Montajaque: A Pearl in the Mountains
I recognize that many people have lost far more than I have in the past couple months and am thankful for all the blessings that we have in our life. Nonetheless, our sabbatical experience has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. By the time we leave Spain in a few weeks, we will have had to cancel trips to the Netherlands, Germany, Morocco, Italy, Denmark and Norway; three different sets of family members had to cancel trips to visit us in Spain; our daughters have missed out on the special opportunity of attending school in a foreign country and did not enjoy the closure of saying goodbye to classmates and teachers; and we missed out on about two months of enjoying normal daily life in Spain. While we have tried to make the best of the situation, it is impossible to not feel some sense of loss. So, it was nice to enjoy an experience that wouldn't have happened if terms like "social distancing" and "new normal" had never entered our vocabulary.