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isles of lavender
happy august! one of the best months, at least for those of us on a teacher’s school year. we saw in july at the karlovy vary film festival and saw it out sitting around a camp fire deep in the woods of western san juan island, washington. this year, we’re spending our august in washington state and a bit of michigan near the end there. it has been such a nice and comfortable transition from prague to vancouver to here on fidalgo island (and many areas around the puget sound) for the next few weeks. a bit of a far cry from my study holiday last august (3+ weeks studying…
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july, lately
at the beginning of the month, we returned from vary and i dove headlong into a one month yoga challenge with yoga glo* (#globlockparty !) with my newfound free time, as well as seeing what delicious meals i could cook up from our july vegetable box and visits to the farmer’s market. right now in south bohemia, apricots and cherries are still having their day, whereas it’s just starting to be berry season – bilberries have been sighted out in force and the season’s first blackberries, as well. i feel it’s a bit too early for blackberries – i’m holding out for some august washington berries, myself. they gonna be…
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festival magic + my top 5 films seen at this year’s KVIFF
ahoj all, i’ve been in the middle of summer camps (sotiredomg) just wanted to pop in after our annual trip to karlovy vary for the film festival. even if it took me all dang week to finish this post. in case you’re new around here: hi, i’m cynthia and i like to have film festival vacations in beautiful hilly spa towns where we get up at 6am to go stand in box office queues! joking aside, we’re getting into a real routine when it comes to this festival, but the most notable change this year is when we arrived to the box office on thursday shortly after getting in, we bought…
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the villages of the drôme provençale
this summer heat has got me thinking about one year ago on our holiday in provence. i wrote a little bit about the stay at our cottage in the drôme region and a day in arles, but nothing much about the many, many provençal villages we visited. the most known area of provence is perhaps the luberon, thanks to the popularity of a year in provence by peter mayle (a book which i highly, highly recommend if you’re going to provence at all), but we ended up staying in the northern drôme (southeastern france about halfway between marseilles and lyon) which was even more beautiful than i ever could have imagined. every day we would…
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prague | 24 hours in holešovice
last month we were in prague for a concert and ended up staying in holešovice, simply because the cheapest private accommodation available was there. and not only in holešovice (which is a large swath of prague 7 that sort of encircles prague’s bubny train station), but east holešovice. i go there whenever i visit the DOX museum, but industrial east holešovice does not seem to be a favorite area of praguers. i asked a couple that i knew, “hey! where do you like to go in east holešovice?" "um……..”“i mean, pražská tržnice is there. and so is cafe jedna. right?”“……can’t you just go to letná?” the letná side of holešovice…
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a spring wander around brixton, london
what is it about blogging, lately? i have a theory that other forms of social media is slowly killing off blogging (do you agree?) and i am taking staunch measures to prevent this, at least for myself. in the past, if i haven’t written, it meant i couldn’t think of anything to say. nowadays, over six and a half years into my life abroad, if i don’t write, i’m too busy with life or my personal studies (language or herbalism). but! i can’t let spring fade sweetly into warm, sun-drenched summer without talking a little tiny bit more about our spring day out in brixton at the end of april.…
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travel, living abroad, and a more ecological lifestyle.
travel + an ecological lifestyle – can these two things belong together? it’s a hard thing to reconcile for any traveler – how to lessen your personal impact and be a more responsible traveler? there’s carbon offsets you can purchase, either as you make your flight purchase or separately from a few different organizations. there’s booking a trip from a company with a ecologically-responsible policy. (in the past week, rick steves just announced all his tours will be certified carbon neutral) there’s opting to take the bus or train more vs. flying. we live without a car here and do almost all of our errands on foot (including grocery shops, hoofing it…
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herbalist in training
i don’t know what it is about herbalism that initially appealed to me. maybe it was the resourcefulness, learning about the plants already growing around you, what medicinal properties they have, how plants can help heal your body. maybe it’s that i didn’t have a garden and the idea of wildcrafting and foraging seemed really accessible (also, free!!!). i think a combination of all these things, but when a friend referred me to some local herbalism workshops, i got really into them. so much so that i decided to enroll in my first herbalism course, which i took online from the herbal academy over the past year and have just recently…
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may, lately
hey, it’s may! may sure starts quiet slow and cool but boy does it ramp up quickly! especially when you live in the czech republic which has a holiday two weeks in a row. i don’t know about you guys, but i can already feel the slowing of the school year and delighting in the approach of the second half of spring (the better half). here are some things that have been making me smile lately… our hiking holiday at the end of april really got the spring/warm weather mood going! i posted the above photo in that particular post but it’s just too darned cute not to share again.…
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walking london + the afternoon tea bus tour
i don’t really ever go on those “weekend away” trips everyone talks about when they move to europe. well at least, not of the kind with an airplane. flying is a much bigger “to-do” than the ever-convenient train, and when you live in the center of europe, it’s easier to get almost everywhere by train… except great britain. but a couple weekends ago, i did! it felt really fancy! i went to london, mainly with the intent of seeing a band i love so much i’d fly for– which i could write a whole post about in and of itself as it was incredible– but all the other in-between stuff…
