London shenanigans

So if you haven't already guessed from my previous entry, I'm in London. I'm staying with me cousin Shane (and yes, I meant to word it like that). He's my fah-vah's mum's son (hee hee). I stayed with him last time I came to London in January.  Remember? The main reason I'm here this time is to take a trip with my half-brother Aaron to the South of France. As I explained in this entry, we'll be staying with his mom at her place in a small remote medieval village way up in the mountains. And since it's (much) cheaper to fly to France from London, I decided to extend the trip a bit and hang with my London peeps too (Shane and my other half-brother Adam) before and after France. Why the fuck not. I've been massaging non-stop for the past month, so I deserve a a little break. Anyway, Aaron and I fly to France on Tuesday morning. But for now, let me tell you about me day in London and what-evah...

I've been on a mission to get back in shape and a few weeks ago, I started taking a ton of yoga to make that happen. So I want to keep it up even while I'm away. I found a yoga studio in London. It's called Jivamukti Yoga and since they have a studio in NYC that I used to frequent all the time, I knew that their classes were gonna be intense. Ashtanga yoga for realz. 

I woke up at 10am (5am NY time) and took the 52 bus to Kensal Road and then walked a few blocks to the studio. The yoga space in NYC is massive. The space in London is not. The London location is tiny. They have a waiting/welcome area, two small studios in the back, a couple of bathrooms and that's it. Like I've mentioned a bunch in my previous London entries, the United Kingdom is not cheap (more expensive than Manhattan, if you can imagine), so it wasn't terribly shocking that the yoga studio was so small. Anyway, I was REALLY looking forward to the class being taught by someone with a thick English accent. I wanted to hear, "You can roll into downward dog or what-evah. Lift mulla bunda, innit." But no. The teacher was from America of all places. Meh. That's alright, though. She made up for the lack of cute accent with her tats and overall coolness. It was funny to see all the Londoners in their yoga gear. Most of them just tend to always be on the conservative-looking uptight side (no offense!), so it was refreshing seeing the Brits dressed down for a change. I'm not gonna go through the class step by step. Don't worry. But if that woman asked me to do one more chaturanga (yoga push-up), I was gonna scream out, "ALRIGHT! Enough, Yankee Doodle. Enough." But, no. Kidding aside. I got a lot of great things out of the class.

I left the studio and took another bus to Whole Foods (wut wut) in Kensington to get some grub for the next few days. I then took my third bus of the day back to Shane's place to get ready for a night out at our friend Rob's place. He invited a bunch of his friends over to hang out and it was fun as heck. I told my FP story and it left them all on the edge of their seats. We had a blast. Oh but they kept making fun of how often I use the word "Awesome." Apparently people don't use that word 'round these parts. If something is great, they'll say, "very good" or "fantastic" or "brilliant." But nothing is ever "AWESOME!" And then for the rest of the night I had to stop 20 "awesomes" from coming out of my American mouth. It was rough. I had no idea how much I wanna use that word.

(Oh and I'll actually take some legit photos tomorrow. I swear. I just didn't feel like treking my camera all around today. Forgive me.)

Tomorrow? More yoga and...Hmm. I guess you'll just have to stay tuned, My Friends.