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summer travels 2014
i love the month of june (after SIFF finishes and my homesickness dissipates, of course). june means time to countdown the normal teaching weeks and dream about summer travels to come. for the second year now, we’ve been planning three trips each summer. the first, a shorter trip at the end of june (4-7 days) somewhere generally accessible by road or rail to us. last year it was the salzkammergut lake region of austria, this year it’s slovenia! secondly, our annual karlovy vary trip for the film festival– a tradition i will keep as long as i live here. and thirdly, in august after summer camps are finished, it’s time for…
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june prague festing
another thing i love about living in czech republic: days in prague. because i’ve lived in prague for two months and been there dozens of other times, the activities i find most enjoyable these days involve taking advantage of festivals and trying out new cafes and restaurants. and yesterday it feels like we did it all. after the exotic food festival got moved back a day (booooo), we hit up the italian food festival happening in havlíčkovy sady, a large park south of namesti miru in vršovice (prague 10). i have to say, i wasn’t expecting to find such a beautiful parisian style park with lovely views from the top…
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end of (school) year
i’ve been a bit relaxed lately. maybe it’s all the warm weather giving me visions of summer, the constant student cancellations, or the fact that i have only one more week of teaching before our summer holidays, but i can’t even be bothered to set an alarm clock lately. especially yesterday, when i woke up four minutes after my german class had begun. i managed to make it in forty-five minutes later and felt like i owed the class some explanation. i proffered a simple: “ich bin nicht aufgestanden.” (i didn’t get up). they were amused. so much for that perfect lipstick/ponytail/preparedness thing i had going for awhile. not even…
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twenty-first century paris (an itinerary)
in october and november 2012 on my way to prague, i made a two week pit-stop in paris between london and berlin. before this i had spent only a few days there eight years before, so i was thrilled to experience the city for an extended amount of days, this time with alex who had never been to france. now, inspired by reading the paris wife, i wanted to share about my fourteen day parisian experience and what my itinerary looked like. i sublet a tiny studio apartment in the 13th arrondissement while the resident (a russian artist) was on a holiday in the states. her rent was about the…
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hot hot hot
what a beautiful warm weekend we had here in south bohemia! between celebrating our “minus one anniversary” with spanish food eaten outside on the adorable street behind me (above) and seeing electric light orchestra in the middle of the budvar brewery’s loading dock…. to the fabulous annual slavnosti piva české budějovice (beer festival) and hanging out in the shade beside the river, it’s been a rrrreal good one. i’m enjoying a surplus of bergamot (lemon mint) and finally figured out that the thing to do with it is make MINT ICED TEA– the ultimate cooling summer beverage! and as it’s going to hit 32C (90F) today and for much of this…
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to commemorate our “minus one wedding anniversary” today (ie, exactly 365 days before our wedding day!) here are some favorites from part two of our engagement shoot, all taken in our current home of české budějovice on a warm spring evening by jan pirgl… who we are seriously thinking about flying to seattle next year! we will wait another year for the sake of convenience to make our union official back in my hometown of anacortes, wa with our family and friends, but i think it’ll be an epic year, just like the other three have been in their own ways. and a year and a half of wedding planning can’t hurt!…
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from the church to the palace
on sunday, we took an excursion for the day to the south-south-south of south-west czech republic near the border of austria to a little town called vyšši brod with the intention of hiking 10km to rožmberk nad vltavou. both of these towns are situated on the vltava river, both are meccas for rafting and canoeing enthusiasts, and both have tourist value, so it seemed like a perfect idea, especially at under an hour and a half by train from české budějovice.we landed in vyšši brod around 9:30am and headed up to the monastery. you can visit the monastery complex and go on a tour every day except sundays, so instead we lingered…
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the little things pt. I
happy moments both big and small deserve to be celebrated, and may was full of both of these. the month started out with a bang of happiness, as it was a public holiday and i began the day with a morning bike ride along the vltava river to give a lesson for two of my favorite little students. there is absolutely nothing like a bike ride along the river to give me really positive feelings about life here in budějovice, and to just generally boost my mood with all of the visuals of the river and blooming flowers. on the second day of may, what’s better than to hang out with…
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this bohemian life
i had one of my landlords over for tea the other day. she’s real sweet– in her sixties and working part-time as an english teacher at the czech-english high school here in town. i love her curiosity about english and english speakers, and how she always wants to know what textbooks i’m using to teach or what methods. she’s the reason we got this great flat in the first place… and the reason we pay much less for it per month than the list price suggested. she often says that she would never “kick us out on the street” and that there would always be a place for us here,…
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american in a czech german class
it might seem a little strange but i’m taking german classes in the czech republic… even though i’ve lived here for a year and a half and speak very little czech. but it to me it makes perfect sense, and here’s why. when we moved to czech republic, we decided to play things by ear, and even now, we re-evaluate every six months what we would do for the next six months. unsure of how long i would stay here, i never wanted to commit to any long-term czech classes, even though i love language learning. i was a bit concerned about the usefulness of knowing czech after leaving the…
