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first video! “one month in iceland”
i’ve been meaning to start making videos forever, and maybe this is what it will take to give me a little jump! i’ve edited together some videos i took over the four weeks in iceland + some funny moments that maybe you would enjoy seeing. the video was filmed at the following places (generally, in this order):flatey islandstykkishólmurat the farm in borgarbyggd (also again near the end) Þjórsá riverdyrhólaeyreynisfjara beachjökulsárlón glacier lagoonon the road in southeast iceland i’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! thanks for following along. xo this post is part of wanderful wednesday.
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camping road trip, iceland style
hi all! did you have a wonderfully warm and sunny august? i’m back (home) in the czech republic and newly invigorated by this iceland trip, having unexpectedly experienced both sunny and warm weather on the trip. it was a fantastic month, but i wanted to share with you a little about our camping road trip! we spent four days crossing iceland’s south coast, from reykjavik to jökulsárlón and back, which including our interior driving near the southwest golden circle area put us at about 1,000km. why the south coast? well. i was not a newbie to iceland, but having never visited the south coast before, i felt as though it…
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turning a new page on the iceland book
have you ever flown into keflavik airport? on the way into reykjavik city, there are miles and miles of nothing but volcanic rock, just like those on which i am “comfortably” perched in the photo above. it’s like a moonscape, otherworldly, like nothing you’ve ever seen anywhere else. i remember staring out at these rocks during much more uncertain days and under grayer, colder skies and started getting all of the same feelies. i wondered, will this time be different? will i learn to really like this country as i’ve always hoped i would? we were shuttled to the blue lagoon, which, say what you will, i think it is marvelous. geothermal water,…
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Iceland Uncovered: How My First Ever Trip to Iceland Went
right around new year’s day, 2011 (about a year and a half before this adventure began), i won a sweepstakes contest to win a trip to iceland. i was naturally ecstatic about this development, as i’d been dreaming about the country for years. about two and a half years ago, i went on said trip. however, after my return the photos i took never really surfaced anywhere and weren’t really shown to anyone… because at the time, the trip was not my idea of an ideal vacation. it left a bad taste in my mouth and a chill in my bones. to be fair, there were circumstances unrelated to iceland…
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My Two-and-a-Half Year Maternity Leave in the Czech Republic
In mere days, the curtain falls on my two-and-a-half year long maternity leave here in the Czech Republic. It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. How it actually works is that there is a six-month-long maternity leave if you are an employee (read: not a freelance worker) that you are granted through your organization and the state, then after this six month period you previously got to choose a two, three or four year parental leave which can be divided or taken by either parent. For the purposes of this post and because I am the parent who took the leave, I will refer to it…
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Week 49-52 of 2024 (Year in Review) – Year of Life and Travels
Wow, y’all. The year 2024, the year in which I had a one and a half year old to now a two and a half year old was not a great year to try to blog more – big oopsies to try something ambitious as blogging every week but I tend to be the type to say yes to too much, bite off more than I can chew and all that. It’s not for lack of trying! In October things heated up when M stopped napping and I am fairly confident that I say that never in my life have I ever had less free time than I do now.…
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Week 9 & 10 of 2024 (In Review)
Spring is in the air! Buds are noticeable, the first blooms are out, plant growth on the forest floor has begun, nests are furiously being built in trees all around us (peep the one above). But it’s been a beautiful past two weeks of crisp, sunny days were wonderful for being just normal winter weeks of the year. Fully embracing my maternity leave days this year (balanced with a wee bit of teaching) has been going so well and although we’ve weathered through colds cycling through everyone in the house and some health challenges here and there, they have been beautiful. Last week was particularly, accidentally magical. Baby play dates…
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Week 7 & 8 of 2024 (In Review)
Even writing week in review posts is proving to be challenging but it’s a special exercise this year only so I hope you are enjoying them so far! The past two weeks brought us Valentine’s Day, which is always a fun week to observe. It was a little bit cold and windy but I had a little coffee date with my Little Man in the monastery courtyard. It was fun watching him wander around. He’s in that phase right now where he’s discovering walking around outside and every single thing is new and exciting. The other day we all went on a family walk to a playground — the first…
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Week 5 & 6 of 2024 (In Review)
It’s nearly mid-February and I’m feeling the urge to settle as deep as possible into winter before March, when it still is very much winter but everyone seems to have spring on their minds. February is still true winter so I’m embracing the hot chocolates, movies, diving into books, flannel pajamas and plentiful cups of tea and coffee. Our little M suffered from a a particularly wretched cold in Week 5 so we kept our activities to almost nothing besides some daily fresh air. You feel so bad for the little ones who don’t know how to blow their nose! Fortunately that’s done and we’ve been able to do our…
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The Books of 2023 (Annual Book Post!)
It took me ’til February, but here it is! This was a great reading year for me, if 32 books with a 3.9 star (out of 5) average says anything about the it. It was a fantastic mix of memoirs, non-fiction, engaging novels and a sprinkling of parenting books thrown in for good measure. No book clubs or anything mucking up my choices (although they can be really fun sometimes). Mostly I read while breastfeeding on my Kindle but being able to read in bed again at night also helped a lot — man have I missed it! Here’s a sampling of the best of them… and really there were…