I guess. Grrr. So as of 3pm, it shows 0 steps. Grrr.

eating mango 7/26/05

ESL students are wonderful people. I usually make a habit of feeding them candies in night classes because everybody must have had a long day at work or taking care of family. But I decided not to take anything for my day class. The class is 1-3:15pm and this turned out to be a rather awkward time. I don't eat before class (as a habit) and it is too early to eat lunch when I leave home around noon. By the time the class is done and drive home, it is close to 4pm and I am usually starving by then. One day, a student brought left-over party food from another class and saw me eating rice cold. Ever since then, somebody brings something to feed me! I have two monks from Thailand and some Mexicans are from coastal part and we have been talking tropical fruits. They have been feeding me fresh mango! We also talked about mangosteen. In case I haven't said so in this diary, I think my previous life was from somewhere in the Caribbean or South America. I say so because I have unusual obsession to tropical fruits. I feel like I go to class to eat mango these days!

working out in the afternoon? 7/25/05

I definitely like to work out first thing in the morning because deeper you go into the day, something comes up and it is easier to cancel the workout. However once I start teaching again, I will have morning classes. I haven't had any morning classes while I regularly exercise, so I am starting to think I should work out AFTER the day is over. As today, I have so many things in my mind and I didn't feel like I could go. My class ends 3:15 today and a guy is coming to fix the doors. I guess I have to just go to Will's yoga class today. Normally I should eat pretty good lunch, finish classes, work out, go home and walk the dog. I may not make it home to watch "100 Mexicanos dijeron". And once winter comes, I can probably just walk around the property. Grrr.

冷や奴 7/24/05

One of the food that I am trying to get back as a Japanese is tofu. It has plenty of protein to build muscles without having fat that meat would have. Yesterday, Taguchi sensei told me about Komart. It is about 5-10 minutes from my new home in Farmers Branch, TX, a suburb of Dallas. The whole area is heavily in Korean and they had natural silken tofu. I wanted to try it to see if it is good enough to eat it by itself as 冷や奴. I wanted bad enough so I even bought a small bottle of soy sauce! It was pretty good. I think I will buy a couple a week.