After spending the past three days buried in articles on child obesity and marketing of food and beverages on TV, I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Or I guess it hasn’t been all that dark actually. Yesterday, when I had finished going through all the research articles I had found on the topic, it struck me how much I have learned in the past few days about a topic that I knew absolutely nothing about only a week ago. That thought was immediately followed by “What will be next? The new nutrition learning material that my professor just posted on our class website? Or my Romanian distance course, on which I have fallen behind? Those guitar lessons on YouTube that Dan recommended? Or should I just take time to read that book on the Medici women that I picked up at the Metropolitan Museum last time I was in NY?” And then I realized how much I love learning! Not just in an academic setting and not just topics related to my work, but almost anything that makes me understand the world better. And music and dancing of course, which are almost at the bottom of my personal version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My favorite blogger right now wrote a while ago that when someone in her class had asked her what her major was, she had answered “I guess I am majoring in life!” Well, I guess I am majoring in World. And it is a lifelong project!

Next up is a field trip for my World class, as I am off again to the Western Balkan in little less than a week. Hopefully, I will be able to make a stop in Paris on the way back to see V and to acquire some extra credit! But first, a few more hours on my nutrition policy assignment!

I finally got some peace and quite around me, and am now focusing on my studies. I skipped dance class yesterday and studied until past 11, with only a few breaks to attend to things from work that I needed to provide input to. Today, my strategy is to stay away from my work e-mail until after choir practice this evening, when I have to finalize a briefing paper that needs to be submitted before the end of the day. Escaping the apartment is also a good way to make me unreachable and I have thus spent a couple of hours every day on various cafes around Dupont Circle, including Le Pain Q below! As I wrote in my previous post, I am doing a course in Nutrition Policy right now, and while immensely interesting, I am struggling with choosing a topic for my assignment that is due in less than a week. I probably should go back to browsing Google Scholar and hope for inspiration to strike!

After a long day at work, ballet class in the evening, and a quick dinner, it is now almost midnight and I am ready to go to sleep. I tried a new class tonight at Joy of Motion, and we were so focused on the exercises that we forgot the time. When I finally got to the metro, I saw a train leave the platform and since they are renovating the DC metro system, the trains run sporadically and the was a 20 minute wait for the next train. Normally, this is not a problem because I can always read while waiting, but today I had FORGOTTEN TO BRING A BOOK!! Those of you who know me, know how incredibly rare this is. My question is: what do people do in these situation without a book or something else to read?? I ended up studying every person on the platform, and then I almost fell asleep on the bench where I was sitting. Is that normal? Forgetting a book was especially stupid since I don’t exactly have a shortage of books to read. Below is what is waiting for me on my bedside table (I have started reading about half of them…)

In order to enjoy life, I think it is important to have interests that fills you with energy. And I don’t just mean in term of physical health, like exercise, but something that completely absorbs you in a good way. Whereas for many, that is actually exercising, for me it involves a broad range of activities from traveling, going to museums, or studying languages. Part of this is probably something that Gretchen Rubin argues in The Happiness Project and that is that an environment of growth is essential for human wellbeing. My real energy boosts however comes from singing or playing instruments, and from dancing. My other focus this semester (apart from work of course) was thus supposed to have been ballet. After a break for about 15 years, I have now been dancing for about a year, but not more than once or twice a week on average. So I thought I’d take classes more intensively to get back in shape (if that is even possible at my age of course). The studios where I currently take classes are a little far away, which involves quite a bit of logistics to every class. A few weeks before Christmas, I found however a studio at Dupont Circle, about three blocks from where I live, and I quickly planned for a 4 – 5 classes per week schedule, involving both traditional ballet classes as well as a barre class (the new trend here in the U.S.) and point class. And yesterday, I was about to go to my first class but when I went on-line to book it, there was a message on their website saying that due to financial difficulties, they had to close down their business! So no ballet intensive for me this spring. Guess it will leave me time to follow Justin Sanderloe’s guitar lessons on YouTube, which Dan recommended me and finally learning properly how to play.