For years, I studied the skies quite thoroughly
I sort of started when we arrived at our first Workaway host in Spain after leaving our home country. The nights were dark and silent. Unless they were hunting in the mountains that is because that happened several nights as well. Anyway, if you leave your home country under such stress as we did, you need to destress and a peaceful environment and some nature around you do wonders, I can tell from experience. We were totally overloaded with stress and I have burned out myself as well. I had no fire left inside me and although we worked very hard at this first host (a nice hotel), we also really needed to rest after work. And so we did.
At night, we sat outside and evaluated
We discussed the day, and we had to process what happened to us as well, but we also tried to enjoy the little things again such as the beautiful flowers around us and the palm trees we both love so much. They give us an instant sense of holiday spirit as we don't have these in Holland. We sat outside in front of our apartment and listened to the crickets at night, they have such a calming effect on the brain. We also watched the skies a lot. And often discovered strange patterns in the sky.
What I remembered most was: the Milky way
One night we were "home alone" as our hosts were out at some friend's barbecue. We were asked to watch the premises and so we did. It was an eventful night because we saw a HUGE spider running in front of our little street and I was not amused seeing such a huge creature that close. When our hosts returned, the lady was quite tipsy, and that was funny because both of them had been under almost as much stress as we were back in our home country, therefor the tension had been through the roof! This evening was different, she came to us all jolly and said, look!!!! There!!!
It's the Milky way! Look how awesome!! She was all excited and so was I, to be honest, I never knew I could even see the Milky way and I probably could have never seen it in my home country due to light pollution where I lived. But here, the sky was all black, and barely any lights in our area at night. The only lights were those of the lanterns so we could just walk to the parking lot and see the Milky Way.
It was one of these tiny things that gave so much joy
And we both needed this so badly after all the stress we had been under, we barely had time to breathe let alone enjoy anything. It was then when I realized that the world is also still beautiful we just weren't able to see it for quite some time and now it was time to find back the little things that made us smile again. It's exactly those free and little things that made the difference in being happy and grateful again. I always knew that we'd climb back up again, but of course, how was still unknown.
I spent a lot of time staring at the skies
I witnessed the weirdest things even deep in the mountains of Andalusia. I was so fascinated by what I saw that I could not stop seeing these weird skies to the point that it got annoying. Nowadays it's much harder to spot a blue clear sky with some clouds as the sky never seems really clear here, it's a shame honestly. These pictures were taken last month when I was walking to a supermarket and needed to wait until I could cross the street. When I did, I noticed this sky and had to take a picture (or 2). I thought it was amazing to see honestly. When you look at the sea from the mountain here, there usually is some sort of mist above it making it impossible to see where the sea ends and the sky starts. So whenever a sky is blue (even with the clouds), I'm tempted to capture it, blue skies are nice to watch.
Do you ever look at the sky and capture what you see?