After lots of playing around, and lots of help from friends (including the talented Jenn Yoo and my girl Paloma), I’ve finally settled on a new banner. It’s no secret I love my green veggies, so a tabletop full of some of my faves seemed a fitting backdrop. It also took some fiddling before I came up with a tagline I liked. The first seemed too passive, the next sounded great, but then I realized it’s because I’d heard it somewhere else before. Whoops! “Juice up your life!” seemed like the perfect call to action, so I’m excited about its new prominent display up top.

Given how unsuccessful my first attempts at the headers were, I thought I might as well go ahead share them with you for a laugh. You can thank Michael for stopping me from posting these instead.

The first attempt:

I realized this one looks like it's for a bad day spa.

And this one:

Michael said this one looks like it should be for a funeral home. Not quite the image I was going for.

What do you think? Did I make the right choice?

Yellow Lotus (Kyoto Botanical Gardens)

Hi lovelies!

I just wanted to throw up a new post to let you know about some cool new developments for GreenJunkieLiving.com.

I recently created a Facebook fan page for the site, which you can visit here. Just go ahead and click that “Like” button, and you’ll be sure to get all the latest and greatest in GJL news. I’m hoping it will lead to some great new discussions on the fan page and make it easier for you to share your favorite posts with your friends.

In Search of Vitality is also our new slogan and guiding principle for the blog. The word vitality has been swirling around in my head an awful lot, lately, and this phrase finally bubbled to the surface. I thought it was the perfect fit.

Some cosmetic changes (a new banner, primarily) are in the works as well. Photoshop and I currently duking it out, and as soon as I win, we’ll have something a bit more fitting and serene up the top to greet you.

There are a bunch of new posts in the works for the coming weeks, including:

• an interview with the ever-fabulous Corinne Bowen, discussing how she balances careers with words and holistic health.
• a frank discussion on anger, inspired by my hero, Kris Carr.
• information on green walls and green roofs to help green your home.
• a new series of posts talking about living with an autoimmune disease (or two). I’m really excited to explore this issue in more depths, and hope you come along for the ride.

Hope you all enjoy your weekend, and cheer big for the U.S. of A.!

Love and smiles,

Olivia

Soaking up some sunshine on the rocks in the river at the end of the tea festival.

I know it’s been a little quiet on here lately, but with good reason. First, Michael and I took a lovely vacation around southern South Korea, finally getting to see a bit of the country we’ve been living in. Then the ever-wonderful Mel, who designed this site initially, granted me yet another request and moved the action over to greenjunkieliving.com.  I still own the old URL for another year or so, but please go ahead and reset any bookmarks and RSS feeds if those are giving you trouble.

Before I recap and some highlights of our trip, I want to thank everyone who weighed in on the name change. It made the process much easier! So now I’m going to call on your talents again: this blog needs a new banner. Ideas, suggestions, and (if you’re feeling extra awesome on a given day) mocked up banners are all greatly appreciated!

My work shut down for a week at the start of the month in celebration of Children’s Day. Seeing as I usually work six days a week, it’s been tough for us to see much of Korea, even though it’s a relatively small country. We took advantage of this guaranteed break from classes (which did feel a little silly, as I had only taught two classes since mid-March…) and booked a trip. We started with a group trip through Adventure Korea to climb Jirisan (the biggest “mountain” in Korea–at 1400 meters) and attend a green tea festival, then we broke off on our own and headed to Gyeong-ju, which was once the seat of the Silla empire. I have lots of photos to share, but for some reason with all the switcharoos on here, I keep getting “HTTP error” alerts when I try to upload. With any luck I’ll have that resolved soon, and for now, here are a few from the first part of the trip that I “borrowed” from a friend’s facebook page.

View from the top of Jirisan on a hazy day

Singing Sweet Caroline--for the first of many times that night.

Nothing like a bunch of foreigners picking green tea on a Sunday morning

The tea leaves are poured into a giant, hot bowl and then constantly lifted and tossed. We're pretty sure this is to release excess moisture, but our translator was unclear about the process.

After heating the leaves, they're transferred to a woven mat where they're crushed and massaged. Again, I think this is to release more moisture, but it was unclear.

Finally, the leaves are transferred to large screens to finish drying.

What I think has become apparent is that health and wellness are what manage to hold my attention and keep me passionate. In my view, this includes nods to things that bring me joy–like a particularly great session with a student or an exciting trip. Mostly, though, this means discussions and reflections about healthy eating and attempts to stay motivated about exercise, mostly yoga.

And that’s where I need your help. I’ll be changing my last name when I get married in October, and I realize my full name as a URL isn’t the easiest to remember for some folks. So although I’ll keep olivialindquist.com/blog for practical reasons and forwarding visitors, I’ll be switching this operation over to a new home. What are your suggestions for a new web address? Myviewfromthere.com and Aviewfromthere.com are both open, but I’m tempted to go in a new direction entirely. Unfortunately, I’m having a creative block, but I trust you talented folks will have some great ideas for me. Right?

If you haven’t already, it would mean a lot to me if you popped over and left a comment (if you’re so inclined).

For those of you not familiar, CSL is a wonderful holistic health community founded by my health hero, Kris Carr. The folks at CSL have given me tremendous support and advice as I continue to work toward my healthiest self. It is an honor to guest post. And if you’re looking to jump start your own wellness, take a peak at the forum, past blogs, and Kris’s recommendations in the CSL store.

Thanks for stopping by this mish-mash of a site. I post about any and all aspects of my life here in Seoul, with a heavy emphasis on health. You might also catch travel photos, ruminations on teaching, and the occasional love post about my fella. Please post a comment, leave a link to your own blog, and let me know what you think. You can also follow me on Twitter if you’re interested.

Cheers and health,

Olivia

In no particular order, you can expect blog posts about the following:

• The China Study, and the subsequent changes taking place in our kitchen
• Vision boards and goals I’m working toward
• The coming weekend’s TED talks screening and discussion
• New recipes I’ve been tweaking
• A draft (for feedback) of my pitch to YogaJournal.com so they’ll let me guest blog

I promise at least one new post will be up by Sunday!

While I’m not one to get excited about celebrities — it’s just not something on my “I care about that” radar — I realized that is completely different when it comes to health celebrities.  So when I saw that I had a comment from one of my all time favorite, realistic, gorgeous, and fun health gurus (for lack of a better word), I nearly jumped out of my chair. Thank you, Kristen Suzanne, for checking out my blog!

Now that that little geek out is over, I’d like to direct you over to my very first guest post, ever. My amazing friend Jen, back in Pennsylvania, has an informative, down-to-earth blog tracking her own health journey and findings. She invited me to do a guest post, so I wrote about my love affair with my VitaMix blender and green smoothies. It’s long, but I tried to break it up with pictures. (Including one with my brand spanking new haircut. Which I realized I share with Suri Cruise. But hey, at least it’s not green anymore!) Scroll down below my post for a very lovely and warm introduction from Jen.

The last piece of exciting news is that I have *drum roll please* energy! On Saturday night we had some friends over to watch TED Talks, have a few drinks, and see what sort of discussion followed. We listened to Larry Lessig, Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, and Ken Robinson. Each was interesting and engaging, but Isabel Allende and Ken Robinson gave me the chills.  Unfortunately, we stayed up way too late, and I drank way too much, which meant Sunday was a wash. But when I woke up yesterday (Monday), I was amazed. I didn’t have trouble getting out of bed. All I wanted was a green smoothie, and my energy lasted all day. Today, same thing. Woke up feeling awake, made my honey some hot choco, and…didn’t have to resist making some for myself. I just didn’t want it. WOW.

I think a few things are at work here.

For starters, I finally found an endocrinologist who would increase my synthroid from 88mcg to 100mcg. And to think — I only had to travel 8,000 miles to do it! I’ve only been on this dosage for about 5 days, but this is the first time I actually feel a difference from taking my synthroid. In ten years. Could you imagine taking a little pill every day for ten years, and feeling no difference from before you took it? It’s frustrating, to say the least. I have blood tests scheduled for January to check my thyroid levels, and I hope they’ll be within range so I can continue at this higher dosage.

The other big change is that I’ve been super consistent with my green smoothies for two weeks. I’ve found a combination of ingredients that seems to really work for me, targeting my three major areas of poor health: digestion, energy, and seasonal depression. The addition of kale seems to have made all the difference. My green powders are great, but the real greens, that’s where the vitality lives. The best “side effect” of these green smoothies, coupled with a decision to forgo wine during the week (baby steps, people) has pretty much zapped my sugar cravings. Let me repeat: Zapped My Sugar Cravings. If you’ve met me, you’ve probably seen me inhale sugar and refined carbs like it’s my job. And now, for now, I don’t even want them. Hallelujah!

I really feel that I’m on the road to a vibrant life. Work is about to get crazy again next week, which is part of the reason I’ve spent these last few weeks focusing on restoring my system. At least I’m entering the 70 hour work weeks with a functioning, energized system. There’s no reason I can’t sip on green smoothies during class all day, so I think I have a real chance to stay healthy through these next two months.

My next goals are to resume meditation and yoga practices. I’m not sure what those will look like for me yet, so I’d love to hear what works for you. I know I need to start small and let the results fuel the next stages. Ideas?