Life is better with a paintbrush in hand

I was looking back at our posts before Jeremy and I arrived in Policka and there was one in particular that caught my attention. It was a post a month before we left, and I admitted to my excitement and worries of coming here. After being here for 6 months, I am still a nervous person, I still get completely overwhelmed at time, I still shy when speaking in Czech, but it's good here.


In the last month, mentally things have started to change for me. I have finally started to get back into a "normal life" which includes painting, listening to music, and smiling at people I don't know when I pass them on the street or see them in the grocery store. These things make me happy. The next step will be saying "dobry den" (good day) and not caring that they look at my funny or don't even look at me at all. It is a cultural thing, Czechs do not talk to people they don't know. During our first months here I would say hello to people when I passed them, but started feeling silly for doing so because of the cold response and stopped. Every week we see the same people when walking to work or around Policka, so why not say hello? Sure we don't know them, but we see them every week.


Starting to paint again has definitely helped me a lot. Since being here I have painted 11 pictures. 5 of those have been in January. In the earlier months Jeremy used to questions why I wasn't painting, and many times he brought to my attention that I would tell people I liked to paint, but very rarely painted anything. This was a good question, but whenever it came up I would make excuses like, "I'm too tired" or "I don't know what to paint" or "I don't have time". But why wasn't I painting? It is something I do really enjoy. There are things that Jeremy needs to do to: read, know what is going on in the world and exercise. I am re-learning that I need to paint.