day one..

Okay so I cheated, and I"m gonna cut and paste from this email i sent, sorry for the redundance!


Hey everyone, I made it here safely and soundly. The resort is absolutely amazing. It's so gorgeous with palms trees everywhere 5 swimming pools, botanical gardens, golf courses, the works.... Not a bad place to be spending 9 weeks to train for yoga! So far all of the people I have met have been super friendly, and Erica and I already made a trip to the local grocery store to stock up on groceries.... (sidenote: it was on the order of Costco with the free samples... except Costco doesn't give out free samples of Vodka and Cran... WOW that's mexico for ya!)

Anyhow, today was the first day of training and it went very well and good. Bikram lived up to all of my expectations and it blew my mind how many innapropriate (but comical and usually right-on) comments he made. We sat through a few hours of lectures and some testimonials- one of which was from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He attributed the last 7 years of his career and the fact that he's still able to move around today to the yoga. We also started posture clinic today and about 50 people did half moon pose in front of Bikhram. (i am still bitter I kind of got the shaft-- Craig (more about him later) asked for 5 volunteers, I jumped up eager to get in out of the way, but then he had us demonstrating the posture itself not the dialog. Erica went today though, and she totally rocked it! Bikhram was very impressed and kept asking what studio she came from. Yay for BYEG!! :)

We only had one practice today and it was a long one... we started at 5 and didn't get out until 7:15... keep in mind class is only suposed to be 90 minutes, but Bikram lived up to his reputation of holding postures and talking at length. Kareem practiced with us and it was pretty funny because i looked to my right and about 4 people over i saw his ginormous chest and shoulders sticking out 2 feet above the people next to him. (not to talk smack on the guy or anything but.... He about died after the 3rd posture and left the room! I'm very proud to say I not only stayed in the room, but I didn't have to sit down once. I was shocked to see how many people were dropping like flies all around me. I felt pretty good, it was hot, but not too bad. I sweated more than I can remember, but I could tell he was tryign to take it easy on us. We'll see though, i don't want to jinx myself, but I'm feeling good about things right now.