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spring awakening + wild garlic pesto recipe
hi all! we have just had a glorious month of april here in the czech republic and the constant warm weather and sunshine just seems never-ending! sometimes there are rumors of a thunderstorm but they always seem to pass our sunny little corner of bohemia by. oh, i have been busy! with all good things. as many people, i’ve been taking full advantage of the beautiful days and weekends with plenty of trips to the forest and the annual malše river trip. we didn’t bring our little dog as he pretty much hates water and the idea of him hanging out in a raft that has been splashed with water…
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my anxiety: how it’s going
i never knew what a panic attack was until the year before moving to europe, 2011. earlier that year, i had experienced the worst airline turbulence of my life…. alone… in the middle seat… on my way home from my grandma’s funeral in minnesota. it was so bad, i can barely talk about it. this is about as much detail as i can give. after this happened, i started driving like an eighty-year old woman and began feeling very uncomfortable riding in the car with a fast driver or going too fast on any transport in any circumstances. my fear of heights shot up from “pretty bad” to “nearly crippling”.…
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a year of life & travels: 2017
today is new year’s day and it’s time for a recap of last year! it was another great year of being based in southwestern czech republic, feeling like home both here and back in my home country (and realizing that “home” is just a construct), and going to some magical places. let’s revisit them, shall we? i changed the title of this year’s post to “life & travel” because, as i learned last year, travel isn’t everything and it is also important to capture what else was going on in one’s life. although for this post, it still remains the focal point. (don’t worry) so without further ado…. in january, we…
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a time and a place
this time of year always gets me thinking around my time studying in berlin, incidentally, ten years ago. this time of year when it would get dark at four o’clock and the sky would turn from neon-grey to a shroud of black. it was the coldest novembers i have ever lived through. so cold and dark, but i was deeply inspired and knew full well time was of the essence to make the most of my semester. this is my berlin – the short days, the long nights. although the summers are fantastic and are like a prize for making it through the other eight months of the year, cold,…
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friday things: february
hi all, i’m at you for the monthly ‘friday things’ on the last friday of february! this has been such a busy (yet good) week full of hardcore language studies, teaching, chatting at a čajovna drinking the freshest japanese green tea, and thinking about some great books and stories i’ve read over the past week (and one terrible one, haha). onward with some happy things & a piece of news! i suppose the news part is… 1) summer plans! i can say now that we are officially heading back to the united states for over a month this summer – it will be our “big trip” this year! we’ll be…
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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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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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friday things: thanksgiving weekend
it seems that after the initial dust cloud settled after the first week of the american election, things starting to feel a little happier, thank goodness. so i bring you five happy things for the end of this third week of the month, from recent trips to expat life successes… 1. vienna! we enjoyed a long weekend in the austrian capital last week. although busybusybusy, it was so good! shopping, eating schnitzels as big as our ‘eads at figmüller, seeing the pointillism exhibition at the albertina (i do adore this museum), wandering around the innere stadt until our feet felt like falling off, and of course… plenty of cakes and…
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an (im)perfect arrival – the first day in the czech republic
sometimes, i think where you stay when you are traveling has a big effect on how you end up feeling about the place. ease of your arrival there can really set the tone, too. but what if your arrival just goes haywire? as we are nearing our fourth czechaversary now in a couple of weeks, it gets me thinking a lot about our arrival to prague on that cold, mid-november day. such a thrilling feeling to be on the road for months and then have a one-way ticket to a country that you don’t know when you’ll leave (as you might know, i never did). however, the arrival definitely did…
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preparing for a central european winter
winter is coming, friends! well, not too soon, but just soon enough to start thinking about whether or not you have the right stuff to last these cold, frosty months in the heart of central europe. the first winter i ever spent in europe back in 2007 was memorably freezing. as we followed our tall danish-german professor around berlin, the wind seared through my jacket like a hundred tiny unforgiving knives, while he seemed completely unfazed. we were all from the continental west coast, and we all were dying. i bought a couple of cheap coats at one of the various kurfürstendamm h&m’s, but none of these coats were big…