754am.

   I woke up to the wonderful voice of Jason Mraz, singing "Wake up everyone, how can you sleep at a time like this unless dreamer is the real you?" My 6 am alarm has never been this effective. How can you not smile and dance yourself out of bed with that song? A few moments later, Kace calls-- "Hello??!!! Answer your land line, the guard won't let me in!"
   We walk to the pool and meet a bunch of interesting characters. Apparently, there is a morning swimming club of sorts in Acropolis. We meet Tita Ita, who's dropped 4 sizes by her swimming. Her husband-- the name slips my memory-- has lost 60 pounds. Their Mom, who is 76-- could barely walk through the pool when she started and is now doing laps. They had a swimming coach-- I forget his name too. He tells us swimming success stories-- a 300+ man betting with his brother that he could lose weight-- Did, and won 150 grand. They invite us to swim with them every morning. Kace says "Si Ina nalang." I would actually really like to. We tell them that we're getting in shape for the New Balance Power Race on the 27th-- He says we should swim with pants so that we build the stamina of our legs. Will do that-- Tomorrow? Lets see. I've got 10 days. He also says that we should sleep before 10pm until the rest because our bodies won't recover. I don't think that's possible. We ask him if we'll lose weight if we don't sleep that much--he just laughs at us. "Just swim everyday," he says. Kace? Game! Then we jog around the village-- "We can do this, we can do this" and we did. One round around the village-- I ask Kace "You think its at least 1K already?" she says "I think, its way more than that. Tama na, Ayoko na!" And so we make it back to my house. My mother goes "What? You're finished already? You were tying your shoes longer than that." At least we're starting somewhere.
     It's 754 in the morning. Kace and I are sipping coffee and eating Oatmeal. Hers with milk and sugar, mine is the tasteless kind-- seems to be a bit sour. My mother is playing some music on the radio. It's 92.3, I'm not sure if its bossa or jazz-- but it's the kind of music you listen to while sitting on a coffee shop in the french riviera-- or at least that's where the music sends me. My mom is painting in the lanai, finishing up her playing kids. Chi comes down and is spray painting a helmet and spear for his Western History war simulation on Saturday. What a wonderful way to start the day. The people I love most-- My mom, my brother and best friend-- in the Philippines at least. I wish Kisa, Julian and Alex were here too. Just sitting around, random stories-- Kace, lending my mother Mizuno rackets. "Akin nalang to?" "We should watch Chi's War thing-- 530 am Saturday" Chi says "It's not going to be fun." Gossip about Chi's ex-Mother-law-to-be texting him-- I have to find out more about this. We ask Chi to take our jumping pictures out on the street for this blog. It was a hoot! "I think that was a fail" -- "I think that was your fail!" He get's tired of our failures but we laugh heartily.Kace says "Ina, don't post that-- I still want to find a boyfriend someday."
    What a way to start the day. I love getting up in the morning doing other things before getting into work mode-- It just takes the weight off working because your day isn't all about that. It's so early in the morning, there's so much else that could happen.