In life, there are only two kinds of middle school students. Those who love Physical Education (PE) class and and those who alway try to get away from it like it’s a medieval pandemic. I was sadly one of the latter. I grew up having little to almost no interest in sports. I did ballet and modern dance in grade school and swam here and there but that was about it. Fast forward to college, I still had no interest in sports or working out. If you knew me back then, you would probably have heard me express my hatred of sweating.
Shortly before the end of my senior year in college, all the bad posture from slouching in the library really took a toll on me and I started experiencing neck pains which led to severe migraines. I went to the doctor and she told me that I was awfully young to be suffering from neck pains and I have to do something about it. She told me that I should start stretching for 15-minutes everyday to relieve the tension in my muscles. A day after my doctor appointment, I bumped into my friend that I had not seen in two years and I shared with her about my neck pains and that I have to start taking care of my body by stretching more. Coincidentally, she started doing yoga several weeks back and extended an invitation for me to check out a yoga class taught by students from the school of kinesiology. The first class was definitely an interesting experience. I had to look around as I was not familiar with the various yoga poses. I am pretty sure that my downward dog looked like half dome as opposed to an equilateral triangle. As I continued to take yoga classes, my neck pains disappeared and never came back. My new found love for yoga also came with other benefits such as better flexibility and (maybe somewhat) visible muscle gains. After yoga, I became more open minded to trying other fitness classes. There are some that I truly enjoyed such as a trampoline workout and aerial yoga. Some others I regretted the moment I walked in, like hot yoga.If you made it this far, congratulations, I know the first half of the post is a long preface with questionable connections to Yosemite. The point is, if I never had discovered a new love to try new workouts, I would have had zero interest in going to Yosemite to hike or what not. During my time in Yosemite, my family and I stayed in a cabin in Ahwahnee, which is a tiny town an hour drive away from Yosemite. We left for Yosemite at 6:30AM thinking that we might catch the regional Yosemite bus transit. However, when we arrived at the pick-up location, it seemed like the bus schedule was irregular and there was not any safe parking spot to park our car for a long duration of time. We then decided that it was a better option for us to drive to Yosemite and keep our fingers crossed that there would be available parking. Turns out driving there was a better option than taking the bus (although my dad would beg to differ) as we were able to have more control over how much time we were going to spend at Yosemite.
I hope you enjoy the pictures I took and let me know which national park I should go to next!
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