The 2 extremes

Thursday night for students and anyone who is anyone is always something of a big night. Thursday night in Cholula on the other hand is THE night of all nights which usually lasts until inappropriately early hours in the morning and involves a write off of the following day. Having recently paid my yoga membership, I was determined that Friday morning was to be a yoga morning (the first in a longg time thanks to Lazy Lilly being a distraction). But of course, being my sister's first night out in Mexico, Thursday was to be a big night full of cocktails, drinking on the street, the usual and predictable Voodoo Mama/Barfly pub crawl combination and a night on drunkening. And of course it happened, without fail. A few too many mixed drinks were consumed and a combination of a rowdy night and a fun bunch of people ensured that all were drunk as skunks. The night raged on until 3am when the urchin in my foot decided to release its poison, paralysing my leg and forcing me to call it quits and catch a taxi home (did I mention I live a mere 6 blocks from the club? ... walking was off the cards at that stage).

The following morning I rose at the bright and early hour of 10:30am, just in time to get myself ready and off to my 11am yoga class. And what a class it was! There were push ups and fast poses and sweat dripping from every pore of my body, sticking my fringe to my head and making me look like a demented paedophile as I forced my hips to the sky in downward dog pose. And the class continued, for almost 2 hours! Meanwhile, all of this holding in my beer gut and maintaining my core tight swelled up the alcohol that was still in my stomach like a ferocious ocean. Gradually the class got more and more painful until I was forced to lie down while the saggy grandmother next to me stood on her head and stuck her legs out at angles unnatural to man. By the end of the class I was in so much pain I regretted both my decision to drink the night before as well as my decision to go to yoga immensely.

Having been told by many yoga-types that being healthy, going to yoga and being square could not be sustained whilst pursuing a life of partying, drinking and dancing all night I scoffed in disbelief, maintaining that I could do it. Turns out they were right and I was wrong, it seems that yoga and partying are just completely incompatible with one another and headstands (even at 12pm the next day) are horribly unpleasant with a belly full of night old alcohol, a greasy taco and less than a full 8 hours of sleep.

And so the question is raised, which do I choose? While nothing beats sharing a cold beer/cocktail/glass of wine/$10 peso bottle of licor de agave with friends (and acquaintances) and dancing the night away, the nice clean, invincible feeling of doing yoga and drinking a juice afterwards is pretty fucking spectactular. I don't want to give up on either but it seems I will have to share my time between these two foes. Could I go one week on- one week off on the drinking/yoga front? Or perhaps on full moons, or when venus is in taurus, or when the sun casts certain shadows on my window I could detox and do yoga briefly before falling back into my decadent and sinful university, traveller, young person lifestyle. Maybe I'll have to have 2 sets of clothes for when I am enormous thanks to litres of beer and greasy tacos and one for when I am normal sized and yoga-esque (ha!) but it seems the only real way to balance the two.

But being the end of the semester, I feel as it is time to hang up my yoga mat (at least for a week or 2) and indulge myself in despedidas, fiestas and enjoying my final days... except for all of those yoga classes I've already paid for... Although maybe true zen is emptying the undigested content of ones stomach after an intense headstand... hmmm.