God I love this place, I mentioned in my last post that it is my heart home and I wasn't lying. It's the place where I can walk down the street and no matter how long I have been gone, I know almost all shop owners and probably half of the people on the street. It makes my heart happy when people wave and smile and ask me how long I am home for :-)
I know that for a lot of us this time is crazy, uncertain, unsettling. For some of us it was a nice break and for some it was very far from that. My experience was pretty awesome, I got to spend a large chunk of uninterrupted time with people I love and really don't have and probably won't have the opportunity to do that again in the near future.
Not all of it was sunshine and roses (although for Wales suprisingly, the sun shone a lot during those 3.5 months), I mean, I had some serious first world problems....
1. I had to unpack my suitcases...completely...for that entire time....
2. I slept in the same bed for that entire time
3. I think the furthest I made it from where I was living was about 5.5 miles
4. I wondered if my life would ever go back to being what I dreamed, travel, friends, family and freedom
However those traumatic events were overshadowed for the most part by other things.
1. I finally lost weight and got into shape at the same time discovering I love yoga!
2. I have it on good authority from my favorite 11 year old that I am an awesome Geography teacher and apparently I am also cool 😎 Who knew!
3. It turns out I can cook
4. I spent a lot of time with some of my favorite people including some very distanced gin tasting in a garden close to home....
5. Went on a lot of beautiful walks that I had never been on in the countryside around Crickhowell.
I did good, I really was where I was meant to be during this 'longer than I ever imagined it would be' life pause. It wasn't all sunshine and roses of course. I had my moments of not being able to get out of bed, devastated at the prospect of no more traveling, no more dream job, never seeing the faces of all my friends and the people I love who are scattered around the globe.
Logically I knew this was not going to be the case but when faced with something so unprecedented and hugely unknown as a global pandemic that literally shut down the world.....thank god for yoga and good friends.
As Europe started to open again and, despite the moment when I put my passports on the Mayan Day of the Dead altar that Fin and I created for his school project as something that I mourned the passing of...
....all of a sudden my passport meant something again. Funnily enough my Czech one being more valuable at the moment than my Canadian one, who on earth ever imagined that would happen when asked why I spent 2.5 years struggling to get that passport all those years ago.
And that brings us almost up to date, the next adventure and what it is like out here traveling and sightseeing in this period of time as things are slowly and quietly coming back to life. I promised to let you know, so prepare yourselves for the next step....the journey from Crickhowell to Prague.
These observations may contain scenes and stories that make you feel a little bit judgmental towards countries, places and people who are at a different point of "normal" than you and your country, place and people might be, please keep those judgments to yourself 😘
