Back again

Yeah. I'm back. New blog name and everything. I couldn't even tell you how many different names this thing has had since I started writing it back in high school. Now it's important to me to stay anonymous, but I'm sure it would be quite easy for anyone who knew me to figure out who I am. A risk I guess I'm willing to take to have this community back again.

I'm living in Colombia now as an English teacher. I have another, real life website where I'm completely honest about my identity but lie in every post I write. I write that I love it, only talk about the positive things. It's all very professional, but I feel strangled by trying to look polished and happy. Reality is that I'm drowning. I hate learning Spanish. I'm so stressed about making friends and my image that I've reverted back to old habits, knowing at the same time that it's terrible for me and that if I commit with enough fervor I could actually get there this time.

The scale in my host mom's room told me today that I weigh 140 lbs. But it's a new scale so I don't know what to compare that to, plus it's old and yellowed and untrustworthy. At least it's told me I've lost weight, though. Before I left the US I was somewhere around 150, so that's a good ten pounds down in a month and a half.

Here my diet is mainly fried things, but I don't binge in the same way I used to which has got to be helping me lose a little bit. On the other hand, I've almost completely stopped exercising. Lost my fitbit on the second or third day in country, but I somehow don't care about that at all. I just know that I'm walking drastically less than I did in Boston and there's almost no use in tracking the two or three thousand steps I take everyday.

Everything I eat is made by my sweet host mom, she's an excellent chef. Patacones, arroz con coco, cerdo frito, yuca, I could go on and on. She serves me far too much, but I've started complaining loudly that I'm very fat so she will feed me a bit less. I hate talking about my body image out loud, it's so gauche, but in this case I'm using my words as a tool. Colombians are so different from Americans in this way. They very openly tell others "you look fat" or "you've gained weight." But at the same time, that's not necessarily a bad thing to them. Today my host sister told me twice that I have a big butt and she wishes she could have a butt like mine. I'd trade for her 110 pound body in an instant. But I'll get there, this is the year I can focus and get thin for the first time in my life.