Woo hoo! This Salsera is back! Last night I caught up with some of my salsa family, well rather 2 of my salsa family from my holiday I took to Cuba earlier this year. You can read more about it on my travel blog here. (I don’t write on it anymore, since my writing became more health/nutrition focused). But before I spill the details on last night I’ll rewind to yesterday.

I did a reluctant hour jog on the treadmill, and discovered a secret which I shared on facebook and got quite a bit of feedback on. It’s how to pass the time when you are doing cardio. Set yourself different goals for each track on your ipod/music player. ie warm up to a slowish song, start picking up pace for faster songs, sprint on the dance tracks and warm down with a slower song. Every second song yesterday, I sprinted with the following track used as my recovery, whilst still jogging and keeping my heart rate in my target zone, but allowing myself the recovery to then sprint for the next song. Before I knew it, my HOUR OF POWER was done. Pure genius.

So after my run, I grabbed a quick banana and I hit the Dubai Mall, to have some pampering that is not so easy to get in my part of the world. Some waxing and a manicure and pedicure. I got talking to the therapist who at 28 is only 4 years younger than me, and wow, didn’t she remind me how grateful ALL of us should be for our lives. Sometimes we can let the little things in life get to us and stress us out, then we meet someone like Lena, just a girl like me, who has left her home in the Philippines, to make money to send home to her family, work 12 hour days, 6 days a week only to go home to a studio apartment provided by her company that houses 4 beds for her and her work colleagues. However she said she is lucky, as most girls have to share with 8 girls. She says sometimes she won’t eat so she can save more money, and even if they do cook in their kitchen, it is the same room as they sleep, so they refrain from cooking too much so as to not disturb each other’s rest or else to stop their clothes smelling like food as the washing machine in their apartment also charges them. And I guess people like me, are creating a demand for workers like this. Not sure what I could do right at that moment, so I gave her a tip and told her to make sure she used some of it for herself too. She told me she would send it home to her grandparents who were not very well. And of course we know there are many more stories like this and worse world over, but it was a reality check for me, to remind myself to be grateful for everything we do have in our lives. So grateful. And how we can get by with so much less. ME definitely.

After meeting Lena, I headed straight for Organic Foods & Cafe in the mall to grab a lunch (I did offer for her to join me but she had other lunch plans):

Cucumber and Lemon Juice with a side of wheatgrass. I thought the Cucumber and Lemon would be refreshing. It was meh. But I drank it all as it is good for me!