(Chinese) New Year Resolutions

Well, I never quite got around to finalizing my New Years resolutions this year....and since New Years Eve has come and gone.....and in the spirit of living in Asia, I have decided to have Chinese New Years resolutions instead. In addition to those resolutions that I have every year (losing weight, getting in shape, being more grateful for my loved-ones) I have decided to also come up with some concrete and hopefully achievable goals.

So here we go, the 2011 Chinese New Year's resolutions....

• Master 1 new challenging yoga pose each month. I love yoga, and its not because I am particularly gifted at it. Quite the opposite, in the land of the petite Asian woman, I am often the biggest and least flexible person in my class. When I first joined my yoga studio here in Singapore, I found the experience to be very disheartening and a little bit embarrassing and often couldn't summon up the courage to go to classes and try new things. But I have accepted that I may never be as bendy as some ladies (and gentlemen) in my classes, but I love the peace and serenity it brings to my day and the feeling of accomplishment I get when I can push past my edge and work out a new asana. The poses I'd like to work on this year include bow, half moon, wheel, head stand and eventually the splits. I went to yoga 5 days in a row this week so I think I am on my way! I'll let you know how it goes. Ommmm. 
• Run a 2:30 Half Marathon. A few cocktails in on NYE I may have blurted out that I'd like to run a full marathon in 2011...but I have reconsidered and decided that I want to focus on improving my 1/2 marathon time first. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to run a full marathon- but any idiot can get out there and finish in 7 or 8 hours. I want to be confident enough with my running to know I can finish in a normal time before I give it a go. So for now I am going to focus on speeding up my 1/2 time and blowing my first 1/2 time right out of the water. My running buddy K. and I have signed up for another one in a few months, so its high time to get to training. With the help of my Garmin, who I have named Speedy, I see no reason why we cannot make some dramatic improvement on our last times. 
• Do as many "OIS" events as possible. I may occasionally (ok, ok, frequently) gripe about Singapore, but the truth is that living here is a really unique experience and provides us with the opportunity to do a world of things that simply wouldn't be possible in New York. The crazy sunny weather means that you can be outside virtually all the time (if you can handle the heat), the city is small so you can get from point A to point B very quickly and a lot of things are pretty affordable. So far my OIS events have included starting to take tennis lessons with my friends (how often am I going to have tennis courts in my apartment building?), signing up for golf lessons one morning a week (seriously, affordable golf courses IN the city that I can go to before work? pretty cool), running off to Little India in the middle of the day to witness Thaipusam and running outside in the middle of January. We know we are not going to be here forever so we should really try to get the most out of the time we have on this little island nation. 

So there we have it, a few little fun goals to work on this year. Wish me luck! And good luck to all of you on your New Years resos too!