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In my last post I announced that I will soon be starting the level 1 of the Art of Life macrobiotic training. Right now the first level is behind me and at the end of this week I am starting level 2, hard to believe!! It was incredibly intense 13 days (11 full days, one evening and one morning) I must say. I was reeeally tired every evening when I came home (usually around 8:30 p.m.), after our dinner meal. There was not much energy left to interact with Nardo – so maybe it was a good thing that he was gone for a week, visiting his family in France When you are doing this training, everything else has to go aside for a while, because it keeps you fully occupied…you get up at 6 in the morning, at 6:40 you ride your bike to the ferry across the IJ bay and then further into the town centre (very very quiet in the early morn), at 7:30 your morning do-in exercises start, at 8:30 you eat breakfast prepared by the cooks of the Deshima restaurant (unless you have a breakfast “service”, then you are in the kitchen from 7 helping to prepare breakfast under the leadership of the experienced cooks). At 9:30 your first class starts, another class takes place at 11:15. From 12:45 you have lunch (unless your teacher is one that doesn´t look at the clock and keeps on talking for many minutes over time ), usually in the Deshima restaurant together with the daily customers. At 2:30 in the afternoon you start another class, and one more at 4:30 and at 6:30 you have dinner, either prepared by the cooks or by yourself and your classmates in case you just had a cooking workshop where you were practising dish preparation. After breakfast, lunch and dinner there is dishwashing, which you do in teams of 4 or 5 people, taking turns with other teams. The free time is almost non-existent, so you have to keep fresh using a sweet vegetable drink (great against sugar level drops!), walks from one building of the Institute to the other and perhaps some stretching exercises. We had lectures on the topics of the Order of the Universe (that is general macrobiotic philosophy), Visual Diagnosis, Macrobiotic healing and health care, Shiatsu massages, Ginger compresses and then, of course, there were practical cooking classes (more like demonstrations done by teachers) and workshops (where we participate actively). This time we were a group of 13 people, nobody from the previous workshops, but luckily a couple of us are continuing to level 2, so it will not be all new faces. I felt a bit like in a monestary, with all the regular exercises, meals and classes, how simplified life became! Not easy with the lack of free time for yourself and your partner and friends, but in a way really stripped to the basics in a good comforting way…I am very curious to deepen my knowledge in level 2, I feel there is so so much I have to study, and study hard!! Now I have a free week during which I am relaxing, but also going through my notes and doing a loooot of cooking to practice what we learnt. I got a new pressure cooker recently, ordered through internet for a very nice price, so now I am using it very regularly! It was a bit of a fight in the beginning to learn to use it properly, but I won in the end! The rice tastes so much better now…and it saves a load of time too!

The night before my training started we met up with our couchsurfing friend Marco, at our local Indonesian restaurant Puspita – a really cozy place with great food and nice people. We know Marco already for a few years, since my last long stay in Holland, and good we got to meet him – just a week or two later he left for Mexico for a couple of months!! I also got to babysit my little client for the second time, but now we are having a looong break…But I actually found two new jobs, or actually two clients for my dogwalking – I met up with one lady on Saturday, in the Slotervaart area (very far from where I live, so I will need to use public transport in this case) and agreed to walk her German/Belgian shepherd mix, four times a week. And tomorrow I am meeting another potential client, who is from the central area and has a French bulldog/Boston terrier mix. So I might be pretty busy after my level 2 ends!! It´s really funny, because I had ZERO replies for my dogwalking ads, for several weeks, and then in one day I get two replies!! How odd….But well, I will need some income after the courses, so it´s good news and I hope it works out…

We managed to quite nicely decorate our room – thanks to our friends who keep sending us beautiful postcards as we requested!! Really cool that this idea turned into a real thing, I like it very much! Every time we look at the walls we are reminded of each of those people…sweet! I really like this room more and more – it is not as large as I thought it would be, but I love love love the big windows…something I apparently need for my life. These days I look out of the window and often see a bunch of very bright green parrots with red beaks. One day some must have escaped from their owners and founded a family, or maybe a whole clan They are very pretty, and keep stealing little apples from one of the neighbours

Yesterday it was Nardo´s birthday so we planned to have a special day – we went by train to Baarn, near Hilversum, south from Amsterdam and from there we took a 13 km trip through the wonderful autumn forests and heather fields, it was so magical!! We took plenty of pics, so be sure to check my gallery and Nar´s blog…The last weekend of October is always the prettiest…I must admit though that it seemed that half of Holland decided to make the same trip! It was very crowded, something I am definitely not used to in the forests of Czech Republic. But well, this is a popular area (as there are very few such pretty natural areas in the whole country…), it was Sunday, and this specific route was recommended on a website for tourists…The weather was gloomy and we didn´t see the sun at all, but it actually gave the whole scenery a tranquil peaceful autumn atmosphere, not bad at all…We took lunch with us – sushi in my case From Baarn we went to Hollandsche Rading where we took the train via Utrecht to Amsterdam.

From Central station we went straight to the Indonesian restaurant near our house Nardo had his favourite meal (yes, he is very conservative! ) and I tried a new vegetarian dish, was nice! After dinner we had a little Samhain celebration, contemplating the past year and the change of seasons, and remembering our beloved ones…It was a very full day, with a lot of beauty. I realized how important it is (and I realized this many times, but need constant reminders!) to get regularly out of the city, into the green (or red/orange/yellow/brown now ).

 

 

 

 

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