Vacations is almost over. I officially will be back to work on Monday.
Yes, I make my own schedule so that means my boss (me) is actually excited about not working until next week.
I feel like I've been on a two-month vacation. First it was a whole month in Costa Rica and then I came back for a couple of weeks and left again. This time it was to go to Miami.
Heinz's grandparents, aunt, uncle, nieces and a nephew live there and actually I've got family there too. We decided to spend Christmas with them and on December 23rd we were off.
Miami has been a big part of both our lives. We each grew up visiting our family there, spending holidays and summer breaks in this sunny city. We even got married there - it's a long story but someday I'll share it here :) -
Christmas Eve was a mix of German and Cuban cuisine: PERFECT. Oma (which translates to grandmother in English) cooked an awesome Lomo (read pork in Spanish)
Very multicultural right?
Christmas Day was my side of the family's day. My aunt cooked Gallina India which is a traditional Salvadorean dish. I wish I could use a different word other than -extraordinary- to describe it but I can't. I can't even describe what it tastes like because it has a lot of traditional spices and I just feel it tastes like home.
We spent a week in Miami and before we left on the 30th I went for my last 2012 run.
It was a very emotional moment. I like to run on the 31st but I wanted to take advantage that I was there to run my last run of the year.
It was a 45-minute no pace & no distance oriented run.
Half way through my run I couldn't stop the tears, I started thinking that 2012 has been the hardest yet most amazing year. I ran my first marathon, I got my yoga teacher training certification, I became a freelance writer, I traveled, I laughed, I cried, I complained (a lot), I blogged and I faced a lot of fears.
But out of everything that happened there was one thing -I think- was the most valuable lesson I learned. From me to me.
I realized all my goals for this year had been based on numbers: How many things I can get done in a day, a month, a year. How quick can I become the person I want to be. How fast can I run, how far can I go. All numbers, numbers, numbers.
Have you ever felt that you get a lot of things done but yet still feel unaccomplished? That is how I used to feel and that is because numbers are good for certain things but they can't measure how much fun or frustration you'll get out of something.
This year -by the way- I'm doing the opposite. That means I still will plan mostly everything (I can't help it it's my thing!) but I'll try to be careful not to power through things on my to-do list. I'll try to live them out instead of just crossing them out.
Here are some snapshots from my last run. I love that I was able to bring my phone with me and capture that sacred moment when I was cut off by this bridge...Miami's version of a traffic jam?
