Finding Balance: Cádiz...just what the doctor ordered

I went to the doctor last Thursday because my foot was still bothering me and showing no signs of real improvement. And Friday, we took a day trip to Cádiz, the oldest city in Spain, and also a beach city just an hour and a half away. And now, my foot seems to be getting a little better every day! It might also have something to do with anti-inflammatory meds the doc prescribed me.

learning (happily) that I have tendenitis, not a stress fracture

happy to get my prescription and to know that I'm allowed to exercise, as long as its nothing high impact

I hate the doctor. In fact, I avoid it at all costs. That's why it took me 2 weeks to make this trip. But let me just say that I am so glad I did. The experience was anything but painful: it was just a short walk away, and I was accompanied by MC who wanted to see what a Spanish doctor's office looked like, and Greg (our grad school intern from UNC, who I thought I would need to translate doctor language for me...turns out I did all the talking/listening and felt quite accomplished upon leaving); I waited for all of 5 minutes for Room 1 to be open, spent maybe 7 minutes in the doctor's office where he asked me various questions and then examined my foot and prescribed me my meds; and the pharmacist took all of 2 minutes to fill the prescription, hand it to me, and charge me 5 euros. And why do I hate modern medicine? It's actually helping. Plus, now I can say I've been to the doctor in Spain. Just getting the full living experience here.

On the more fun side of the weekend, we spent all day Friday (some of us skipping class) in Cádiz. It started as a cold morning, but whenever someone said "I can't believe the weather is like this today, of all days!" someone would counter it with "hey, it's only 10:30, it's going to get hot just trust me." This banter continued for some hours: "hey, it's only 11:45," "hey, it's only 12:30," "hey it's only 1:15!"...but eventually the sun did break through the clouds and when it did it was hot. We even got in the water. And since its not tourist season for the beach yet we had the place almost to ourselves. A few people left around 3:30 for lunch, but I was here for one reason and one reason only: la playa. I lay in the sand, skipped rocks in the ocean, took a walk along the beach and climbed rocks when it was low tide, took a nap on my towel, at my bocadillo out in the sun, read magazines and chatted with Em and Chlo all afternoon. We didn't leave the beach until 7 when we had to catch the bus back to Sevilla. We did walk out on a long pier on our way back and saw locals jumping from the wall of the pier into the ocean. It looked like a blast, but I didn't want to be wet on the bus ride back...next time.

the difference between morning and afternoon

It couldn't have been a more perfect Friday, and maybe the best thing about it was the fact that it was a Friday. We still had the whole weekend ahead of us to look forward to. MC had class on Friday so she didn't come with us, but she went on Saturday so I had the day to myself which was kind of nice. I went to the park and did some people-watching [in particular, one boy who was screaming at ducks in the pond...literally running back and forth as the ducks scurried away from him, and his dad just sat back and laughed]. I also browsed around Nervion Mall to see if there was anything worth spending money on (I try to avoid shopping at all costs because its hard to justify spending 40 euro on skirt when that could potentially be a plane ticket to Barcelona or something). I did see a few things I liked but I decided to leave them be and return if I kept thinking about them (I did).

I'm calling this my "Italy outfit": maxi skirt with a long slit, cropped tight tank, straw hat...all under 30 euro thank you very much

On Sunday we went to see the new Wizard of Oz movie in Spanish. I thought that I would certainly fall asleep since I normally can't even help it when its English, and with having to pay extra attention just to follow the story line, I thought it would be a lost cause. I was pleasantly surprised when I came out, only having snoozed for a few minutes, and having grasped about 90% of the story. It was rainy so it was a perfect day to sit inside, and the movies are pretty much the only public thing open on Sundays anyway. Now that I'm thinking about it, that's the first movie I've seen in theaters since The Grey, my sophomore year, if you don't count the Batman premier which I slept through right from the opening trailers.

And since I can't do anything high impact, Insanity is out of the question, as is running. And until this week, I didn't think a gym would be possible (O2 wanted me to pay for March and April, the months I hadn't opted to keep the membership, in order to be a member for May, and they're ridiculously expensive already). So I've been doing a lot of research on my own about workouts you can do at home, in small spaces, that I can modify to not be too much impact on my feet. Some exercises I have found that seem to be pretty effective, still use interval training, and are easily modifiable for my needs, are those within the Tabata technique. You can pick the 4 exercises you want to use for your workout of the day, and you do each one 8 times for 20 seconds (at 120% effort), with 10 seconds of rest in between each set. After you finish one exercise, you rest for 60 seconds and then move on to the next exercise. A 20 minute workout in total. I downloaded the Tabata timer app and picked my 4 exercises on Sunday night (jackknife crunches, oblique crunches in high plank, burpees at low impact, and regular squats/hands behind head), and tried out this technique for the first time. And today I am sore! I love it. And I missed sweating, since I haven't done that in almost 3 weeks. And now I plan on incorporating some of this new stuff into my group fitness classes!

my trusty new Tabata timer

And if this little entry weren't already random enough, here's another little going-on as of now: Miguel Angel is home a lot more often now (don't know the reason why), and when he's not painting various rooms in the house and smoking cigarettes up a storm, making the entire house ooze fumes like nobody's business, he's cooking in the kitchen for us. And it's good! I asked him if I could write down own of his recipes and he was overjoyed. Like mother like son, I guess. He jumped at the chance to share his story of how he combined a few recipes and some things he tried in restaurants to come up with his perfect garbanzo bean stew. It looks a lot like things we normally eat (I mean come on, how can it not look similar when they rotate among the same 6 ingredients, essentially), but it had a fresh new taste and I was so grateful for that. Only when I was trying to write the recipe, I not only had Miguel Angel yelling (because that's just the tone of his voice) in the most rapid Spanish slang anyone can imagine, I had Cristina yelling over him to correct him and tell me additional things to write down that he forgot. I guess this display of crazed yelling can be interpreted as a passion for sharing this aspect of their lives with me, something they truly do cherish and find satisfaction in.