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Monthly Archives: March 2010

we’re down to our last month in sayulita. ever since we’ve been here in august life has been so, so amazing that just the thought of leaving this place fills me with sadness. brenda and i have had both lives in many different countries, and we both agree that sayulita is something very special. we have a long list of other places that we want to visit, but the draw of sayulita might just be strong enough to bring us back here instead.

at least we have a couple of months with the grandparents to get ready to head back into the world of work. this morning we said goodbye to our friends damon and amanda who took seven months off to come and surf in sayulita. amanda has a 11am meeting tomorrow and she was saying how surreal it is to think about working again. being here makes you really wonder how sane it is to put yourself in a situation where you barely have any free time. not to mention the stress. i look at the families here and see them hanging out every day, surfing and playing in between work. they might not have a sparkling career or a lot of money, but if i’ve learned anything from my time here its that no job or no wad of cash will ever compare to being with your family. i know its such a cliche, but it wouldn’t be cliche if it weren’t true! even if i end up at weta again, i know i’m going to have a much healthier attitude towards work because of this lesson!

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summer is slowly creeping up on us now. the days are getting longer and much, much hotter. the ocean is heating up again and we are in that in between time where everything is perfect – not too hot, not too cold. well, as cold as it gets around here anyway. (i just realised that most people call this spring… ahem).

currently nayou is really into swimming. he’s got all kinds of floatation devices, and he likes to put as many of them on before venturing into the water. i put him on a surfboard last week but he was still not too excited about it. i am so keen to get him surfing. i can’t wait for the day when the three of us can all go out together. we’ll probably have another kid by then so maybe the dream will have to wait a little longer than expected…

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nayou has also found some very cool new friends next door. the older girl ximena is so sweet with him. here is the gang playing pirates. arrrrr.

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and on that note, its time for us to take our siesta. i love having that hour or so of nap time in the middle of the day! zzzzz.

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ok sorry about the lengthy pauses between posts these days. our new(er) laptop has been giving us lots of grief and it looks like there might be some kind of hard disk failure. its a good thing we have our trusty six-year old fujitsu as a back up! it can’t do much any more, but it sure comes through in a pinch.

not that much has changed since i last wrote. we are still loving our new house. nayou is acting more and more like a big boy with each passing day. and brenda and i have been surfing a lot. the waves have been awesome recently which makes nayou’s 5.30am wake-ups kind of a good thing. plus i think because we know we’re leaving at the end of april, we have been surfing every chance we get. if there is one thing that we are really, really, really going to miss, its the surf. our friend sondra and i were comparing surfers to dogs. if you don’t walk your dog every day then eventually it will get anxious, restless and irritable. ditto for surfers. i can feel a decrease in my general sense of well bring after about four days of not surfing. i remember looking at surfers in wellington and thinking how crazy they were going out in the freezing cold water. now i think i would be among them. its a healthy addiction though, i swear!

in addition to surfing, i have been teaching a LOT of yoga. my friend shelly (who runs her own yoga and pilates classes) was in the states this week so i was filling in for her. one day i taught three consecutive one-hour classes in the morning followed by one ninety minute class in the afternoon. for someone who is used to teaching three times a week, this has been a big step up. after this week though, i have realised that one class a day is about my maximum. while i love teaching, i find that it takes a lot of energy and its just too draining to do it more than once a day. its not really fair to the yogis who come to class either. i’m going to get a great chance to recharge though. i’ve got a three day workshop with diane long coming up on monday, and tomorrow i start a 30 day sadhana with my friend marianne!

nayou has been doing really well, although we are definitely in the era of strong opinions and the occasional tantrum. oh, and not sharing. he was in one hell of a mood this morning and i found myself fantasising about volume knobs on children very frequently. nayou also knows when he’s in trouble and will try and change the subject by suddenly noticing something very important across the room. i wonder whether this is going to be a lifelong habit. its a good thing they make ’em so cute!

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sometimes nayou is the poster child for homlessness:

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this is a super awesome series that brenda took:

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and this might be my favourite sayulita photo. it was taken on a day where the weather and the waves were just perfect. we were hanging out on the beach and it captures that afternoon so well.

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we knew that we needed to move out of our old house by the end of february. our landlord had already rented the house out for march and april, so we had no choice. brenda and i started looking for a new place to live quite early on, but were disappointed with what was out there. houses were too expensive, too far away, too shabby and sometimes all of the above. we got disheartened and kind of gave up the search. there was also the possibility that we might end up living for free in this huge new mansion that our friends built, and having that glimmer of hope took even more of our motivation away.

about ten days before the end of february (i.e. coming down to the wire), our friend will called with a house he wanted to show us. will is a real estate agent in sayulita and has his ear to the ground for all kinds of deals. we saw the house and immediately loved it. its big – 4 bedrooms big – and has a nice open living space with a huge yard to boot. plus the main bedroom has a king size bed. i was worried that the rent was going to be too high, but they offered it to us for less than what we were paying in our old studio apartment!

it almost seemed too good to be true, and it kind of was. what we didn’t know at the time was that there was this guy andy who had been living in the house for free for some time. andy is a friend of the landlord’s and needed a place to stay after he broke up with his girlfriend. andy liked living there and was a bit… reluctant… to move. on the day we took possession of the house he still had all of his stuff in the house and was digging in his heels, despite having heard from the landlord and will that he had to be out. we ended up postponing our move by one more day to give andy one last chance to move out.

the next day i arrived with a carload of stuff and found andy in the house. luckily he was in the process of moving all of his gear out. it was my first time meeting him, and despite all of the drama that was unfolding between him, will and the landlord, he was pretty cool. he took a while to get all of his belongings, but after that he was gone and we moved in without any incident. its been smooth living since then – having more space is just so awesome. nayou gets to spread all his toys out and run around, rocky gets his own hang out area and i get lots of room to do yoga. win win win.

here is a tour of the new place:

and just for comparison’s sake, here is what our old place was like: