Healthy Living

Last saturday I took part in the annual "St. Lucia Wellness Walk" beginning in Choc and ending in Castries. It was a lot of fun and I would definitely do it again! It was great to see 100+ people out there at 5:30 in the morning working towards healthy living! My host mom, her friend and I walked from the house at 4:45 am and got there at about 5:15 am. We were already a little sweaty from the walk there even though at that time in the morning the weather is almost perfect. Once getting to Choc, we had to wait until about 6 - 615 to begin the walk to Castries. Once we got going, they had police and ambulances escort us into town. It was a nice brisk walk and then afterwards, we all assembled at the courtyard in Castries and danced a little. It was fun! Afterwards, I met up with Ashley and we went off to Soufriere. Man, oh man, Soufriere is beautiful! We walked up to the Sulfur Springs, which was a lot further than we thought it would be! But here is a picture of us there... the mud and the sulfur water is supposed to take 10 years off of your age...we shall see. Ha! It was extremely hot and we could only stay in there for about 10 min. The funny part though was the fact that after we got out we had to walk back up to the shelter to change, in just our bikinis and tevas. WOW.... great attention grabber that was. I don't think I had ever felt that awkward before, well until yesterday but that is a story I cannot fully put on this blog for reasons beyond my control. Anyhow, after attempting to get clean and dry, which we never did, it started pouring down rain and so we had to shelter. After waiting around, we finally made a move for it and went back to Soufriere to meet the others. After doing that, we went around to Vieux Fort and found Sandy Beach--- Absolutely unbelievable!

So, I am big on working out and staying active and it's been a little tough of a transition for me as far as working out in St. Lucia. With a combination of the heat, the humidity and having no gym access I have been forced to be creative with keeping my body active. Doing yoga in my room, along with the bands I brought and push ups and crunches... in a hot room, extremely hard to manage. Today I was able to finish an hours worth of yoga but I was drenched to the core. I attempted to walk a lot more, but everytime that I do I get these "water blisters"...ewwww... they are much less appealing looking than they sound. So for now, I am trying to come up with some more yoga routines and maybe putting some of the others volunteers and I together to come up with a yoga class for us and the community. Next on my list, after training when we have more time and more funding for transportation is both of the Pitons (gros piton and petit piton) and hiking through the rainforest from Soufriere to Micoud. OOOOh I can't wait! We were supposed to take a field trip today but the rain interfered and we had to cancel :(. More to come later.