Acupuncture

I had my first session of acupuncture today. She addressed my bad ankle, my weight loss efforts, my asthma and overall circulation. Most of the needles I barely felt - but a couple of them, especially toward the toe end of my feet, stung like an electric shock would sting.

There's an interesting article about how acupuncture is entering the mainstream.

My ankle hasn't hurt since I left there, but I'm not naive enough to think that's all it takes. But wouldn't it be great if acupuncture could solve this 2 year old problem?

Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here!

Finally our family is once again complete as Maya and Sophie have finally arrived in Bosnia. Caroline arrived on the 19th of October with the two dogs in tow. They had a wonderful trip from Guatemala with much attention and support lavished upon them by airport and airline staff. I'm sure Caroline drew many eyes as she apparently spent hours walking them through the LA and Munich airports during her long layovers. When they arrived in Sarajevo, we could hear Sophie barking for quite a while, long before we saw her. It was very exciting to bring them home.

They have been getting quite a bit of attention here in Sarajevo as well. The park right by our house is full of people, dogs being walked, and congregating pigeons. Maya in particular loves the pigeons. Yesterday, in the public walking zone, men kept calling to them and saying Sitz! Sitz! Did they think they were German dogs?

These pictures are from right before they left Caroline's house in Guatemala.

The Top 100 Books Of All Time

I love to find these lists of the "greatest" books. I picked up this one at my bookclub today and knew I could find it online.

How many have you read?
Do you have a favorite?

More importantly, do you have a different list of the best books?

My international book club.

Everything is so much more interesting here - even my Book Club. Everything I attend is like a mini-United Nations. Have I already said that? For instance - at my book club today there was a woman from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Holland, Canada, Bosnia, Iran, and two other Americans. As you can imagine, this makes the discussion much richer. Today we discussed The Kite Runner.

Our upcoming books are The Fortress by Mesa Selimovic, The Three Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare, The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle and Blood Brothers by Elias Chakour. I love discovering new authors so I am very happy. If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Also recommended is the book Fran's War by Sally Trench which looks particularly interesting to me.

Qi Gong

I was invited to start attending a Qi Gong class for 9 weeks. Today was the first day. My lungs are in horrible shape and have been since I had serious pneumonia as a pre-teen. Qi Gong is supposed to be particularly good for people with asthma and many people end up being able to go off their medication all together. What a miracle that would be! There were 5 of us students and it was very interesting as the doctor of Chinese medicine showed us the first 2 movements. Basically you do a movement as you breathe in a particular way - concentrating on expanding your diaphragm downwards and relaxing your shoulders. You breathe in very deeply, expanding your diaphragm downwards, then hold your breath for some period of time, and then breathe out through your nose very silently. I kept having to hyperventilate until I shortened the period of time for the breathing once she told us to move at our own pace. It will be interesting to see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Below is information from a website discussing various forms of eastern medicine:

"The word Qigong breaks into Qi and Gong: Qi = vitality, energy, life force, Gong = practice, cultivate, refine; Qigong = to cultivate and refine through practice one's vitality or life force. The Chinese believe that the primary mechanism that is triggered by the practice of Qigong is a spontaneous balancing and enhancing of the natural healing resources in the human system. Over thousands of years millions of people have benefited from these practices believing that improving the function of the Qi maintains health and heals disease.

In the paradigm of mechanistic Western science, the practice of Qigong triggers a wide array of physiological mechanisms which have profound healing benefits. It increases the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. It enhances the elimination of waste products as well as the transportation of immune cells through the lymph system. And it shifts the chemistry of the brain and the nervous system. You can find a summary of the many physiological mechanisms that are initiated by the practice of Qigong in the Information Center."

This is just one of many towns we passed on our way up the coast. Each one looked more intriguing than the last. The islands of the Croatian coast must stretch for over a hundred miles - they were always there in the mist.

The waterfalls of Krka National Park just go on and on - cascading one into the other. The path crosses them at the top through a combination of dirt path and wooden platforms and comes down the far side. At the bottom there is a very long wooden footbridge that crosses over them again. We only got 2 hours in the park and would gladly go back for a whole day.

Trogir is a small island connected by a short bridge to the mainland of Croatia. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Besides being very picturesque, it has this very cool castle/fort that you can climb around in and up. Apparently they also hold concerts in the open area that you can see inside the walls.

A picture cannot convey how very very very far up we were. When we looked out the window of our bus we could see nothing but a tiny speck in the distance that might have been a car driving below. These photos make the hill look slanted -believe me, when you're perched up in a bus, it doesn't look slanted at all. It looks straight down!

Supertroopers!

The kids were super-troopers for the whole weekend. Spending 3 days traipsing around old medieval towns is not their cup of tea but you would never have known it!

The Cathedral in Sibenik has these stone carved faces that went all around the whole outside of the church. Every single face is different from the others. It made me wonder whether these were townspeople and instead of "donating a brick" like we do as a building fundraiser today, donated their face!

These are two photos from Sibenik on the Dalmatian Coast. This ended up being my favorite town of all the towns we stopped at. The cathedral is really beautiful inside, but a service was going on so we had to be discreet in our "peering around." The town itself is full of narrow alleyways somewhat like a maze and since we arrived at sunset we got to enjoy them as they look in the picture after nightfall.

I am so proud of Shelby. On our recent trip to Croatia she ordered fish for lunch and got a little more than she bargained for. But she was a trooper and ate the whole thing, just leaving the little fishy carcass...