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expat thoughts on the bake off finale
a bake-off post! in case you still aren’t sure what i’m nattering on about, i’ve been baking along this autumn to the show, the great british bake off (series 9) which just had the finale this week. as i know this series will hit the states several months later, i just want to say: i will mention the winner of this series sometime in the post (spoiler alert!), so if that matters to you, go ahead and skip to my bakes (below) or click out. but something has been rattling around in the old craw about this year’s bakers that i just felt like i had to comment on. i…
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the spooky october movie series, pt. IV
halloween is drawing near, so it’s time for this year’s edition (series four) of the spooky film series! as film aficionados, we try to select five movies that have a deliciously horror or spooky vibe, because i know i’m tired of watching hocus pocus year after year. this year we’ve got films ranging from the 1950’s to this decade. i chose two, alex chose two, and our halloween night film was chosen together. i rate the films on a scale of one to five ghosts depending on how “halloween-ish” i feel the movie is, but also accounting for quality. week 1: the addams family values (1991), barry sonnenfeld my pick.…
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autumn leaves
beautiful fall weekends are here! after last weekend in which we were mostly hanging around budejovice, i very much wished to get out of the city this weekend and enjoy the beautiful foliage this time of year. alex suggested popping over to třeboň for the day to walk around svět lake – it’s such a nice walk, and it occurred to me that i had never been there in the autumn before. in fact, the last time we even walked around the lake was over five years ago! those times that we were scrambling every weekend to see as much as the area as we could, thinking we could be…
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october, lately + bake off update
hi guys. it’s been a strange start to the school year this time around. i’ve had a few work switcheroos and cancelled lessons throwing me for a loop – not exactly the kind of thing you want to have happen a month or so before you go on a big trip. ohhh, did i mention i was going on a trip next month? more perceptive readers will know i tend to post my travel plans on this page as soon as i’ve scheduled them, but i haven’t yet got a chance to mention that next month, one of my biggest travel dreams is going to come true. one that i…
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in berlin: teufelsberg
have you ever heard about a place that so captures your interest and imagination that you end up thinking about it all the time and even dreaming about it? that’s how teufelsberg in berlin was for me for years (similar to seljavallalaug, which i finally went to in 2016!) and as today’s beautiful, crisp sunny autumn weather seemed like a perfect sort of day to go to grünewald (the large swath of forest to the southwest of the city where teufelsberg is located), i thought of it today. and writing about it. but you might be wondering – what is teufelsberg? those who don’t have a knowledge of german language…
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SEPTEMBER LATELY (& bake off week 2+3)
hi friends! some happenings of the past couple of weeks… SELF-STUDY maybe it’s the back to school fervor combined with more time than usual before all my courses start again, but i’ve been positively swept up in a very literary and studious obsession lately. between furiously reading the best book i’ve read in years and trying to finish my german course book from the summer before my lessons begin next week (with a bit of herbal studies sprinkled in when time allowed), september has been very scholarly for me. of course, the amount of language study still can’t compare with doing the intensive course and homework last month, but i’ve still…
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at summer’s end, 2018
now that summer’s in its last week, it’s time for some looking back at the best season of the year with my annual “at summer’s end” post. i guess i’m ready as i’ll ever be! what did you do this summer? i spent a third of this summer abroad, which is more than usual considering we didn’t fly to the united states this year – it was truly an amazing summer i’ll always remember! right after the school year ended, we flew to southern france and spent a week and a half mostly at a fantastic cottage in the drome provencale (+ a few days by the sea!). we then…
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on getting lost
yesterday morning i was waiting for a bus when i noticed two very small children (the oldest couldn’t have been older than seven) get off another bus that had just pulled off and walk past me. my “morning thoughts” brain just took it and ran. things like, “wow! i can’t believe they are so young and traveling across town to school by themselves!” you don’t really see that in america. it got me thinking of when i was a wee lass and one day, had to ride the school bus to the next elementary school, get off, and walk to the middle school for a pottery class. this walk couldn’t…
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august in berlin, week three
in the last full week in berlin, i started to get a little frazzled because we had by that point finally decided when we were going to head back to budejovice – we had to be back by the end of august to temporarily renew our visas, so the end was near, as it were, and there were still (as ever) far too many things on my wish list. there is something about this city that makes me want to be out every day, doing as much as i can, going as far as i can… but i had to learn to let it be and relax a little bit. …
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happy september, indeed! + bake along #1 (biscuits)
well, we’ve made it to six years in europe, y’all. i don’t know how it happened and this year, it was certainly against all possible odds, but it did. that’s right! our major visa issues have been resolved thanks to the wonderful people we know here in budejovice and apparently, they are the right sorts of people to know. i am ever so grateful. i’ve heard about others in the same situation as us not having quite the luck we did and that it had been the end of the road. but for us, not today. cynthia and alex are going to keep this crazy thing going into year seven.…
