November 15, 2011

Kusadasi, Turkey "A new attitude"


Monday Nov. 7th

I barely hear my alarm through my earplugs at 7 a.m. after having an early night and getting to bed at 12:30 the night before. My room is pitch black because there is no port hole on my floor, and my body feels like it just went to sleep. However…years of waking up for 5 a.m. practices have taught me to JUST GET UP. So, that’s what I do… ( a few snoozes later of course). The night before (when I was wide awake and planning how I was going to get the most out of this internship) I decided that I would wake up before work whenever we were in a port and go ‘exploring’ coupled with some exercise to knock two birds out with one stone. This morning I decide to get a little ‘tri’ action on (run, outdoor gym, ocean swim/picture taking along the way). The views were absolutely stunning… Kusadasi is a fairly small city…with about 70,000 people living in the city center with beautiful beaches and views atop very high hills (which I would call a mountain, but I don’t want to sound ignorant or incorrect… but coming from the Bahamas, it was a mountain). My run turned into more of an interval training session, with the slow walking/rest being strategically placed at lookout points ;)


View from my run... pretty amazing huh? This picture doesn't even capture 5% of how beautiful the views were! 


A little workout station at the top ;) yes, of course I used it!


A little gross & sweaty, but I couldn't resist a self portrait! 



I’ve decided that running is one of the best ways to get a real feel for a place when you only have a few days to explore…you notice things you would never encounter on a taxi ride or sight seeing experience… for some reason, when you exercise publicly, locals feel more of a connection to you or something…or maybe it’s just me. By the time I made it back to the beach, there were more people around…in particular, Claus, a sailor from Frankfurt who took quite an interest in the fact that I was going swimming in such cold water… but hey, it was warmer than Izmir! There were also people with fishing rods all over the rocks…but I couldn’t quite understand, because I saw NO fish during my swim…NONE, so I couldn’t quite figure that one out… the morning was successful, and the hours at work were much more enjoyable today-I felt like my capacity to learn was greater after having such a refreshing morning. So-experiment number one=successful. 


1 comment:

  1. Breath it in with your entire self bey! (it's the coach in me, I got to cheer for you!)

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