Every Day

After a few harder days, today was much better. I went into work on Tuesday and it stressed me out so much that I made myself sick for two days. But, back on track today. I got to sleep in cause I didn't have any online classes. I had some very vivid dreams about house shopping and traveling... I woke up, had breakfast and did my 20 minute sun bath. Yesterday I didn't set an alarm and got caught up reading my book and accidentally got sunburn. So today I set an alarm. No sunburn and still felt great. The sun greatly affects my mood. After my sun bath and a little bit of relaxing, I decided to do my "Fiton" classes. Just some short exercise classes to make me feel like I did something. Im trying to improve my fitness and exercise also helps my mental health. I have been feeling more mentally productive, awake, and happy because of it. For lunch, I prepared a salad for Ty and I. I love a good fresh salad. We ate outside on the patio in the fresh air. After lunch...

This morning I woke up before the sun and taught some kiddos English. I had all my favorite students today which makes getting up early worth it. Then I had my morning computer time and went on a deep dive into this Facebook group called "House Plant Hobbyist". Its seriously the best group on FB ever. Lots of people post about plants, literally anything about plants and everyone in the group is so supportive and positive. I love it. It makes me happy. I probably spent about 45 minutes just looking at plants and posting suggestions and comments... Yoga time was next. I wanted to get out before the sun took up the backyard space. Theres a nice concrete patch thats perfect for my mat. It was in the shade for my whole practice! I did a long and slow flow and felt super calm and connected after. Not to mention all the great music that they play through that app (Down dog). Its a free membership until May for anyone interested! Ty and our roommate decided they needed to get s...

I have been social distancing and trying to stay at home for about a week now. Its been an adventure for sure. Last week was rough and stressful but this week I settled into my new routine and am enjoying myself. Self care is important and when Im feeling good, I have been attacking some things off of my to-do list. I want to try to do some blogging about my experiences just because its so different. Im living in Florida now, Tampa Bay area, and while the cases of COVID-19 are not too bad here yet, the state of Florida is in trouble. Our governor isn't locking down and the cases are going up and up throughout the state.  But enough about politics... Today I woke up and taught online. I am teaching English through an online company where I am able to teach Chinese students. I am thankful to be able to have that right now as many people are struggling after getting laid-off. (If you're interested in getting involved with this, let me know! I'd love to give you some...

I don’t know how it all seems to work for Ty and I all the time on our international adventures, but it does. Which is why I was willing to start this adventure this morning... but let’s catch you up from the beginning. Yesterday... Ty and I arrived on the island yesterday afternoon and our Airbnb hosts were lovely. We decided to take advantage of the warmer weather and go snorkeling at the local beach. We walked down there and the snorkeling wasn’t really good... neither were the free beaches. Instead, we sat on a break wall and watched the beautiful blue waves crash.  I was so tired last night that we went to bed around 9 and then woke up at 6:30 to be able to get ourselves organized for an adventure! We wanted to visit Clifton heritage park on the west side of the island but no busses went all the way there. We decided to just go with the adventure and we hopped on a bus that would take us within 2 miles of the entrance.  As we went along, the bus that wa...

If you're like me, all of the news about our environmental problems has been a bit overwhelming over the last week. The Amazon burning has been very hard to wrap my head around and I've been wondering what I can do to help. I wanted to create an updated version of one of my favorite blogs "Life Hacks: The Easy Environmentalist" ( https://everydaymoad.blogspot.com/2014/12/life-hacks-easy-environmentalist.html ) to include some new things that Ive learned over the last 4 years! I don't want to be preachy, I just want to empower you to learn and make some simple switches that can have a HUGE impact. 1) Bamboo toothbrush I myself was VERY skeptical. Put wood in my mouth? Uh... But after recently making the switch, I'm very happy when I brush my teeth knowing that plastic won't end up in the ocean. It's such a small thing that most of us don't even think about but has a large impact. Here is my toothbrush that I liked:  https://givemethedirt.com/prod...

Its been hard finding things to write about to continue the blog. I feel like life isn’t that exciting. But then I remember not many of you are traveling outdoor educators who are familiar with life in the mountains dealing with horses. So I guess I'll write about some of the mundane (to me) stuff too! Its been raining frequently. Its that time of the year here where we should be getting lots of precipitation. Its good to see because that means it’ll help the drought! Last time I was here it NEVER precipitated. It was rare to need a rain jacket… One thing that’s not so fun when its raining is feeding the horses. Ill throw them some hay, it’ll get ALL over me and then will be STUCK to my jacket. I look like a hay monster… lol  We had a big snowstorm last night. It was mostly sleet yesterday but overnight we got some accumulation. We all woke up to the bright sun reflecting on all the white snow. The mountains had a dusting making the trees look like lace. Even though I am not a ...

Hi all! Its been way too long and Ive been meaning to write for forever but it seems like such a daunting task to fill you in on the last two years of my life… So Im not going to. Let’s just start about a month and a half ago around Thanksgiving 2018.  At this point, Ty and I had been living in CT for about a year and a half in our adorable two bedroom condo around the corner from downtown Westerly, RI. I wanted to hate it but Westerly was one of the best moves I’ve ever made. I would get excited to head home and flying back to New England would make me giddy.  Now Im in California.  How? Well, there were many factors but one of them was that winter sucks. It sucks everything out of the both of us. Its such a struggle that everything amazing about the place wasn’t worth it. So we wanted to be somewhere warm were we could be happy all the time. (Also, our roof leaked but thats another long story)  Ty got a job offer in Florida and it seemed li...

Our taxi drivers didn't really know where we were headed that afternoon which was the first indication that we were in for an adventure. We found it without much trouble and pulled up to an unfinished and empty "hotel". Blue Shark Hotel was definitely an experience that I'm glad I had but wouldn't need to ever have again. Its all about the stories right? So we were greeted by a very nice but socially awkward gentleman who helped us with our bags and then told us to leave them on the stoop so he could give us an "orientation" inside. He puled up some plastic chairs which were the only furniture decoration in the place and stood in front of us to tell us that dinner would be fish and breakfast would be eggs and then said "oooook lets show you your rooms!" At least he spoke pretty good english for everyone. After grabbing our bags again, we walked to the back of the building and up a set of stairs. Its so interesting because everything was hal...

The last day in the Galapagos! Ty and I wanted to get in one last snorkel and per our favorite travel agent we decided to hit up Charles Darwin beach early in the morning. We all woke up early in the house to go on our morning adventures. The girls were going to the Charles Darwin Research Center, my parents were going to hang out at the research center and the beach and Ty and I were going snorkeling. Tide was low and rocks that we swam over last time were now jutting out of the water. We put on our thickest wetsuits (that we brought) and slowly got into the freezing water. There were two older ladies who were wading in the water as well and giggled at us as we squealed at the cold water. They told us to have a good snorkel and we were on our way. It was cool to see a little closer to all the small fishes and rocks since the tide was out but we really didn't see much. We were not out for long when we got really cold and bored (when you see sharks, turtles and rays on all you...

"9:30 I'm walking out of this house." I announced to everyone the evening before. I wanted to get a good start on our last full day together. At 9:30 am, I did leave the house with only a few other people (funnily enough all the parents) and we walked into town to get our snorkel gear. After the shop handed me a bunch of the same size fins that were too big and a pair of adjustable, I finally actually got a pair of fins to wear for the day. Yay! Just as we were ready to leave the shop, the rest of the gang showed up to get their gear and we said we would meet them at the ferry. On the dock we looked at all sorts of wildlife and also spotted the tiniest little baby sea lion with its mother. It was about two feet long and so adorable. The park service had sectioned off an area for them to be alone but we still had a good view from the dock. The little yelps it was making to get the attention from mama was adorable! Then everyone arrived and we were able to take the ...

We woke up at 5:15/5:30 am. Thats early. Our shuttle was picking us up at our place at 5:50am. Ty, my parents and I were out the door at 5:47 and our ride pulled up and the gentleman who booked our trip jumped out (the nice gentleman who didn't speak much English). Only the four of us were outside so we yelled for our companions to join us. "Ride's here!!" But sense there was only room for four per taxi, the gentleman assured us that he would wait there for the next taxi and the rest of the group so we jumped in and hoped that the rest would arrive after! Our driver stopped the truck (white trucks are used as taxi's down there) and said something in Spanish which we all assumed meant "get out" or something similar in nicer language. So we hopped out, grabbed our stuff and met our Naturalist for the day. After a few minutes of waiting for the rest of our group and thinking each white truck would be them, they finally showed up and joined us and so we ...

Tuesday was off to a slow start especially because of the long, exciting day on Monday. I honestly cannot remember why it took us almost until noon to get moving. We probably made breakfast, sat around and talked and slowly got ready. Its also especially hard to get 8 people out the door at an early hour lol. So before noon we all left the house to go rent snorkel gear only to find out that the place we wanted to rent from was closed. So, we had to try to find somewhere else (added time). With 7 of us needing either a mask, snorkel or both, that was a lot for this place to find. We were probably there for like 20 minutes while they went to their other location (3 times) to try to find what we all needed. I have my own mask but lost my fins in Thailand (you can read up on that in my blog, http://everydaymoad.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-lost-flipper-of-thailand.html ). It was a very sad day and now I'm crazy picky about my snorkel gear. They kept trying to give me adjustable fins and ...