Burrito West Blog

Today I went to a taco place at lunch with my co-workers (chicken taco with mole sauce, hello delish!) and I paused for a moment to give thanks for the fact that the place had jugs of FREE WATER sitting out for customers. I nearly wept.

 I love water. I rarely drink pop, never drink coffee, don't see the point of tea (flavoured hot water?), and don't do alcohol - so travel to Europe is always a drag when it comes time to order a beverage. I just want tap water. Free tap water. But that's not an option, so I can either order still water - which could be some stupid thing imported from far away, or a pop. I usually go for pop (if I'm going to pay, I at least want some sugar). Meanwhile, while I'm paying $2+ for my tiny glass of pop, Peter ends up with, like a 1L beer for less. So irritating. So I am generally always thirsty while in Europe.

After work I had time to grab a quick bite at a cafe near the dance studio and I asked for a glass of water and they didn't think anything of it and gave me a mug full of cold water. Blessed free tap water, I love you. 

Is it wrong that this is one of the things I love most about being home? Knowing I can get tap water wherever I go? I'm a simple girl.

Funny how one can love travel and being someplace new and interesting and still be so happy to get home!  We arrived home at 2am this morning after a long haul: Riga Latvia - Warsaw Poland - Toronto - Vancouver.  That's a lot of time in airplanes and a lot of time changes, which really screws up your body clock! But I've had time to sleep and cuddle cats, so I'm feeling semi-human again.

I totally fell in love with Riga, thought it was fabulous.  It's historical and still in the process of figuring itself out, but it's a real city - not just a tourist enclave, which was lovely.

Yesterday one of Peter's business contacts took the day off to tour us around some sights.  We went about 45minutes outside of Riga and visited a modest palace, a ruined&partially restored castle, and a seriously posh palace.  It was a whirlwind, but fun!

When Peter and I got back to the city, we headed out in search of supper.  On the way we ran into three tiny kittens playing with each other (all rough and tumble) in the cobblestone street.  I stopped and nearly died of cute overload.  Eventually someone came by and scared the kittens away (all the cats here appear to be feral which means I don't get to pet them: sad face).  We went into a random basement pub for supper - where we were the only customers (it's off season here now).  The people who work at the bar had their friends over and they set up a projector to watch the Latvia-Russia hockey game. We told them to turn up the sound, because we're Canadian and love hockey (we like to support stereotypes wherever we go).  We watched a bit of hockey - noticing that Baltic players seem less interested in physically pummeling each other, which was nice.

Eventually we had to leave to go to our next destination - a folk club that supposedly has folk dancing every wednesday night.  And it DID.  It was AWESOME.  The bar was another basement bar (and I mean basement of a 150+ year old building) and it was full of people, mostly young'uns.  And they were FOLK DANCING to live music. They were weren't performing in costume, they were just youth having fun by FOLK DANCING in a bar -  hanging out with friends, dancing, drinking beer. It was the awesomest thing I've seen in a long long time. I totally want to start a Latvian folk dancing club in some bar in Vancouver.  It just looked like so much fun.  It's sad that our culture's version of dancing is mimed sex on a dance floor of a dark club with music so loud you can't possibly communicate with anyone.  In contrast - this was energetic, fun, funny, you could still converse, meet up with friends, etc. Seriously, it looked like a ton of fun.  *sigh*  So jealous of the Latvian Folk Dancing Club members.

We eventually left the folk dancing club - and as we did it struck me as funny that after much training, Peter and I know 8 different dances and somehow found our way to a place doing a type of dancing we don't know.  As we wandered back to our hotel through the Old Town, we came across a cello player set up in a square playing beautiful classical music.  Just as one would expect in Europe.

Kittens on cobblestone streets, folk dancing hipsters, cello players in the plaza.... I love Europe.

UPDATE - I found some videos on youtube of the folk club we went to so you can get a bit of an idea of the awesome:

Riga, Old Town

Riga: pro-cat sort of town

Jurmala Beach, outside Riga

Lily pads with actual lilies

Beaver Lake

Peter in the woods

Peter and I went exploring in Stanley Park one weekend recently - a chance to walk through the forests without having to go out of town.  There are still trails in the park we've never walked, so I thought it was high time we fixed that. 

It doesn't hurt that there is a lovely pub in the park with the best patio in the City (because there are no roads anywhere nearby and you overlook a beautifully manicured garden), in case you need refreshments.

View of the seawall from under a bridge

I am ridiculously excited.  I just spent my evening helping wrangle cats and kittens (SOCUTE!) for my super talented photographer friend, Ben Johnson* to take photos of.  This is my way of helping a local animal rescue organization, by roping my very talented friends into helping.  He took some beautiful photos (in very challenging lighting) of some skittish cats (cats are not co-operative models generally, just fyi, especially recently feral cats).  This animal rescue (HomeFinders - soon to have a website, as soon as I finish making it) has no shelter and relies on people finding their animals online.  I think having beautiful profile photos in the online listings will help them stand out in the crowd and hopefully get adopted quickly!

I can't wait to get the photos from him - I'll be sure to post some for you.  My favorite part was the 3 grey kittens at once, and of course the tiny, lanky black kitten Hank (love).  *sigh* I need a bigger apartment so I can become a fully crazy cat lady.

*see his photos of his cats (and chickens) as examples of his talent. His cats are hilarious.  I'm not sure which is my fave - this one of his cat in a tree, or this one of his cat flying.

Update - PHOTOS!  Isn't Ben good??

Just in case anyone was wondering, I had no idea there had been an earthquake nearby until I read it online.  It was off Vancouver Island, so pretty far away still.  But I will double check my earthquake kit tonight to make sure it's loaded up and the food hasn't expired.

So I was thinking about dancing the other day.  I do that a lot, since we dance kind of a lot.  (Apparently I also blog about dance a lot.)

I actually started by thinking about yoga, which I only do once a week but love.  We have a great lunch time yoga program at work and the Monday instructor is fabulous.  I struggle in yoga (like most people) to get my brain to shut up.  This is also why I love yoga, because I am able (eventually) to quiet that constantly running inner monologue - the one they say is part and parcel of us being a sentient species but that can get annoying at times.  It occurred to me that dancing is the other time I can quiet the hamster wheel in my brain.  As a follower in dance, especially when dancing something you don't know or with someone way more advanced, to succeed, you must stop thinking about the dance and think about the moment - it's the ultimate way to practice 'being in the moment'. You have to constantly stand at the ready to receive signals on what will happen next.  They are usually subtle signals and if your mind wanders, you may miss them. 

I spend most of my time not in the moment. My job is usually about the exact opposite - planning for the future, spending a LOT of time thinking about the future and the impacts of our present decisions on the future.  So I'm discovering that I really value activities that quiet my mind and let me just enjoy the NOW.  Who knew that such a physical activity like dance could be so much like meditation?  Quiet the mind and work the body, not a bad way to spend an evening.