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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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valentine’s day (& why i’ll always love it)
valentine’s day is the zenith in an otherwise cold and dark season. it’s nice to feel excited when february rolls around to celebrate this day of love. something i don’t get, however, is why people are so darn stanky about it. i mean, i see why a little bit on social media where everyone is posting photos of their significant other with mushy declarations of love. to me, valentine’s day is not about just one person and has never been. i will always remember how my parents would surprise me with chocolates and other lovely treats on valentine’s morning every year growing up. or the time that my dad and…
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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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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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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…
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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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traveling is not everything
so you’re probably looking at this title thinking “duhhh”, or you’re in the “the more, the better” camp, like some many of us living abroad when it comes to travel. while it certainly can bring some much needed excitement to life (travel is accelerated living!), there’s something to be said for taking some time to be at home for awhile. after our big nordland adventure this summer, we have planned and gone on some great (shorter) trips, but the focus is, happily, more at home right now. what are the advantages to not traveling? 1. doing all the local things drinks with friends, going to the market, snuggly weekend brunches…
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so bad, yet so good
alex and i have talked before, half jokingly, about that if trump gets elected, i guess we’re staying here four more years. this was when we both believed there was not a single chance in a million years this would be happening to our country. and yet, here we are. i certainly never left the united states on any political ground, whatsoever. no, i just wanted to live in another country, study other languages, learn about other cultures, and work so i could travel and use central europe as my spring-board, if you will. then, the more time we spent here, we woke up to the fact that, “wow, life…
