Yoga at Heathrow

During my very lengthy layover at Heathrow on my way to Tbilisi, my body was calling me to do some yoga. It could have been that, the fact that it was a completely separate room with door and smokefree and perhaps the fact that I found myself dragging a 10 pound/6 kilo yoga mat through the airport. After having done the rounds entirely through terminal 4, the time difference and the fact that I can never sleep on transatlantic flights going eastbound, I decided to check out the nondenominational prayer room. I mean, some people call yoga and chanting religious so why not venture to the next level and actually use that to my advantage. I actually was in a yoga class, Bikram style which is controversial in its partake of the yoga circuit, where the teacher who essentially memorizes a monologue that they recite through a set of nonvarying postures in 100 degree heat. For tree posture, which involves placing your hands together at your heart, called prayer position or samistiye, the teacher requested that we place our hand in non-denominational prayer posture. The act of making yoga politically religious and trying not to stun students to get them to stay to make more of a profit made me want to go running from the room, but so I diverge we trek our substantially large amount of carry-on baggage into the prayer room after the young devout Muslims had finished their worship. You see, I wasn't too sure how they would take to the chanting and yoga.

I had always seen these rooms and joked about doing yoga in one but never had ventured that far. I guess I never had a long enough layover and a mat handy as well. The room itself had a lot of Korans, prayer rugs, and tons of other stuff. I was doing some meditation and chanting when the Mecca seekers came in for a bit. There is actually a compass on the ceiling showing the direction of Mecca. Muslims practice prayers 5 times a day in the direction of Mecca in case I am being too vague. They even have showers so you can cleanse yourself for the ablutions before you pray. The British are quite good at respecting non-dominant religions which I think is quite impressive considering that sometimes some individuals around the country can be a bit close-minded about that sort of stuff.

The last Georgian Restaurant in Washington DC

I'm not sure how we did it but we did. All of our stuff is indeed in boxes at someone's house, in boxes being Fed-exed or posted, being given to a friend, sold, or in our suitcases. Quite an impossible feat if you had looked into our drawers, cabinets, and closets. It seemed like the stuff never ended from free food samples from natural food and bath product fairs, preserves from Georgia, alcohol and food brought back from several continents, I am honestly shocked that we have moved. I have made more friends in the process and managed to sell people at random times like our sofa at the going away party. We had over 30 bottles of wine that needed to be drunk, or given away so as people imbibed more, obviously more was to be sold.

So the Georgian restaurant, our kitchen, is going back to Tbilisi. It will be interesting that's for sure. I'm not sure how as I found it is best to not have any sort of expectations in this type of situation, that is moving to a country I have never been to and have only met people from. But then again, would you expect any less from a tsiganka, gypsy?

Lucky Duck

On Sunday afternoon I was on what was supposed to be a short walk in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC with some friends. As that was the case I opted to go not sporty coat BUT purseless to be practical. As much as I had the intuition or thought that something could fall out of my pockets, I did not dream it would really happen. We are trekking down these steep hills that are not trails and walked on this rotting old street which had been closed down which is the origin of the bumper stickers, I have seen for the last 3 years, "Save Klingle Road". As I have seen Klingle road on the bus, I was wondering what they meant. There is this one section of the road which is indeed a waterfall, no joke, there is water streaming down it. The road definitely needs to be saved. Anyway, back to why I am so lucky. After we turn around and come back through the zoo and we are close to my friend, Emily's house. I discover my cell phone is indeed not in my pocket. It had fallen somewhere in the infinite amount of trees in the forest, by any of the possible things we had climbed over or trekked down. After trying to call it, we realize the phone has died as well. Sounds pretty dismal, no?

But No!, my dear Friend. I look at some fortune cookies we had bought at the Fortune Cookie Museum in San Francisco, telling me that my grace encourages others. I decided, I'll give us a 1/2 hour of trekking to find it. After going down two of the hills pushing around our feet, I stop and look to my right, any my mobile phone is there, uncovered just staring back at me. I was in total shock! Now that is pure luck!

The remains of our country