Day 10 of Project 2015

Cricket, cricket and more cricket! We watch the Test match by day and then watch the Big Bash by night. And Saturday, David plays cricket in the mornings too.

It is definitely an overload of cricket but really – it’s only a couple more months before the season ends so we might as well get our “fix” while we can.

We also finished the puzzle at midnight this morning – piece by piece we did it and feel so accomplished 🙂

Summary of January 10

Newbies

We had a few games of Scrabble today while the cricket was on. Time to work on our vocabulary some more and challenge the brain to something different. Got to keep those ole cog wheels turning.

Brighter/Different Perspective

We walked up the road for dinner with the family tonight. Le’s got a few relatives here from interstate and overseas so we ate at a local Italian restaurant. It rained as we left the restaurant and we had no umbrella. We welcomed the coolness on our skin after days of heat and humidity. We didn’t rush home and in fact didn’t even blink an eyelid over it. We walked slowly and leisurely all the way home!

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Day 41 – Palas de Rei to Arzua

If there was any day that would’ve brought us to tears, it should’ve been today.

For the record, of the 41 days on the Camino so far, today was by far the toughest in every way possible or so it seemed.

The weather forecast was for rain and rain, it did! It might have let up for only minutes at a time before it would come down again. It would be really heavy at times and then really light in parts.

We also had to contend with crazy winds, muddy and slippery paths and inclines and declines, crossing highways as well. The rain and the mud seeped into our shoes and soaked our socks and feet so when we finally got our boots off, the soles of our feet were wrinkly – our feet had aged about 50 years! We both also got stuck in the mud, trying to navigate our way through the safest and driest passage on the path.

What added to our grief was our sore legs. David was getting shin pain and Le was getting pain in her left foot – so we were both a walking mess in horrendous agony. But we soldiered on as best we could. And it proved that today was a test of our endurance, patience and tolerance. And if it was a test, well we both failed slightly because we had individual dummy spits over stupid things. Not at each other but at the situation at the time.

We got over the mini tantrum pretty quickly and stopped feeling sorry for ourselves pretty quickly too.

We comforted ourselves by saying that we were so lucky to have gotten this far with only 3-4 days of rain …. So we had been spoilt until now. Guess we needed to have the momentous day and character building day at some point.

And the biggest take away message was that when we are living our life outside the Camino and we are having a rough day at work or the weather is crappy – we will remember this day! The day we had to walk 28km or so in pain, with driving rain and we did it VOLUNTARILY on our holiday! So at least we will remember what having a tough day truly means!

The bar has been raised to what that actually entails to us. It certainly puts our lives of comfort into perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 11 – Logroño to Navarrete

If there’s an up, there’s a down! If there’s a happy, there’s a sad. If there’s hot, there’s cold. So if there’s sunshine, there’s rain!

And that is what we got, we walked pretty much entirely in the rain today, it wasn’t heavy thank goodness but it certainly was wet. We have spray jackets and also ponchos so our upper bodies were dry at least. 🙂

We could’ve had a few reactions to the rain! We could’ve let it dampen our spirits, we could’ve been annoyed, we could’ve seen that it ruined our rain-free record so far. And maybe these thoughts did creep in at times.

But we chose to see it slightly differently; we figured that we couldn’t truly appreciate the sunshine if we don’t experience the alternative!

We flipped it slightly and saw that we were lucky that today, the path we walked was mainly sealed so we weren’t slipping and sliding in mud or rocks! That was more than we could ask for. Obviously we would probably feel differently if the walk was longer and or the rain was heavier but based on what we experienced, we are grateful that if we were to experience rain, that it would be today out of any of our walking days so far!

The rain itself revealed to us our lesson in life: we will have bright days and we will have not-so-bright days. And depending on how we react to them, it can affect how we feel overall about the situation. But it is the “not-so-good” that makes us appreciative of the “good”.

And what is rain? It’s not there to depress us, it’s there to water the earth. How can we expect beautiful lush farms and gorgeous green scenery if there is no rain? We, as humans, need water for survival so we probably shouldn’t be too resentful of rain sometimes!

Let’s not forget that the world is made up of opposites if we didn’t have what we perceive as the “negatives” occasionally, how can we value the positives?