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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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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…
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life lately /on pursuing your hobbies
hi all, did you have a nice halloween and first week of november? this was our most low-key halloween celebration to date as we were in moravia for the big “halloweekend”, as it’s come to be known, and that meant no dressing up for us this year! that’s just how the calendar days fell. i’ve learned when you get a long weekend, you don’t take it for granted! more from moravia coming very soon – i have just been too ding dang busy this week to even think about writing more than i already have, in my last post about my first day in the czech republic. a full schedule…
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thoughts on heading home
heading to my homeland, the united states, in the coming week for the first time in ALMOST THREE YEARS. this isn’t exactly weird to me, because i’ve lived it, but i can see how it would seem weird to everyone else. i suppose when your life is weird, these weird facts just grow on you! two years and nine months solely spent in europe. blam. i can’t help but wonder if i might freak out when i hear english around me all the time. or what i’m going to do to busy myself on a long-haul flight because the real last big one i took was in 2011. or if…
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Living Without Stuff
i came over to europe with only those things that would fit comfortably in my (large) backpack. well, fit comfortably isn’t exactly correct because it was totally over-stuffed and weighed more than even alex’s bag and huuuurt if i wore it for over an hour. ouch. (below, me and said backpack in gimmelwald, switzerland, 2008) but i am now settled in a place: České Budějovice for the time being. it’s nice to live somewhere. to have plants (my small “herb garden”) and make baked goods. to have people over for tea or dinner. this is living as usual and it’s nice. since i’ve stopped moving around in january of this year…
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Leaving Home, Living in Europe
when i left seattle last july–almost a year ago–i didn’t have a goodbye party… something i sometimes kick myself for. although that’s what most people do when they go away for a long time, it didn’t seem real to me then. i told everyone where i was going and when but i didn’t feel like the occasion warranted a full-out goodbye party. sometimes i downplayed my departure. that seemed too definite at the time. when i packed my clothes in anacortes last august, i didn’t quite understand what i was packing for. even though it was august, i forced myself to pack a warm winter hat and a sweater or…
