Road To Mysore

Practice today and yesterday has been great. They were both easy practices. My knee is slowly healing and I got back some of my range. I think it will be another couple of weeks before I can bind Mari B on my right side. I've been binding on my left side consistently though. I've been really taking the extra effort in moving much slower and taking longer breaths. I've been holding postures longer than usual too.

A lot of people have left since I arrived but there are more people arriving than leaving. There are a lot of new faces this week. I'm definitely no longer a newbie. Normally, by 6:45 there are "no more, one more?". I think this weeks "no more, one more?" was around 7:15. I'm still hoping that Sharath keeps me on the 6AM slot. It's only a question of time before he moves me to the 5AM slot. I haven't been sleeping very well this week so if he moves me this week I'll be screwed. The thing about practicing so early is that I'll have to sleep much earlier to get up at 4AM and therefore I also have to have dinner by 4PM. I normally finish dinner here by 6PM. If I eat any later, I end up tasting dinner again the following morning during practice. Practice here is so intense that your food has to be fully digested before practice. Another problem here is that most restaurants don't serve dinner until 6PM and the only restaurant that serves dinner anytime is closed for 2 weeks.

These are the issues I'm confronted with everyday. I have 4 major decision to make each day...Where am I going for breakfast? Where am I going for lunch? What am I going to do today? Where am I going for dinner? I feel like a Beverly Hills housewife.

Last night we had dinner for Stephanie(from Germany) at the Greenleaf. She arrived a month ago and was taking the 8PM train to Bangalore. Tonight we have another goodbye dinner for Shannon at the Parklane Hotel. Shannon is part of the LA crew(2 gone 5 to go). She leaves tomorrow for Bangalore. She's taking an extra 10 days to visit Varnasi, New Delhi and other cities. I've been often tempted to take so time off to see the rest of India but I don't want to take away from my ashtanga practice. I figure, one of these days I'll come to India specifically for travelling. This trip is all about ashtanga and Mysore.

I spoke to Saskia a week ago about renting a house here in Mysore for a whole year. Saskia has been living in Mysore for the past 2 years. She told me that if I'm only coming to Mysore for 3 to 4 months in a year, it's not worth it to get a place for the whole year. She said I'm better off storing my things with my present landlord or with Shiva. I know I'm coming back here next year but I may not lock into a place here for a year.

The shala population here is closely following the US Presidential Elections. I don't know of any American here who voted for Bush. I'm not a Democratic. I just don't like Bush. All the non-Americans here(mostly Europeans and Australians) can't figure out why anyone would vote for Bush after all what's happened. We are constantly in the defensive. If Bush wins in the next few days we're definitely going to hear about it from all of them. This morning during breakfast a Finnish guy said that he should be entitled to vote because the outcome of this election affects the whole world. Even my landlord and the local population is hoping for Kerry to win. I really wish Kerry wins because it would be difficult to face everybody if he doesn't.