Adventures of Sarah: February 2009

Well. I can´t believe its been two weeks already. Class is going really well, about 8.5 hours of it a day, with a lot of hands on practice - at least two hours a day of sessions that we give each other. Sometimes thats great and sometimes its another student who´s really practicing and not getting it so its vaguely annoying, and hard to explain how to change it since we don´t know that much yet to give fefedback. But even if it feels weird or I have to say you´re pulling my hair five times, or your thumb is in my ear again, its still getting bodywork every day. We are learning a specific sequence that combines swedish, acyupressure, myofascial release and polarity, and probably other things too, but we dont get into the technicalities much at this point. We also learn anatomy, history of massage and theory.

Class is held in a villa about a mile from our apartment in town, which is a lovely walk once I get past the ugly modern condos. There´s lots of bird life and really cool varieties of plants and cactus and grasses. THe bird I most want to see is the Hoopoe, which lives inland from here.

The water is so beautiful and amazing, but the town has been swamped with really pasty kind of annoying northern Europeans. Only annoying in that they´re not particularly interesting to me and it creates a very british vibe, so that htere´s more pubs than portuguese restaurants. If I were travelling, I would have hit this town and said, get me on the next bus out of here. But its way less built up than say, Florida, and spectacularly beautiful once I turn my back to the development. The sea cliffs are amazing, full of changing color and texture and studded in the middle with an ancient volcano. Rocha Negra, black rock.

Classmates are fantastic, as is the quality of instruction. Theres six of us and I couldnt ask for a better group. We cover a range of body types, though not gender, all being ladies. We´re all studious students and have similar enough habits and interests that we bonded pretty quickly. I live with three others, in a three bedroom two story apartment. I have my own room, and the two who share a room were immediately giggling until midnight and then giggling again at dawn.