Comments on: Mumbai Impressions-A Pilates Instructors First Trip to India

By: Jean Leavenworth

Jean Leavenworth — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:05:07 +0000

Hi Trisha-
If you send your story into me with the photos attached, I will post it on our blog. Email it to: jean@pacificnwpilates.com
Thanks!
Jean

By: Trisha Hatfield Graves

Trisha Hatfield Graves — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:23:02 +0000

I’d love to submit a travel story too! I just spent the last 2 summers as the featured international premier Pilates instructor at The Cascina Papaveri in northern Italy. How do I do this and include pictures? This is an opportunity other instructors could hook up with too. The Cascina Papaveri (www.cascinapapaveri.com) is just INCREDIBLE; an organic farm and vineyard perched atop a hill overlooking literally MILES of wine country, historic villages and castles. It also has the largest equipped Pilates studio in Europe on the bottom floor of this historic cascina complete with a full sized lap pool, sauna and steam rms. It houses up to 10 guests in the most outrageously gorgeous rooms with open shutter views. It provides daily culinary arts lessons too in the preparation of the nightly dinner. It is the dream child of retired Brit and Kiwi couple, Robyn and John Simms. Instructors are housed in a gorgeous little apt in the local village and can walk to the Cascina daily through Anne of Green Gable type rural farm and country lanes. It is just outrageously cool and I want to turn other instructors onto it as well as GROUPS wanting a BIG studio to visit for a workshop in Italy. Let me know how to submit an “article” or travelogue w/images of the place. Thank Jean!

By: Trisha Hatfield Graves

Trisha Hatfield Graves — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 20:11:03 +0000

Hey Jean! I had never been out of the USA when in 1990, I decided to use Financial Aid to go to India and fulfill 15 academic credits toward my BA through Independent Studies. Here I was this white girl, SO naive, so foreign to travel – SOLO’ing through India for 3 months….alone. Began in New Delhi and meandered through Pushkar, Agra, Varanasi, Bodgaha…on down, on down…ended up in Goa for the last month living in a beach cottage. Then back to Mumbia (AKA Bombay) and returned to the USA. The question I got from folks that felt the strangest to me upon my return was “did you have FUN?”…like I went to Disneyland or something. It was SO BEYOND fun. Rich, scary, exciting, different, lost, found; golden moments peppered in here and there that I couldn’t have even manufactured in my imagination. I came back a changed person. Arriving back in Kennedy airport I found English to be overwhelming…too much “talk” going on. I had temporarily lost my innate ability to “superficially banter”. I had to pull my brain back to the frontal lobe to simply keep up with things here at home. It was STUR-RANGE!! I “recovered”, but what an incredible place!!!