september 20, 2001. This month is getting away from me. I've barely had any time to sit down & write, let alone write down the stories I've been promising for weeks. Meanwhile the house keeps getting dirty, my belly keeps getting hungry and my heart keeps getting lonely. Entropy is such a wonderful thing. I had my first yoga class this afternoon. It was an interesting experience in many ways. I've been looking forward to yoga as a way to increase strength & flexibility, forgetting completely that this would necessitate almost-painful sustained stretching. Oh yeah, and the backs of my legs have always been very stiff & hard to straighten, even when I was a young girl in dance classes. Spending about 5 minutes with my back on the mat & my legs flattened against the wall in a 90 degree angle made me realize how many ways I've been compensating for this problem all these years. Still, it was really good, partly because it was so tough. I really have to work for my instructor's praise, and one word - "good" - meant more to me than a week of smiles from my academic professors. The other good thing about it is that there were about 7 other education students in the class, and 2 women in my church choir. So despite the fact that I was in a black catsuit, I felt oddly comfortable. The catsuit is something I'm thinking about skipping next week. I mean, I should use it, and where else can I get good use out of a full body leotard? On the other hand, everyone else was wearing shorts & a t-shirt, clothes that would hide the body attributes I'm trying to diminish through yoga. The Boy would be ecstatic if I took to wearing this catsuit more regularly; he finds it an intrinsically funny outfit, and he always begs me to do an interpretive dance when I put it on. "I dance like the wind. If I can't do my interpretive dance, I don't want to dance with anyone." - honey Busy like a bee, this week has quickly flown by on aerodynamically unsound wings. Yesterday we went on a fieldtrip to the Dalhousie Art Gallery to see an art exhibit about the Black Canadian experience, followed by a film about a fishing raid to a Native village in '81 called "Incident at Restigouche." It was a lot of fun, and completely unlike any other fieldtrip I've ever been on. There's a lot of talk in progressive education theory about teachers taking the role of facilitators rather than givers of information, and my professors practise this with a varying degree of efficacy. Yesterday there was almost no hierarchy whatsoever: we ate with Linda & Miriam, we teased them as they counted us on the bus, we milled about as we pleased. It was very cool knowing that we chose to be responsible & to show up for certain things. I guess that's the whole point; built-in motivation, that is. The maker of the film spoke to us about the importance of including native points of view in the curriculum, and told us how she used to perform at schools for days on end when they asked her. She would sing & speak to the children, and at recess she would run around with the kids in the playground and teach them Indian games. It made me wish that I could teach social studies, just so that I could invite her into my school. At the end of the night, Miriam drove me down from where the bus had let us off to the education offices, where I had left my laptop. When I had grabbed my gear, she offered me a ride up the hill, which I greatfully accepted. As we neared my house, we began seeing other people in the program walking along in clumps. Suddenly I felt like a princess on parade: elevated above my fellows for absolutely no good reason. Miriam felt guilty, but I enjoyed myself enormously. this time 3 years ago: ah, the wedding (pixie & q's)