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A Little Ray of Sunshine: The Next Phase Begins
Our life adventuring abroad has occurred in big phases. Stepping onto a plane bound for Glasgow, Scotland with no return tickets. Moving to Ceske Budejovice and becoming gainfully employed in Europe. Getting married and coming back to the Czech Republic with renewed commitment. The post-wedding years really coming into our own here. It’s time for what will be the beginning of the next phase: We’re expecting our rainbow baby in July and we’re so excited! You might be wondering some details, so here are the questions I could think of… How are you feeling? Really great, now, at twenty-one weeks. Truly, every single day feels different. I don’t think anyone’s…
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The Books of 2021
I made some major mistakes in my reading life last year. It pretty much all came down to being far too ambitious and picking up way too many reading projects! You might remember last year when I announced my participation in #OurYearInTranslation, in addition to trying to keep up with my book club. What a colossal mistake. I think OYIT is a great prompt if you’re stuck, in a rut and want to try something new, but that’s the thing – I was really happy with my big stack of books as it was and I didn’t really need a challenge. Honestly, I just needed everyone to leave me alone…
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Looking Back On Last Year, 2021
Alright, look, I’m embarrassed how late this post is coming out, but when you’ve just come home from a fifteen day trip abroad, dropped your bag and started a full work week (ew), there are a lot of other things to manage. So already, we’re not doing it the traditional way as the typical happy “Year of Life and Travels” year-end re-caps. 2021 was one of the hardest years I’ve experienced, but I can’t tell if it’s only the beginning of more to come or just a fluke of a year. I admit, I can only think of a couple years or times of my life that reached the same…
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At Summer’s End
Ahoj, friends – what a break it’s been since my last post in July. As you know, I’ve been in the USA for most of that time, only just returning back to the Czech Republic at the beginning of this month. I unexpectedly decided, especially with everything going on, that during that time producing anything was not it and that I really needed to just take it all in. Input instead of output. I do think that we all need time like this at certain parts of the year or even month to not put anything out there and to just listen. Normally around this time of year, I would…
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The Books of 2020
A big year for reading it was! I set my reading goal intentionally low at twenty books, but in the end I managed thirty-one! Perhaps this was because I still wasn’t sure if I would undertake any kind of formal studies and wanted to emphasize quality over quantity, and although I greatly surpassed it, I don’t really think the pandemic was the culprit. This was the first year that I really, actively considered reading books a hobby. Before it was just something I did, I guess, but now it’s gone full-out obsession, I’m either sorry or delighted to say. Ironically, I feel like I spend more time thinking about what…
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Year of Life & Travels: 2020
We made it! And yes, even 2020 is going to get a recap post! I love these sorts of posts and catching up with what people were up to this year, so here we are. They’re also really wonderful to look back on and see the year as a whole. I know a lot of people choose a word of the year before the year even gets going, but as I do my year-end reflections on the last few days remaining, the word to define the year that was always comes to me. This year would be adapt, of course. And now, a run-down of the year that was… Ah,…
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At Summer’s End
Someone recently asked me “What did you do this summer?” and when I told them, they proceeded to sort of frown over my answer. Better put into a metaphor: This summer was like having a best friend come to visit for three months, but finding that you don’t get along as well as you always have, and when they leave, it’s sort of on a weird note and you don’t quite know how you feel about it, compared to their previous visits. Our holiday in Croatia in early-mid August was really the only concrete thing or the easiest to mention, but this summer was more full of small moments of…
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May, Lately + More Thoughts of Traveling “These Days”
What a beautiful spring we are having this year! Unlike other years where it’s been like winter winter winter SUMMER and maybe one week of spring temperatures, we’ve really seen spring this year. April has been full of warm days and sun, trickling into May, even though we’re in a couple days of a cold snap right now (a good excuse to sit down and write something), I have really been enjoying it (ughhh, I probably say this every year, so here it is). I just actually learned about the days May 12-14 here called the “days of the ice men” (Ledoví muži). This is because those days are the…
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The Books of 2019
I know it’s called “the books” of 2019, but I mean merely, that they were books that defining the year for me – I make no big claims here. But now it’s time to take a look at favorite books, disappointing books, reading goals for this year, and generally how everything went. I just barely scraped by my Goodreads goal, just completing my 25 books in 2019. (welp, that went well!) The year before I’d managed over 30, so must’ve got stuck on some slog-reads again, but I feel good about having made it, of course. Rating them an average of 3.8/5, I’d say it was a pretty positive reading…
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Year of Life & Travels: 2019
Hello all! Hope you had beautiful holidays if you were celebrating! The Czech celebrating period seems to go for about two weeks so I am still enjoying the beautiful downtime, lit candles, all of our decorations and tree – this time is honestly one of my absolute favorites of the whole year, even though Christmas is over. We’ve just had a nice holidays in the Salzkammergut lake region of Austria, not very far at all from Salzburg (but in the smaller villages). I will post about it soon but I wanted to get to the annual and much anticipated (by me, if nobody else) ‘Year in Life and Travels’, 2019…
