Yes, yes....I know I have been awful about updating this thing....and now i'm going to disappoint even further by not updating about Disney, or Toronto, but yes...you guessed it....(or maybe you didn't..)....my yoga class that I took this morning. We found this cute little studio that practices "Moksha Yoga". I've never heard of it before, but it's basically a mix of bikram and vinyasa. Not as flow based, but still done in a heated room. Anyway, our instructor, Mike, was the most attentive instructor I've ever had - Explaining each position so throughly and correcting everyone....I've been practicing for almost 3 years now and realized I've been doing basics completely wrong. We practiced "meditation laughter" which was just lovely. he made the point that when you are immersed in giggles, it's impossible to let extraneous thoughts in...your mind is completely blank while positive endorphins overtake your body. Pure awesomeness. To end the class, while we were in Savasana, he told us this little anecdote (which I will try, to the best of my ability, to re-tell)...
A Philosophy professor began class one day by writing "A Mayonnaise Jar and two cans of beer" on the board.
he pulled out a large, empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it to the top with golf balls.
"Is it the jar full?" he questioned the class? They all agreed that it was.
he then pulled out a bag of pebbles and emptied it into the jar with the balls, and gently shook it so that the pebbles filled in the cracks left by the golf balls.
"Do you all agree, that the jar is now full?"
They class nodded in agreement.
The professor then pulled out a bag of sand and proceeded to empty ThAT into the mayonnaise jar.
"Now. Is it full now?"
They class all agreed that now, it was definitely as full as it could be. At which point he presented two cans of beer, popped the tabs and poured the two cans of beer into the already stuffed mayonnaise jar.
"Now, the jar is finally full. The mayonnaise jar represents our life....the golf balls represent the important things in our life -our family, our partners, our friends, our health, our irreplaceable experiences and adventures....the things that, if everything else was lost, and only they remained, our life would still be full.
The pebbles are the less important "things" in our lives....our house, our car, our job.
The sand is everything else. The "small stuff". If you put the sand into the jar first, there isn't any room left for the golf balls and the pebbles. The same goes for our lives. If we put all of our energy into the small stuff, we won't have enough room, time, or energy for the most important parts of our lives.
Pay attention to your golf balls.
Visit your parents, get medical checkups, take your significant other out for dinner, enjoy your kids laughter during his soccer games
Set your priorities. The rest? It's just sand."
A student raised her hand and asked "what about the beer"
"Glad you asked. The beer just shows, that no matter how packed your life may seem, there is always room for a couple of beers with a couple of your golf balls."
Of course Mike ended the story, and I was laying on my mat, a sweaty mess, sobbing into the dark heat of the room (: But it's nice, right? Put me in a great place to start my day.
and then? I made the most delicious smoothie in all the lands....
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 c. frozen strawberries
1 banana
spoonful of plain fat free yogurt
1/2 almond milk
1 ice cube.
Blend.
Pure deliciousness.
I promise the next update will be about my princess fittings (: My Cinderella costume is a fairytale.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
City of Brotherly Love
You'll never realize how submersed you've become in your own citys lifestyle, until you move to another. Granted, I've only been in Toronto for 7 days, but the amount of New Yorker that I am constantly recognizing in myself, while walking these Canadian streets is ridiculous. Seriously. Ridiculous is the best word to describe it. Nobody is in a hurry, here. Nobody needs to stand a quarter of the way into the street to be the first person to rush across the intersection the moment the light turns yellow. People look at each other as they pass each other in the street and smile. WhAT!?! Personal connections? People say excuse me, and hold the door for others. Can't find the local market? Stop into the closest liquor store and 3 of the cashiers will enthusiastically give you 7 different options and directions to take to find the most suitable grocery store for your needs. The most impressive showing of Canadian love? Going out for birthday drinks last night. A group of 11 of us. Our waitress greeted us cheerfully (the restaurant was packed), brought us all water immediately, offered without any of us asking, to do individual checks, moved us immediately into an inside table when requested, due to the weather, and then took multiple pictures of us....all with a genuine smile on her face and consistent patience. My conclusion? I'm a horrible waitress? Yes, but no...Toronto is awesome. Just awesome. And yes, while I do love New York....I do not miss the pace, the tunnel vision, the agendas...not one bit. Ya'll should come pay me a visit. This city is beautiful. (:
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Welcome Back! New Contract, New Adventures!
hey all!
So I am so happy to announce that I've been blessed to receive another performance contract that will take me to brand new places! This time...Toronto, Ontario Canada, Los Angeles California, and various places along the coast of the Mexican Riviera with the Disney Wonder Cruise Ship. With this new adventure, and with my limited means of communication (text and skype only in toronto...e-mail only while on the ship), I figured I'd bring back my China Blog and re-vamp it a bit to keep you all updated if you're curious about my new life!
Sooo....
I guess I'll dive right in!
We arrived in Toronto last Friday afternoon, after a delayed flight at La Guardia, during which I was able to chat with two of my future castmates, Christina and David - both lovely fellow New Yorkers. Upon arrival at our apartment complex, The Rosemont, we checked into our rooms (I got a sweet, well-lit little studio). Friday involved an initial paperwork meeting, a mini exploration of Toronto to find pizza, and then a brief little mixer in the party room to get to meet a handful of us. Then it was off to bed for me...I was beat.
Sat AM:
First rehearsal! Met our director, Phillip, our stage manager, Michael, and everybody else we would be working with for the next 2-8 months. Introduced ourselves, and our pre-assigned characters...I guess here is where I should mention that I'll be playing Cinderella in the Disney Dreams show, Cruella De Vil in The Golden Mickey's, and Bo Peep (after later auditions) in Toy Story.
Next we had our dance placement evaluation....alllllllways my favorite part (ugh)...but despite my nerves, it went fine (:
From there we had our Spanish Web training which has been the best part of this process, thus far! It's essential an aerial circus skill where you climb a rope about 20 feet up, attach your wrist to a small loop at the top, at which point you can hang freely. At the base of the rope is a "web setter". This person spins the rope at the bottom which allows the performer at the top to spin at various speeds, integrating dance poses while spinning. We all were encouraged to do it, regardless of our performance tracks. Getting up was terrifying, but the cast was all really supportive of everyone, and once we were up, in the wrist strap and spinning, it was just freaking awesome. No other words. haha I was literally flying. And watching everyone else do it - it is just a beautiful, beautiful art! The spanish web is used in the Tarzan segment of Golden Mickey's....here's a clip from the show so you can get a better idea as to what i'm talking about. Between 1:12 and 1:40, you can see essentially what we experimented with on Saturday. And yes! We actually looked like that (:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRT6AAMa8c8
After web, we had our lunch break and then came back for our understudy tracking auditions. Basically all the mainstage performer girls, bout 7 of us, got together with our music director, Lona, to go over all of the princess music in Disney Dreams. Shot me right back to 7 years old, playing in the basement of my Gram's house with cousins, Jack and Pete, and Ah-ah-ahing at the top of my lungs, pretending to be Ariel. hahaha it was literally a dream come true! We each got be Ariel, Cinderella, and Belle....I've never felt more giddy and girly hahaha. We princessed around for a couple hours and then our day was done.
From there a handful of us headed to the gym to begin our first Insanity Workout. Luckily, David came uber prepared to the contract with the entire collection of P90X, Insanity, and any other dvd workout program you could imagine. We have since appointed him our cast "trainer". Anyway...took our first fitness test of insanity. died. went to bed. end of story.
Sunday? Our day of rest (: Not much to note about this day other than much sleep, reading, and television watching was had by all. 3 things that are completely alien to my lifestyle. So yes. It was quite a nice day.
Monday AM: More of the same as Saturday, as we still had Golden Mickeys, the Welcome Aboard Show, and Toy Story to cast and run understudy tracking for. More princessing was had and some reading auditions for Toy Story and the Welcome show....My age and height (particularly in these shows) brought about some new characters for me to be introduced to and considered for...ie. the "Mom" characters. It's a strange type to wrap my fingers around but it was new and fun!
Monday night brought our second day of Insanity. Over the course of our day off, we had adopted about half of the cast, if not more, into our workout program. Because of this, we asked to use one of our rehearsal spaces to accommodate our size increase, and David, once again, our fearless leader, led our workout. Rough, but do-able. Get ready...I'm gonna be the most ripped Cinderella you've ever seen by the end of this ride. WOOOOOOOOOOO!
Phew. Sorry to have written you all a novel. I promise that will be the longest one. I'll try to update regularly and only on the really cool things, so as not to overload on the info (:
So I am so happy to announce that I've been blessed to receive another performance contract that will take me to brand new places! This time...Toronto, Ontario Canada, Los Angeles California, and various places along the coast of the Mexican Riviera with the Disney Wonder Cruise Ship. With this new adventure, and with my limited means of communication (text and skype only in toronto...e-mail only while on the ship), I figured I'd bring back my China Blog and re-vamp it a bit to keep you all updated if you're curious about my new life!
Sooo....
I guess I'll dive right in!
We arrived in Toronto last Friday afternoon, after a delayed flight at La Guardia, during which I was able to chat with two of my future castmates, Christina and David - both lovely fellow New Yorkers. Upon arrival at our apartment complex, The Rosemont, we checked into our rooms (I got a sweet, well-lit little studio). Friday involved an initial paperwork meeting, a mini exploration of Toronto to find pizza, and then a brief little mixer in the party room to get to meet a handful of us. Then it was off to bed for me...I was beat.
Sat AM:
First rehearsal! Met our director, Phillip, our stage manager, Michael, and everybody else we would be working with for the next 2-8 months. Introduced ourselves, and our pre-assigned characters...I guess here is where I should mention that I'll be playing Cinderella in the Disney Dreams show, Cruella De Vil in The Golden Mickey's, and Bo Peep (after later auditions) in Toy Story.
Next we had our dance placement evaluation....alllllllways my favorite part (ugh)...but despite my nerves, it went fine (:
From there we had our Spanish Web training which has been the best part of this process, thus far! It's essential an aerial circus skill where you climb a rope about 20 feet up, attach your wrist to a small loop at the top, at which point you can hang freely. At the base of the rope is a "web setter". This person spins the rope at the bottom which allows the performer at the top to spin at various speeds, integrating dance poses while spinning. We all were encouraged to do it, regardless of our performance tracks. Getting up was terrifying, but the cast was all really supportive of everyone, and once we were up, in the wrist strap and spinning, it was just freaking awesome. No other words. haha I was literally flying. And watching everyone else do it - it is just a beautiful, beautiful art! The spanish web is used in the Tarzan segment of Golden Mickey's....here's a clip from the show so you can get a better idea as to what i'm talking about. Between 1:12 and 1:40, you can see essentially what we experimented with on Saturday. And yes! We actually looked like that (:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRT6AAMa8c8
After web, we had our lunch break and then came back for our understudy tracking auditions. Basically all the mainstage performer girls, bout 7 of us, got together with our music director, Lona, to go over all of the princess music in Disney Dreams. Shot me right back to 7 years old, playing in the basement of my Gram's house with cousins, Jack and Pete, and Ah-ah-ahing at the top of my lungs, pretending to be Ariel. hahaha it was literally a dream come true! We each got be Ariel, Cinderella, and Belle....I've never felt more giddy and girly hahaha. We princessed around for a couple hours and then our day was done.
From there a handful of us headed to the gym to begin our first Insanity Workout. Luckily, David came uber prepared to the contract with the entire collection of P90X, Insanity, and any other dvd workout program you could imagine. We have since appointed him our cast "trainer". Anyway...took our first fitness test of insanity. died. went to bed. end of story.
Sunday? Our day of rest (: Not much to note about this day other than much sleep, reading, and television watching was had by all. 3 things that are completely alien to my lifestyle. So yes. It was quite a nice day.
Monday AM: More of the same as Saturday, as we still had Golden Mickeys, the Welcome Aboard Show, and Toy Story to cast and run understudy tracking for. More princessing was had and some reading auditions for Toy Story and the Welcome show....My age and height (particularly in these shows) brought about some new characters for me to be introduced to and considered for...ie. the "Mom" characters. It's a strange type to wrap my fingers around but it was new and fun!
Monday night brought our second day of Insanity. Over the course of our day off, we had adopted about half of the cast, if not more, into our workout program. Because of this, we asked to use one of our rehearsal spaces to accommodate our size increase, and David, once again, our fearless leader, led our workout. Rough, but do-able. Get ready...I'm gonna be the most ripped Cinderella you've ever seen by the end of this ride. WOOOOOOOOOOO!
Phew. Sorry to have written you all a novel. I promise that will be the longest one. I'll try to update regularly and only on the really cool things, so as not to overload on the info (:
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