New Years Resolution 2019 Check In

Happy August!

Today we are posting about our resolution check in – a month late, but here we are.

Overall, we are doing pretty well with our resolutions. We did a lot more traveling and have had more visitors this year, which has made it a bit difficult to keep consistent with some of them. That being said, we still have a full half a year left to complete them, so here is our mid-year recap and any plans/changes that we are making to finish the year strong!

Fitness

•  Workout 3x for 30+ min a week
  • For the most part, yes. We are trying to be better about not letting travel get in the way, but sometimes after a 12-hour bus ride to get to a hostel, we just don’t get it done. But, on the days that we are home, we are good with waking up earlier and planning our day around a workout.
• Improve our 10k goal times: Alli (sub 52) Dylan (sub 47).
  • This has yet to be tested. However, we are doing a half marathon in Asunción on August 25^th! We have been following a Garmin training plan pretty closely.
• Run, hike, bike, and speed walk for a total of 350 miles in 2019
  • We are on track! Currently, we have the following mile counts (the majority of these miles have been around the same 2-block square in our site – which our Strava can prove lol).
    • Alli 257 miles
    • Dylan 238 miles

Mental Health

• Yoga 2x a week
  • For the most part, considering the aforementioned travel days and days that we need to be in a hostel in Asunción, we have done well with this. Being aware of how fast time has gone here in Paraguay, we have started to read more about mindfulness practice and yoga to keep us in the present moment. Thank you Yoga with Adriene for being our yoga guide here in Paraguay! (Check out her awesome YouTube videos if you are into that sort of thing.)

Relationship

• Have 1 special/creative date night a month
  • This has actually not happened, but has recently come up in conversation. We thinkkkk it gets put to the side because we spend 24/7 together, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put in the extra work to make our relationship our focal point for a night. We want to be more aware of this in the latter half of this year, and strive to commit to one special date night per month!

Technology

• Daily average phone time below 1 hour/day, excluding time counted for music, podcasts and calls with family/friends.
  • It has been shocking how quick time can go on a cell phone. We are posting a picture to show our times but for the most part we are able to keep phone time below an hour. This does not include computer or our Paraguayan phones, but usually those are for work purposes. It has really given us a moment to think about how much time we use technology and how to be more present without it. We were doing really well with this, but have slacked in tracking out time the last few weeks. The actions of writing down and our time really gave us great motivation to reduce our phone use. We will be getting back to tracking this week.

Environment

• Reduce plastic use, by taking inventory each month to track the source of this trash and make more specific reduction goals.
  • NOPEEEE. We are disappointed in ourselves that we haven’t kept with this goal, because we pride ourselves on trying to reduce our footprint as much as possible. We think that with visitors and travel, the saving of plastics to count just wasn’t a sustainable practice. We have still been washing and putting our plastics in ecobricks, and we do try to make as much as possible from scratch to reduce packaging. However, without counting we are not sure if we are actually reducing our consumption. We are also trying to buy in bulk, so that we don’t have as many wrappers.

Culture & Art

• Photography – Participate in a photo challenge 2x per month to learn to use our camera and improve (read: obtain) photography skills.
  • We started off really well with this for Jan-March, and then faded. We are going to aim to realign ourselves with this goal for Aug – Dec. See some of our photo submissions below.
• Language – Read news articles for 15 mins, 3x a week to help us improve.
  • Next month we have our Close of Service (COS) conference and are tested on our language skillz. Dylan received Intermediate Low and Alli Intermediate Medium on our first test back in September 2017. We are hoping to be in the advanced level, so we are upping our practice game. We have done well with reading news articles, and Dylan actually finished the first Harry Potter in Spanish too!

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Social connection

• Visit someone in the community 1x per week (different people each week)
  • This has been going well. We are making a concerted effort to visit and cook with different people, and build up the relationships that we want to focus on for the remaining 4 months that we have in our site.

Peace Corps

• Start and finish year 2 strong!
  • Overall it has been a great year and we look forward to what the next few months will bring!
• 1 blog post/2 weeks (We got it this time!)
  • ……um……… not so much. But, we are doing what we can, and that will just have to suffice.

One Month Challenges

Completed

• These will be certain one month challenges that we will take on throughout the year.
  • 1 month of no alcohol (February to March)
    • We went 5 weeks without alcohol.
• 1 month of 1 mile run a day
  • We actually made it 2 miles a day. Due to some travel and inclement weather we were not able to do every day – we missed 3 days – but we averaged 2 miles a day for 30 days.

Yet to be completed

• 1 month of yoga every day
  • Started July 15^th – did two weeks but then fell off with travel. Planning to do this in September.
• 1 month of no refined sugar – Planning this for September or October.