Running in Place

When we last wrote, we were in the middle of week 8 of our confinement, and now we are starting week 12 -- not necessarily confined, but there is an ongoing "state of emergency." While things have changed a lot over the past 3 weeks here, they have not changed that much for us overall. We are in the second week of Phase 2 of the de-escalation process, and we should enter Phase 3 next week. All that really means is that we can go out whenever we want, can go wherever we want within the city (and province), and that we are required to wear a mask indoors in any public place, and outside if we cannot maintain the required distance from others. People here do not seem to mind the mask requirement.

Still, our day-to-day lives and routines have not changed hardly at all. Yes, we can go outside, but there aren’t that many more compelling reasons to venture too far from home than there were 3 weeks ago. Our main destinations remain the grocery markets and newspaper stand. We are enjoying the freedom to go for walks, and so far, our greatest pleasure has been eating an ice cream cone while walking through the city. The weather has been beautiful, and we love being able to re-experience the beauty of San Sebastian. Included in these photos is a sign of the times – face masks hanging out to be dried.

This week we will finally go out to eat at a restaurant – to celebrate our 24^th wedding anniversary. It will be nice to visit with our friends, the owners of the restaurant, and have our first meal since March 14 not prepared in our kitchen. My yoga studio is re-opening as well, with a limited offering of classes at about 50% capacity. That will be interesting. We have run a few errands here and there and will continue to do so. But, on the whole, we feel like we’re running in place. Our gym has not reopened yet, and whenever it does, we won’t be the first in line to get in. Surprisingly, our home workouts have met most of our fitness needs. Starting this week, we will try to go out once a week to restaurants to support our favorite places. Yet we are still spending most of our time at home and maintaining a low profile. We don’t want to make any new travel plans yet because things remain so uncertain. So, like all of you, we continue to take it one day at a time.

That’s it for now. We’ll see what June brings to our corner of the world.

Take care,

Shana & Jeff