Sunday Funday

Happy Sunday to everyone out there! For those of us in Germany, we just sprung our clocks forward today, so now it's time to adjust to the time change. I'm a little sad that the sun isn't helping to wake me up at 0530 anymore, but it's kindof nice to not have dusk until around 2000 (8 pm). Tradeoffs.

As you can tell, I did not do a blog yesterday, so I will make up for it today. I took yesterday as a rest day from my workout, even though my original plan was to go for a run. Instead, I woke up feeling oober productive, so I took advantage of that and went for a run today, which I'll go into more in a little bit.

I was fortunate enough to have two splendiforous highlights to yesterday. The first was the Sunshine Brunch that is put on annually by the Women's Ministry ladies up in Graf. Although it actually was sunny outside yesterday, it's normally held in February after a long winter suffering through the Bavarian cloud cover and cold, so it's a little bit more fitting then. They crank up the heat, put up lots of bright colors, and we all get to dress in our awesome spring clothes to remember how fantastic a little bit of sunshine can feel. I enjoyed some wonderful food (as is evident by the plate in front of me...which was my second round :S ) and of course, some lovely company. Some of the women there I had already met, some were new to me, but we all had a great time.

The other highlight of yesterday was performance number 6 of Evita. No tech issues, high energy from all of us, an oversold house, and even some impromptu fun on stage. It was a great performance night, and I hope that our last two shows coming up this week are just as spectacular!

As for today, I went for my run that I skipped yesterday. I decided after church to head over to Amberg where I had seen a map for a sculpture route a while back and thought that it would be nice to run around there since it was such a gorgeous day (68 and sunny!). So, that's what I did. I did it today because I was figuring (for a reason unbeknownst to me) that no one would be out on Sunday afternoon and my anxiety levels would be relatively low. Wrong...

Ok, so I will admit that I am pretty good about being all gung-ho about facing fears and doing things that you don't want to do to better yourself, yadda yadda. HOWEVER, I have some social anxiety issues which lead to me often avoid unknown situations for fear of doing something wrong and looking like an idiot when I'm by myself. Today, by default, I had to push through several of those anxieties just to go on my run. Let me explain...

This is the path where I began my run and the church on the back end. It was quite a nice little path that it took me along for about 25 minutes. I didn't go too far though for fear of getting lost among the many winding paths. I probably would have been a little more adventurous had I had food in my stomach and weren't so anxious about my car.

The green car on the left is my car (aka Kermit). This was the highest trigger of my anxiety level spike today because I have a giant fear of getting a parking ticket or getting towed ever since having my car towed shortly after graduating college during a time when I was struggling to afford bread and milk. For those of you who have never driven in Europe, parking is a little bit of organized chaos. There are signs that will usually tell you where you shouldn't park, but there are not necessarily markers telling you that you CAN park somewhere. Take, for instance, my car. There are no lines for a parking spot, and there are cars parked in both directions on the street. This still freaks me out a lot, and so after parking (although I was 97% sure that it was legal), I proceeded to envision my car getting towed in a foreign country. This thought occupied my mind for most of the run until a Polizei car drove right by afterwards and didn't bother at all with it (although she did park right up the street and sit in her car, which still freaked me out). Anxiety number one faced.

Anxiety number two comes from the fact that there were a CRAZY amount of people out today, and driving through small European streets is still a little nerve wrecking for me. My idea that there would be few people out was completely blown out of the water, so I had to navigate my way through the streets (thank God I have a GPS now...) in front of large blobs of people. But I did it, didn't hit anyone or anything, and got only a few crazy looks overall.

The rest of the day, I decided to forgo the beautiful weather (semi-begrudgingly) so that I could be highly productive at home and be able to go play later this week instead. That plan was largely a success, and my productivity level was super high today :)

And with that I say, "Nanu Nanu". It's time for bed :)