Our little quarantine family would have occasional movie nights and dinner parties together. Dinners at Kim and Simon's meant exposure to Vegan cuisine! I'm not gunna lie to you, the meals are delicious. Within the group there are two pescatarians, one vegan, another vegan-transition-er and two meat eaters. So the meals dispersed between this family is pretty eclectic. It's good though, it gives us all the chance to exercise our culinary skills. Something I personally love as I am still desperately trying to make up for the year of pureed dinners in my exhausting first season in German. Our first dinner at the Puerto Rican household with Ray and Jessie turned into a full on karaoke night! Some players bring their favorite clothes, others may pack their favorite snacks, but Ray, my sweet spirit animal Ray, had brought from home, her dear karaoke microphone. Thattagirl.

The night started with a calm jam sesh with her husband Jessie playing guitar, but quickly progressed to singing disney musicals on the karaoke screen. We were there for a good two hours, and actually singing the majority of the songs in french! Well, in our best french.

We really tried to give our best during this quarantine time. Whether it was dinner parties or karaoke nights, movie nights or picnic potlucks in the backyard. We did it all.

As the time went on though, we started to get a little more sporadic with the workouts. I've been switching up my days of exercise between these backyard "strength" workouts, with a day of running for cardio, aaaand yoga! I've noticed that changing up my workouts daily has allowed me to stay motivated, heck even excited to get out and do something. I usually just despise running. You couldn't catch me on the side of a road trekking along if my life depended on it. But our strength coach was all about cardio so I've been trying to keep it up. I will say that there really is something different about running when you're doing it in the South of France. When I started to add running into the mix it was, well, ugly. But I did it! I mapped out the same route that I decided to be my route every time. Then on one beautifully sunny day, I decided to turn right instead of the usual left. I don't know if it was the Missy Elliot melody bumpin' in my ears or a change in the winds, but it brought me a couple miles further into a scenery so beautiful that I swear it was fake!! I was surrounded by twelve different shades of green with vineyards on my left and luscious crops on my right. I even turned Missy off just to listen to the wind dancing with the trees. It was liberating getting to see that this run had transformed into a moment of adventure. I couldn't believe that this world was in our backyard all this time.

It was from then on that I committed myself to use these runs as an opportunity to really live in the moment, mindlessly. Our world is beautiful, we just gotta allow ourselves the moments to cherish it.