Of life and exercise

6 months is a very long time to be away from home. Thus far we have adjusted beautifully thanks to the wonderful friends we have made and to luck as everything has worked out so well. But I was still feeling a bit in limbo, like I was here but not quite settled, so I decided to fully settle in and create a life for us here in Santiago.

Last week I became the newest member of the Stadio Italiano, which is a sports club about 5 min’s within walking distance from our apartment. It is a beautiful facility and I figured it would give us access to activities, exercises, and hopefully some fun.

From stadioitaliano

From stadioitaliano

From stadioitaliano

From stadioitaliano

From stadioitaliano

From stadioitaliano

For those of you who always thought I was a bit crazy, I have good news – you were right! Since we became members of the club, I started looking around for classes and found all sorts of cool things. So Friday I started tennis lessons – they were AWESOME! It was so fun being active again! And today, tatatata, I started water polo!!! They have a women’s water polo team at the club and I went today and it was SO COOL! For those that don’t know me personally, you wouldn’t know that I was super athletic back in my old, pre-Nathan life. Well now I get to resuscitate that part of myself again 🙂

Talk about jumping in the deep end. I showed up at the pool and the coach told me to just jump in and swim 600 meters. Well I almost drowned after my first 100 meters. I very apologetically asked him to be kind to me as I’m in terrible shape! But once we got past the swimming part and into the water polo part I was in heaven. I have not forgotten at all how to handle a ball or even how to block. Yes, you got it – I used to be a goalie when I played in high school and college. So after a short little warm up, the coach gave us our hats and sent me to the cage as we were going to scrimmage! I was super nervous as I haven’t blocked a ball in ages, but I did pretty well considering the last time I played was in 2003.

“Holy Moly, what about Isabelle,” I hear the collective gasp. Well, I’m in such terrible shape that I can’t get higher than my chest when I block, so she is safe in my uterus. Plus I think it’s really good for her to have an active, healthy mommy. My body was really deteriorating because I was so inactive. So all in all, I think it’s best for Isabelle for me to be exercising and having fun!

So on Tues and Thurs mornings I have yoga, Tues, Thurs and Fri nights water polo, and Wed and Fri mornings I have tennis. Yep, busy schedule – I love it! I feel like I am getting a valued part of ME back, a part of me that’s been lost since Nathan was born.

Hmmm…how does Nathan figure into this picture, you might be wondering. Well, the cool thing is that they have a warm indoor pool for him to go swimming. So as soon as he’s over his cold I am planning on taking him swimming at least every other day. They also have a nice playground where he can go and interact with other kids.

Today Nathan was still congested but was in much better spirits. He’s still sick but at least he didn’t spend the whole day whining, which means he must be feeling better. He went to CME in the morning and didn’t do too well, but did okay. He took the afternoon off CME.

I am determined to find a healing team for him down here in Santiago. I have to let go of the LA team as they are simply not here and find him a good team in Santiago. So I took him today to a Healing center where they have a whole bunch of alternative healing modalities: Centro Ohani. The lady used a technique called biomagnetic therapy on Nathan. She claims that he still has many viruses and bacteria in his upper respiratory tract and in his chest and lungs, and that the magnets would “zap” the invaders and help his body heal. Quite frankly, I didn’t know anything about this therapy going into it but as always, I went with an open mind. I read a little bit about it in Google after I got home and it seems interesting, but of course I want to see if there is a change in Nathan, then I will decide whether it works or not. The thing is I’m back to the drawing board and have to try try try until I find a good team down here. It’s part of our “settling in” process – I need to strengthen Nathan’s immune system and find a good support team for him for the remaining 4 months that we will be in Chile. Hopefully this treatment is good, Nathan gets better, and we have a new member for Nathan’s team!

And now I need to get to sleep as I have tennis in less than 8 hours 🙂