Distance does not stop the family connection

       I am proudly rolling out a new morning routine that has taken me 10 months to figure out. Its got all the elements to get my day going with a jump start and not make me feel like the lazy gringo that can afford to wake up at 8:00am. As most of my family does here, I am in bed by 9:00pm each night, somehow completely exhausted and ready for sleep. This leads to a natural awakening at 6:30am, as more than 9 hours of sleep each night just seems excessive. I pop myself out of bed and release the pee that is yearning to get out as it has built up a lot of pressure due to my consumption of one mug of tea every night right before bed. I greet my host family on the way to the bathroom, typically at our gate carrying grass for the guinnea pigs or starting up the fire in the kitchen. This proves that I am in fact up and awake at a respectable hour. I also carry an empty water bottle to the bathroom to fill up for when I return to my room, shutting the door behind me, I start up my electric kettle to boil and drip my coffee through a collapsible camping coffee dripper and American sent coffee filters. Once the aroma has filled my room, I top off my mug with some milk that I have stocked up on from my last trip down to the main town, as it is not sold here. I store this milk on my floor as a natural cooling system, right next to my pee chamber (that is really just a large plastic container that has been cut) that I use when I am too lazy to walk to the bathroom at night. On a side note I have been watering our peach tree with this, and the peach tree is looking quite nice, a natural fertilizer if you ask me! Anyways I then move my chair next to my bed to place my cup of coffee on, and then I climb back into bed and read for half an hour, while sipping on my coffee, and very cozy under the covers. Once the coffee energy has kicked in I am shaking to get out of bed and jump into my running clothes. It is at this point that I really hope all my natural digestive systems are working, as the natural laxatives of caffeine should be kicking in at this point. When all is in check this system keeps me extremely regular which is a very important stabilizer to have when traveling and consuming foods that your stomach is still in question about. I pop my running shoes on, stuff my ipod in the back butt pocket of my running pants, and toilet paper down my bra (for my constantly running nose) and I head out the door.

            Let me re-emphasize how I truly hope that I am staying normal and can make a bathroom stop on the way out the door. However the last couple days  this has not been the case. I have been heading up the steep outdoor stairs that lead up to our main road without this essential stop. I climb up the hill feeling all right, with my jams on and once at the top start off up the road for my run. The Nike plus running app tries to predict how many miles I run but the GPS sometimes tells me I run a five minute mile, and the next mile I run is a 20 minute mile, so I suspect something about the GPS system is not quite working. However on these days that the regularity has not come to me, I find the announcement of 2 miles in 18 minutes and 43 seconds and I cannot go a step farther. I am in emergency mode and in the middle of farmland. I desperately look around for some nice rounded leaves with no spines, and find that all the leaves near the road have been sprayed with pesticides. I do not think the softness of my bottom would react well to pesticides, so I scramble up with hillside getting more and more desperate. I finally yank some leaves off a tree and with no other choice, look around and pray that there are no farmers milking their cows or tilling their land. I drop pants with half a second to spare and well lets just say I enjoy the view for a couple minutes. Afterward I sprinkle a little dirt on top and let Nike plus take me on down the road with a much lighter step. Three times in a row these emergencies have sprung up on me, and it is three minutes of intense panic, followed by 45 minutes of the best and lightest running of my life.

            However this is not the focus of the story, the point is that my routine gets me happily out of bed at a reasonable hour, and on a run everyday. On my run I am able to enjoy the sites, and give my mind time to plan out projects that I want to do, and next steps for the day ahead. I get back to my house and enjoy breakfast, eager to start off the day. The routine is consistent, and works every time, making me feel like I have purpose to each day. However it was only three days into the routine that I had a mini break down when I realized this is the exact routine that my mother has used all of my life. Panic struck me as I realized I was turning into my mother all too quickly and there was no avoiding it. Yet the routine makes me so happy and gives me such a feeling of accomplishment, part of me wonders if this is because I know my mother would be proud me for it. I then panicked that we all just turn into our parents one day or another, and there is no hope for social change when most of us end up voting as our parents do, eating as our parents do, and praying as our parents do.  But have no fear I worked these struggles out on my next run, and feel proud to have a morning routine that I can count on and that starts the day off right.