Kate’s Blog

In two weeks I will be leaving all of the quickly mealting snow in Aspen Colorado to embark on a three month adventure around the world. On April 7th I fly to London to watch my mom give a speach at Oxford. After a week in London my mom and I will head to Italy for a week in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. She then returns to the US, and I continue on with one more week in Italy, road biking through Tuscany (oh life is so tough!). From here I fly to Chiang Mai Thailand to study Thai Massage for 4 weeks. After every muscle in my body has been relaxed, and my belly is full of green curry, I will hop a plane to Bali Indonesia for six weeks. Here I will be attending the Vibrant Living Yoga Teacher Training Course for four weeks, and then travelling for my final two weeks. I will be continually updating this blog as I travel, so please check in frequently to hear all the stories!

I arrived yesterday morning in London, slightly jet lagged and longing for a coffee. As we walked out of the airport we were greeted by surprisingly perfect weather and a bright pink taxi waiting to take us to our hotel. Pink taxi, good start.

After a taxi ride that was equivalent in cost to my budget for a month in Thailand we found ourselves in the heart of London and set off for a tour of the Sunday markets with our personal tour guide Nick. Nick is a very tall friend of mine from college who now lives in London. He is the perfect tour guide becuase not only does he know his way around the “off the beaten path sights” (which is what I am after), but if you ever find yourself lost, you simply look straight up and see this man rising an extra 2 feet out of the endless sea of people.

The markets were full of so much energy and diversity. The items for sale were far less interesting than the people wandering around. We walked through maze after maze of stands selling everything from Etheopian coffee to things that apeared to come out of grandma’s closet. In many cases, you didn’t even need a stand to be a vendor. A simple sheet  layed out on the floor with some old crap you no longer wanted would do the job.

After hours of market wandering the sun began to fall in the sky and we made our way down to the river for the sunset and beers on the London bridge.

Thousands of tourists all attempted to capture the perfect picture of the bridge in the late day light, while I attempted to capture the perfect picture of the thousand tourists.

On our way to dinner, walking through a beautiful mideval tunnel along the South Bank, we came across what I thought was was the best thing I had seen all day. It was not Big Ben, or the bridge, or the London Tower. It was a very small piece of art that hundreds of people pass by every second without ever knowing it’s there. Stenciled on a perfect brick wall in black spray paint it says “All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall….”

We had a great Asian dinner at some place called Wakamama, which is really fun to say over and over and over again until you’re laughing too hard to get the words out. As I walked home along the Thames which was now beautifully reflecting the city lights my mind was stuck on one thought: all I have to do for the next three months is wander around and take it all in. It felt so good. I think I could do this forever…..

Among the many things we did today was a visit to Trafalgar Square. You may not be familiar with Trafalgar Square by name, but if I told you that it was the place in Mary Poppins where they “feed the birds, tupins a bag” you might have a better idea of what I’m talking about.

There are two very famous museums right on Trafalgar Square. The first is The National Galery, the second is The National Portrait Galery. Both are truely amazing with art collections, not to mention the buildings that house them, which will blow your mind. I was most impressed by a photography collection in the National Portrait Gallery called “Faces of Fashion.” It featured six very famous fashion photographers and their best portrait work. It was beautiful and inspiring.

After the National Portrait Gallery we moved onto the National Gallery which contains the works of famous painters from Renoir to Monet. This captivated my mom for hours, while I made my way through it rather quickly, then found myself capitvated by the scene in Trafalgar Square just outside.

There are thousands, which is an underestimation, of birds in the square. You cannot walk through this place without one attempting to land on your head. It is pure joy for children, and pure terror for some adults (particularily women in high heels I noticed). There are a few people who make their living off of these birds, giving away “bird food” (which was popcorn) for tips. I spent about an hour here taking pictures of the kids with birds on their heads, hands, arms, all squeeling with joy. Then, naturally, it was my turn to get a picture taken covered in birds.

A small Indian man walked up to me and said, “These birds are all famous you know. Every one of them. They were all in that movie, Mary Poppins. Now everyone wants a picture with them because they’re famous. It’s free if you want me to put one on your head.”

Soon my head was covered in “bird food” (remeber, popcorn), and my arms in birds.

We arrived in Oxford two days ago by train from London. My oh so intelligent mother was invited here to give a speech on Reading Comprehension, which is why we came to England in the first place. Oxford is the oldest University in the world, not to mention one of the most famous and distinguished . Simply walking around the on the old cobble stone streets, and passing by the walls of countless years of history, you somehow instantly feel smarter, simply by being here. As we sat around a very long table last night for dinner (30 chairs long), in a dining hall that was lit by candles (think Harry Potter), with an enormous oil portrait of the original President of Oxford hanging on the 70 foot wall near the head of the table (imagine a very tall serious looking man in long black grim reaperesque cape with a staff and a red barrette),  it was agreed by all that our IQ’s had undoubtly increased even over the time from our first course to dessert!

The beauty of this place is of course all of the history and ornate buildings, but more than that it is how there is still an air of old time academia even in the present modern age. There are old bikes everywhere, no one walks around with a cell phone attached to their ear, old leather messenger bags and brief cases outnumber back packs. People carrying books tucked under the arm are more common than those with computers. It’s refreshing to see that such a historic place has managed to hold on to its roots and traditions despite the rapidly increasing modern world just outside (regretfully, I type this from a Starbucks on the outskirts of campus…it was the free WI-FI that sucked me in against my will!).

Because of my mother’s connections to the University here, we have been very lucky to get quite an intimate view of Oxford, one that you would never get if you were simply a visitor here. We have been put up in “guest professor housing” which is located right on campus in the St. John’s college (one of 30 colleges all comprising the U of Oxford). St. John’s college is 451 years old, which makes for a very magical and medieval setting. To get from building to building you pass though very narrow archways that lead to open courtyards with yards manicured beyond perfection. I am led to believe that even their gardeners and landscapers are graduates of Oxford. How else could they attain such perfection?!

Similarly to London there is an overwhelming international flare to the place. Foreign languages almost outnumber English. As I sat at a café reading yesterday I was surrounded by a group of three loud Frenchmen on my left, and four giggling German girls on my right. The person I ordered my Coffee from was Scottish, the man who brought it was Indian. The bartender who gave me water was South African, and his friend who sat at the bar was from Israel. If you count me in the mix as American, we have seven different nationalities represented in the short span of five minutes! 

Tomorrow morning we will get up before the sun to return to Heathrow Airport and hop a plane to Florence. With any luck, I will next be writing from the terrace of our Tuscan villa, over looking the rolling hills dotted with Cyprus trees and endless rows of grape vines. With even more luck, there will be a glass of red wine in my hand and fresh pasta in my belly!

There is just something about the air in Tuscany. You take a deep breath in, and the way it smells, tastes, feels; it sends a wave of pleasure and fullness through your body. I love it here, and I vow to one day own a house here. We arrived two days ago, walking off the plan down a short stair case and into the warm fresh air. Everything around us was amazingly green. I’ve seen shades of green over the past few days that I didn’t even know existed. The villa where we are staying is only about 45 minuets from the center of Florence, however it feels like worlds away. As you take the A1 highway out of Firenze, you are instantly transported into the most perfect countryside. The very greenest of rolling hills stretch out in front you as far as the eye can see. The green is spackled with bright red poppies, tiny yellow and white flowers, and rows of winding deep brown grape vines. The air is filled with a thousand bird songs and the sky is a cloudless soft blue. A warm wind blows from somewhere (my sense of direction has escaped me here), taking with it every ounce of worry and stress you might be holding onto.

We are greeted by the manager of the villa. She is a beautiful Italian woman who welcomes us with a glass of the villa’s own wine and a huge smile. “Welcome to Casa Monsignore!!” She seems very excited that we have made it, and we are very excited to be immediately handed a generous glass of red wine (our drive to the villa had a few stressful moments).

We are taken to our villa which is beautiful and far larger than two people could ever need. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of clocks. There didn’t seem to be a single one. So in keeping with the theme, I took off my own watch, tossed it into the suitcase and decided from that moment on, I would function independent of time (at least until I left Tuscany!).

I watched the sun go down over the hills in the distance, casting a bright orange light on the stone villa. As the sun slowly receded in the sky, the shadows of the Cyprus trees grew taller and taller until soon they looked like black skyscrapers on the green fields.

We ate dinner at the restaurant located on the property. It is a tiny place with only a few tables, one chef and one waitress. Their friendliness and smiles are contagious, and their food cannot be described by words. The wood beamed ceiling is very low. From it hangs ropes of garlic along with various pots and pans, all lit up by candle light.

At night the only sounds are those of a few night creatures. I fall asleep with the windows wide open, despite the slightly chilly spring air. I’m hoping to soak up as much of this place as I can, so that even months after I have left this place, I still feel as though I am under the Tuscan sun.

You can view my photo albums at:

http://katekolson.com/Gallery/albums.php

There is something much more than just cooking to be learned from our Italian chef Roberto. One of the first things he says to us is, “don’t stressa (stress) the food. If you stressa the food then you gonna stressa your guest, and that is not good for anyone,”as he elaborates, hands in the air, eyes sparkling, smiling and talking all at the same time, he explains that you must enjoy what you are doing, while you are doing it. Whatever emotion you pour into the food, into the entire meal, is what your guest will feel when they eat it. “If you stressa the food, it don’t taste very good.” A great lesson in cooking, also in life.

There is no better way to see the true beauty of Tuscany than from the seat of a bicycle. While it is true that at the end of the day, all you want to do is stick your very sore bum into a giant tub of gelato, it is worth every ounce of pain. Plus here in Italy, you can sit in your gelato and eat it too!

For the past five days I have been biking the picture perfect beauty of the Val D’Orca which includes the towns of Montepulciano, Pienza, and Montalcino to name a few. The colors this time of year are as if they have been taken straight from an artists pallet. Fields of deep green grass are dotted with bright red poppies. Wild mustard fields paint golden streaks across endless rolling hills. Once up high in the hills, you can look out over the entire valley. Amiata, a big volcano, towers over the valley with many little towns scattered about its lower lying hills. Cyprus trees line the long driveways up to villas which typically sit atop perfectly round green grassy hills. There is not a villa in this valley that does not have a 360 degree view.

So yes, Tuscany is gorgeous, blah blah blah . But there is something else that makes this place so magical, and that is the people who live here. One very special person who lives here is Marco. Marco is our bike guide. Let me first paint you a picture of Marco so that you can better understand what it is like to spend your days with this man.

We have just ridden a beautiful long ride up to a town called Radicofani. After the town is a long descent to a section of highway that we have to ride for about 5 kms. At the top of the hill I see Marco on his bike raising both fists victoriously into the air as if he has just won the Tour de France. Then comes all the cheering and yelling. “Wow,” I think to myself, “this man is very happy to have reached the top of the hill.” However, as I get closer to Marco I notice that he is on his cell phone. His 12 year old son has just won a soccer match. Dad is very proud.

Once we reach the highway, Marco tells us to be careful because it is a busy road and ”Italiens are crazy.” “Oh you think so?” I mumble to myself. Causiously we pedal our way down the highway with Marco in the lead. However, Marco has apparently thrown caution to the wind. There he is, a red scarf around his head, helmet dangling from the handle bars. A cell phone in his left hand, attached to his left ear, water bottle in his right hand sometimes pouring water into his mouth, sometimes being used to gesture and throw water around as the phone conversation gets heated. This leaves no hands on the bike. Oh, and did I mention, it is a two lane highway with no shoulder and apparently no speed limit. As cars fly by at what must be near 150 km\hr, Marco never once breaks his stride. When I told him later that, “that was the most Italien thing I have ever seen,” he grins and explains that it was his friend on the phone. “He is having problems with the wife. He knew I was on the bike, so he tells me he will call back later, but I say ‘no! this is important! we talk now. i am in my office.’” Marco’s world headquarters are in the saddle of his bike. His office dress code consists of a red head scarf tied like he is a member of Hells Angels, two gold earings in the left ear, and spandex, lots of spandex. I like Marco’s job.

 So this is how we spend our days; out on the open road with Marco, riding through the exquisite countryside, stopping for lunch in towns that date back to pre-Renaissance times where the restaurants have no menues, and the waitress is also the chef, who also owns the restaurant, which has probably been in the family for over 300 years. You eat whatever they bring you, and you will never be disapointed. I made the mistake of asking for some balsalmic vinegar to go with the olive oil. The waitress\chef\owner looked at me with disgust and said in angry Italien to Marco, “Explain to her that you never use balsalmic with good olive oil, for it would ruin the delicate taste of the oil.” And indeed she was correct. It was amazing.

 Being in Tuscany, you feel like you are in Earth’s secret garden. The days are warm, and nights are cool. The air always smells like a bouquet of fresh flowers, and is alive with the buzz of birds and bees. There is a constant cool breeze which makes the tall dark cyprus trees look as if they are slow dancing with one another. Just being in this landscape is incredibly energizing, simply because there is so much life surrounding you.

I will very soon be leaving this beautiful landscape for a new, very different yet equally beautiful place. The only parts of me that won’t be sad to see Tuscany go are my rapidly enlarging belly and my fierce spandex farmers tan. I can’t wait to get them to Thailand where hopefully they won’t survive more than a few days! 

Ciao from beneath the Tuscan sun!

So here I am, or there I was; nearly 40,000 feet in the air, playing solitaire on my personal TV screen, drinking cup fulls of airplane red wine in hopes that I will slip into a wine coma and miraculously awake in Chiang Mai without even the slightest hint of a sore neck. Far bellow we pass over Iran, Kabul (Afghanistan), a sliver of Packistan, and now we are just East of Dehli, India. Despite the feeling that it is nightime inside the plane, there is daylight outside. I raise my window cover and press my forehead to the glass. The landscape bellow is brown, grey, and desolate. I marvel at how people have managed to survive on this land for so many years. Even from thousands of feet above, I can tell that life is not easy down there. It feels sureal watching it all pass by from the comfort of the Boeing 777. The modern technology of the plane seems very out of place in contrast to the rustic dwellings and rural villages bellow.

While the other passengers sleep, my imagination keeps me awake wondering what daily life is like for those people. As we cross deeper into Northern India, the electronic map shows Kathamandu and Mt. Everest in the distance. My legs begin to twitch. Just being near Kathamandu is exciting for me. I have wanted to go there since I first saw a photograph about ten years ago showing hundreds of spinning prayr wheels. I immediately start fanticising about my next trip……Nepal, Tibet, India…..I am eternally lured by the adventure of travel.

I have now been travelling for 25 hours, changed planes 4 times, and logged 17 hours of airtime. It sounds exhausting and like a bit of a hassle. There is an “oversized” man to my right whose body is neglecting to stay within the confinements of his seat. With every five minutes that pass, his snoring rises a notch in volume while his head drops a notch in height, directly towards my right shoulder. Yet, I couldn’t be happier. No mater what challenges and discomforts we face while traveling, they all contribute to the complexity and greatness of the adventure as a whole. Each moment stacks up, one ontop of the next, adding another layer of emotions and experience. When you finally make it somewhere, see something you never thought you’d see, do something you never thought you’d do, you are so happy to be there you could kiss the ground (and should, its quite fun). Then you realize it was worth everything it took to get there.

Slowly the wine coma comes on. I drift off to dreams of a thousand adventures. Suddenly, I realize I am awake. My dreams have come true, I am just about to begin yet another adventure………”Welcome to Thailand” the womans voice says over the loudspeaker, “Sawadee Ka.”

For the past few days since ariving in Northern Thailand, I’ve found myself wondering exactly what it was that brought me here. I had an intuition that I should come here. Part of that came from my desire to learn Thai Massage. But there was something else, something I knew I would discover once I got here. Today, my question was answered. It began with a quest to find a man by the name of Ajarn Poo.

Ajarn is Thai for “master.” Yes, this man’s name is Master Poo. Master Poo is a “healer” who lives in Chiang Mai. However, it’s more accurate to say that Master Poo is a healer who is hidden in Chiang Mai. He has no phone, no internet, speaks very little English, and lives somewhere outside the main city of Chiang Mai. The only way I knew of this man was from the first person who ever gave me a Thai Massage, Simon Park. When I told Simon that I was coming to Chiang Mai to study massage, he told me that I must go see Master Poo, and so my quest began. Through some research and random contacts I found the one and only way to Master Poo; a tuktuk driver by the name of Roon. Roon is apparently the only man who seems to know where Master Poo lives. I recruited a Thai woman who spoke Enlish well enough to understand me to use a payphone and call Roon to see if he would pick me up and take me to Master Poo’s house. I was half expecting this not to actually work out, but much to my surprise, as I walked out onto the street the next morning, there was Roon, in by far the oldest tuktuk in town, patiently waiting for me.

Roon’s tuktuk is like a personal shrine. Various photos, pieces of paper, and knicknacks cover the inside. It is so old that every time we stopped for more than two seconds, the thing would shut down. But Roon would simply look in the rear view mirror, give me a huge grin, and start that bad boy right on up again! I liked Roon instantly.

We drove for about 15 minutes out of town, through backroads, never seeming to go straight for more than a few seconds. I laughed to myself at how I had originally considered trying to find this place on foot. Then I saw a small old yellow sign with an arrow that said “Ancient Healing Massage,” and we were there.

Roon walked me up to the front door where, in true Thai tradition, we removed our shoes. A man no taller than five feet appeared in the door. Clasping his palms together in the prayr position he bowed and greeted Roon then myself. I too clasped my palms together and said “sawadee ka” which means hello in Thai. It felt more like I was praying there with my hands pressed together, “please please please be Master Poo,” rather than saying hello, but my wishes were me, it was indeed him. He asked me why I had come, and I explained how I suffered from back and shoulder pain from an old ski injury. “Ski” he did not understand, so I used my hands to show “mountain” and then “go down.” Now he understood, but he looked at me like “why the hell would you do that? what did you think would happen?”

Then he looked at my feet for about three minutes, and somehow he knew it all from that. He explained to me in very broken English exactly what I had been experiencing, what would happen over the next five years if it went untreated, and what he needed to do in order to fix me. He grabed a huge binder full of drawings and detailed maps of the human body, some of which looked to be over one hundred years old. This book is a dream come true for anyone who likes anatomy (I know what you are thinking now, what a dork!! I was almost drooling over the thing.) Then using some of the drawings he pointed to where, “there is problem” in my body. He told me that he thought he could treat me in 5-6 sessions which would be carried out over the next three weeks. I thanked him, said goodbye, and hopped back in the tuktuk feeling as if I had just stepped out of some mystic fairytale, yet really I was just stepping in.

A few hours later I found myself having yet another facinating experience with Eastern Medicine. A girl I had met in my first and only day of Thai Massage School (yes, I am officially a Thai Massage School drop-out!) told me about her experience with a Chineese Medicine Man. Chineese Medicine, like Thai Massage, focuses on the energy flows in the body. Its goal is to balance out the yin and yang energies, which are apparently all out of whack in most people these days for a number of reasons, namely our fast paced modern lifestyles. I was intrigued though, and wondered how out of whack my yin and yang might be….and if they could become balanced again, hmmmm what might that be like ?!! Ironically, I stumbled on a Chinese Medicine place the next day. Inspired by the recent conversation, I couldn’t resist checking it out.

The facility was beautiful with gardens everywhere, most of which were growing the medicinal herbs they use. When I found out it would cost me the equivalent of about $5 to be seen, I signed right up. The next day, a few hours after my magical Master Poo experience, I sat in the “waiting room” which was a garden, with my shoes off (Thai style), driking some tea. This was by far the best experience anyone could ever imagine having at the doctor’s office! Then I was led to a room to meet with the Medicine Man, who to my surprise, was a woman. She asked me a few questions, and was very excited and intrigued by the fact that I was a Pilates teacher. “You must teach here in Chiang Mai!” she said, “So good for people here.” A lovely idea, though fairly unlikely. Then she held my wrists for a while and looked at them in much the same way Poo had done when he looked at my feet, as if they held the secret to life. Diagnosis?? My yang energy was all out of whack, there was a blockage. The energy line that runs from the Kidney (but also the whole length of the body) was not flowing correctly, or virtually at all. “Accupuncture” she said.

Now, you must first understand that I am deathly afraid of needles. I actually passed out in the Aspen doctor’s office when I was getting the shots for this very trip. Now here I was, in a boarderline third world country, agreeing to be stuck head to toe with needles. But there was something in the way she spoke to me, I knew it would be worth my time to give this a whirl, never mind the fact that as you lay there you are a virtual human voodoo doll.

I got stuck with five needles in total. One in the ancle, three in the back, and one in the neck. Then I was told to lay and “take a nice rest.” “Yeah right,” I thought, “Like I’m actually going to fall asleep with all of these things stuck in me?” I was out in less than five minutes. I awoke to the calm voice of my Chinese Medicine woman, of whom I decided was equally as mythical as Master Poo. They must have been born on the same island of “really cool mythical people.” “How are you miss Kate?” she asked. “Good” I said. Then she proceded to hold a stalk of burning herbs over me, moving up and down my body, and circling the smoke around like a dance. I still have no idea what that was about. “Ok miss Kate,” she said when she was finished, “you come back Friday,” and I was on my way, feeling light as a feather!

There is something very hard about grasping and accepting Eastern Medicine for Westerners. First of all, it’s completely opposite in just about every way. Western Medicine looks for the “quick fix” because that’s what the consumers demand due to our fast paced lives. Easter Medicine in contrast looks at the root; what is the cause of the problem? How can you prevent it from happening again? One of the things I find so facinating about Eastern Medicine is the fact that it dates back a few thousand years. The world has changed an incomprehensible amount since then, and yet Eastern Medicine is still around, much the same. I don’t need much more proof than that to think that there must be some merit to this stuff.

As our healthcare system in the US continues to fall apart, and we become a nation who relies on prescription drugs just as much as we rely on oil, we will begin to see that this is an unsustainible and unhealthy way of living. I believe that as this become more evident, you will see a shift away from Western Medicine towards more Eastern methods. While by many definitions the “East” is still the land of developing nations far behind their western counterparts. However, in some ways, particularily certain aspects of medicine, they may be way ahead. Just look at the popularity of yoga over the past 20 years.

And so it is my mission while here in Northern Thailand to learn and experience as much as I can about Eastern Medicine, the history behind it, and the culture surrounding it. To me, it is one of the most facinating things out there.