Aahhhhh....

Hello dear readers. I write to you this fine evening (well, night by this point) in a rather contented mood. All is as it should be again. In what way, you ask? I'd love to tell you.

**Actually, first I'm going to go on a tangent. I recently (or maybe 3 months ago) found out that the title of Unit Development Assistant, or UDA as we affectionately say, was completely made up by the Denver campus of NCCC. This position exists on all campuses (campi?), but it is called Unit Support Team Leader. You see, the entire group of green-shirted Team Leaders can be divided into two categories: Field TLs (the ones who go out and lead teams on projects) and Support TLs (it's the government, so we say STL). STLs are all the TLs working in the office. There's an STL with the Community Relations department, one with the Operations department, and one with the Programs department. There is also one for each unit, which is me for the Sun Unit. Despite several staff members telling us clearly that the job of UDA doesn't really exist, the entire staff still calls us UDAs. Go figure. But from here on out, if I say something about "the STLs," that will mean the four UDAs and the one STL from each of those departments I mentioned.**

So. Here's the first thing that is as it should be. When the entire Corps is in Denver on campus, everyone eats all meals in the cafeteria. That's just how it is. When teams go on spike, they receive a budget and go grocery shopping and fix all their own food. The STLs and whichever teams happen to be local are given access to kitchens and also receive a budget and go grocery shopping. However, the city forced us to renovate the kitchens back in like early November. This was supposed to be done by the time teams left for spike and the STLs and local teams would have started using them, but it so totally wasn't. Thus, local teams and STLs were forced to eat in the cafeteria for another month. People complain about the cafeteria all the time, but let me tell you, the quality went way down when everyone left and they were only cooking for 50 of us instead of 300. It was really rather sad, as you could imagine. That was nearly four months I had to eat in that place.

Our Christmas break started almost immediately after everyone got back from their first projects. After break was what we call "Transition Week," which is the week you always spend back in Denver between projects. Last week was transition week, so everyone was eating in the cafeteria as expected. Then we got the wonderful news: THE KITCHENS WERE DONE! Kind of. There's still an inspection that needs to be done by the fire department, which means that a security person has to be around while we cook until the inspection happens to make sure we don't set the stove on fire, but we can use the kitchen! Jourdan (the Ops STL) and I went grocery shopping for the STLs on Sunday and we've been eating real food ever since! No one's made anything too exciting yet, mostly because we seem to have forgotten how. Even after these three days, we all walk into the kitchen and have to take a moment to stand in the middle of the floor and look around confusedly, wondering what to do. But I'm sure that will wear off.

The other thing contributing to my Happy Courtneyness right now is that I finally got to go back to my yoga class at the YMCA. During the first project round when everyone was gone, I got in to a pretty nice routine at the Y. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday I went to Body Pump (an hour-long weight-lifting class), and Tuesday and Thursday I went to yoga. I've been to yoga classes before here and there, and they're always kind of ok, but I've never really felt much of a desire to stick with it. Emily, the yoga teacher at the Y, is absolutely WONDERFUL in every way. She explains things very clearly, so I'm not always having to look around to see what I should be doing. She walks around to check our postures most of the time, but she'll go back up to the front to demonstrate when she's about to have us do something more complex. This class is specifically Flow Yoga, so she even includes when to inhale and exhale as you're flowing between postures, but not in a way that's annoying or cumbersome. If she's walking around and sees that you maybe don't quite get it, she quietly corrects you in a way that doesn't make you feel like a clumsy awkward oaf.

I would probably have wanted to keep going back just because Emily is so wonderful, but this is also the first yoga class I've taken where I've felt better for days afterward, not just for an hour or so like other classes. For the purposes of this post, "feeling better" mostly means "feeling not so lopsided." You may or may not know that I've had scoliosis my whole life. It's not severe or anything, but there's definitely an S curve and also a twist going on in my spine. Studying the Alexander Technique (you should probably click that link - I find it so fascinating) with the brilliant and magical K-Spang for my last year and a half of college did wonders for my lopsidedness, but that was well over a year ago now. It pains me greatly to say it, but my body has forgotten a fair amount of what she helped me accomplish. You know what also helps me not feel quite so lopsided? Flow Yoga with Emily at the Y. It's been three weeks now since I've been to that class, so even though tonight's class was a little rough for me, it was still wonderful to be back.

And now I'm going to read a little David Sedaris and go to bed. Life is good.