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winter weekending
i’m having the best, most relaxing weekend. i don’t know how winter weekends are managing to be this good, but they are. and since i haven’t done many “hey! this is what i did today” kinds of posts, i’m feeling it today. friday was the semester break for the public schools here, officially over the halfway point in the year! we always like to go out to a leisurely coffee at a beloved cafe this year every day, since my last lesson of the day is cancelled and have a (generally) free afternoon. as i mentioned in a post about this day from a year or two ago, cafe days…
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a real winter
this month has been quite the opposite of last year’s super mild, almost spring weather. no, it’s even colder and snowier than the first winter we lived here in czechland (2013). this winter is frigid, the kind with a constant layer of snow and ice on the ground. (wasn’t it a great time to get a dog and have to take him outside all the time?) we’ve been experiencing regular temperatures of between -8°C and -14°C, with one today about a week and a half ago even getting as cold as -17°C (1°F!). i can say, undoubtedly, that these are the coldest temperatures i have ever been in in my…
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one month of dog
alright, so it’s actually been over a month and a half now (hah) by the time i actually got this post out, so even though i’m stickin’ with my catchy title, it’s more like ‘over a month and a half with dog’. ferdinand’s first month with us was a lot like you’d might expect when you get a new pet. it’s a major adjustment period, especially from a dog that spent a year living on a farm in a kennel with other dogs to a flat in the city by himself. the bad the first two weeks of the house-breaking process. i guess because he was one year old when…
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the books of 2016
last year was the first year i actually frickin’ completed my good reads challenge! two months early, too! i am not so much for quantity rather than quality and i love reading long books and loads of non-fiction which are hard to get through as quickly as fiction is. so i am pretty pleased, here. also, i love reading the internet. as aziz ansari famously said, “i read the internet so much i feel like i’m on page a million of the worst book ever”. but winter is my cozy book reading time, so i’m hoping to put a big dent in this year’s challenge in the upcoming months. here’s the…
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friday things: hello, 2017
maybe i am just one of those perpetually upbeat people. even when things are going kind of rough or i’m wearing an all black ensemble, i can’t really help but be a bit peppy. even in january. the change to the new year always puts me in a great mood of new beginnings and usually brings icy wintery weather to budejovice. (a view from this morning, above) so! i thought i’d put in motion the first ‘friday things’ of the year! just some things that i’ve been into lately or have been making me happy. 1. this coat i’ve decided this year i stop worrying about trying to blend in…
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a year of travels: 2016
2016 was (mostly) all sunshine and rainbows over in these parts: i can’t believe (unlike previous years) that we managed some travel in every single month of the year. it really goes to show what you can find in your own backyard if you embrace it. last january, almost a year from now, we experienced highly frenetic weather: the earlier part with a cold burst of snow (the only of that winter!) and in the latter part, temps around 12ºC, which made day trips to places like třeboň (above) ideal. we dined on “carp fries” at supinka restaurant (the best fish restaurant probably in the country – highly recommended!) and marveled in…
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those magical days
even though christmas is over, i do love that stretch of days between the holiday and the new year. nobody is really in town yet, everything is running slowly and mostly still, everyone’s playing, everyone’s happy… i am embracing it this year (as i mentioned in the last post) rather than feeling guilty for lack of productivity. if there’s any time to take it easy, it’s now! i hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! we started ours with a walk through krumlov and took ferdie on his first trip (with a bus ride longer than ten minutes). he did okayyyyy, until he upchucked on the floor of the bus! (mental…
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embracing a local christmas
this is now our fifth christmas in europe. i have to say, you’d think it gets easier but that’s not necessarily true. our first christmas, we had only been in europe for a couple of months and it was all the heart eyes as prague pulled out all the stops and there was nothing but perma-smiles. the next year, my mother visited. the following year, we had a picture-perfect austrian christmas at the wolfgangsee. last year we happened to be in berlin, but a funny thing happened. while i was in my personal “happiest place on earth”, i felt a case of “the sads” as we call them, creeping in…
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photo an hour | december
i’ve never done a photo an hour before, so i thought i’d give it a try… i personally am a huge fan of reading ‘day in the life’ posts so i hope you enjoy it too. this was sunday, december 4th, 2016, and was a special day as it was our first full day of being dog owners in the czech republic! 9:00 – as the first out of bed and dressed, i took ferdie out. it was looking exceptionally wintery that day, as you will soon see! 10:41 – breakfast! this breakfast just so happens to be my absolute favorite – paprika-dusted poached eggs on avocado toast with beans…
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say hello to my little friend
adventurings, now, with 56% more dog! we have been thinking about getting a dog for over a year now (with a little drama in between: we were told we couldn’t have one in our building, then later it turned out we could, but only a very small breed). as i grew up with a dachshund, it seemed like the best choice for us at this time. alex got to know a bit about the breed with sweet mika from our workstay near oban, scotland, so he was on board too! and here we are, first few days of december, and finally met our little ferdinand! (ferdie, for short!) the amazing…
