Taj to Goa

Dave and I have written every post together (me correcting his half French half English spelling and grammar and him making me less boring) so it's a little difficult to write this without him... but maybe you'd like to know what I've been doing?

First, the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately the sky wasn't clear- a combination of dust, pollution and post-Diwali fireworks- but we went anyway and took the required 5000 photos. Here are a few...

So as you can see, we have seen the Taj Mahal.

After seeing the Taj, I left Dave sitting forlornly on his bed and began my long journey to Goa. I have been doing yoga off and on since I was about 14, and the idea to do a teacher training course had crossed my mind. However, I always put the idea away, thinking that I wasn't good enough, that there wasn't time to do a course, that I couldn't afford it or that I'd be a terrible teacher. Over the last few months though, Dave and I have been doing yoga whenever we can with lots of different teachers (some good, some named Dilip....) and Dave asked whether I had considered becoming a teacher. I explained my issues with the idea and he destroyed them all. So I was stuck- I wanted to do it, my reasons for not doing had been destroyed- I had to do it! I spent hours and hours googling places (whenever I would give up Dave would send me back to the computer to look more) and finally found a few places that looked good. Unfortunately, they were full (I guess people usually think about this more than a week before). However, fate intervened and the centre I liked the most emailed me to say they had a cancellation, the spot was mine if I wanted it. One plane, one rickshaw, two taxis, one train later and one night in the wrong hotel, I arrived at Ashiyana.

I've been here one week and so far, the experience has been incredible. I get up around 5:30 am to go running (stupid early I know, the sun isn't even up), then we have breathing exercises and meditation from 7-8 am, an asana or yoga class from 8-10 am, then we're given breakfast. The rest of the day is a series of classes in anatomy, learning to teach, different forms of meditation, philosophy and chanting. We're given a break after lunch for a couple hours, which most of us use to run to the beach to fry ourselves in the sun. The teachers are incredible, the food is great, the centre itself is beautiful... in other words, everything has dramatically improved since I ditched Dave.

This is the beach....
This is my super awesome roomate Renee with her dry wafer cookie...

That's all for now... I don't know where Dave is or what he's doing, last I heard he was taking a 30 hour train ride from Pushcar to Goa.