Running Stitch

I thought that it may be time to run a wee gathering stitch around my life, draw it all in to keep you up to date with a few things here.

I told you that there is a pauza at the yoga class. One of my friends told me that there is another gym in Makarska (imagine that, two women’s gyms here, who knew!), and that there is yoga, pilates, zumba, etc. But more than that, Jasna waxed lyrical about the wonderful Annette who runs the gym, how kind, how supportive. She said ‘she doesn’t speak much Croatian but we all understand what she is telling us to do’. Do you see? It’s a reversal of me at the other yoga class! I would understand this yoga teacher!

I had a long coffee with Annette, and she is all that Jasna said she was. A german woman who adopted California for 10 years and is now living here in Makarska, but more Californian than German. Tuesday night I went to the first yoga class – loved it. Last night I went to my first pilates class – loved it. So the exercise regime has stepped up again….

And the rowing – for the last two weeks I haven’t done much rowing myself because there are now seven young boys lining up in the morning to row in the double with me. Each summer break brings more eager children to the rowing club – some with a bit of English (and no co-ordination), and others who are naturals – as rowers and English speakers. But the most exciting bit for me is that there are now two girls, both 11, and both so keen to be out in that boat! I even have a woman friend who wants to come out and learn to row too.

My Croatian vocabulary for the words required for rowing is increasing faster than any other register- If having a conversation was as simple as saying ‘nagni se naprjed sa navnom rukom I onda povuci vesla kroz more, onda ruke dolje i naprjed’ I would be fine! (Translated this is ‘lean forward with straight arms, and then pull the blades through the water, then hands down and forward’. So there). I do need to learn the words for ‘Frane, if you take your hand off the handles of the blades and turn around to look at me once more we will both be swimming!’ but guess that one can wait, he may improve. I say ‘ Frane, uvijek ruke na vesla.. uvijek, uvijek’. I’m wondering if he is deaf…

One of the girl’s dads was down watching the last of the morning row yesterday and he admitted that he was a rower and is trying to get back into it (a slight handicap with chickenpox doing the rounds of pre-schoolers put the delay on the re-launching of his rowing career) but would be happy to get into the double on the days that the kids aren’t rowing – so that will start next Monday. Excellent.

I’m going to Hvar for the weekend next week… and then…more excitement lies ahead!

Maybe an update about work next week.