We Have Success!

So here goes. I've got a seriously large amount of photos to share, and a lot more stories to write, so I'm hoping to do a bit of journal/blogging backlog. Perhaps my daily life has become to normal, perhaps I feel hesitant to write much about my general daily drama because I have the whole business thing going on, or perhaps I just lack the drive to be transparent about how exhausting it is to be a business owner. Okay, it's probably a mix of all these things. Basically, I just think travel stories are more interesting, so that's what you're going to get :)

On a three week trip, everything is more intense. Every day has to be taken advantage of, because there are so few of them. While a three week holiday might end up feeling long, a three week trip home quickly becomes a blur. And with jet lag to deal with, getting on schedule quickly is essential.

In order to keep ourselves awake, after an excessively long day of travel, as soon as we got to Marianske Lazne, we went for a walk. Being back in that comfortable place had a magical effect on both of us. It was as though several years evaporated and we were young lovers once more. We walked through the parks, holding hands and remembering dreams of making the abandoned ruins our future homes.



Amazingly, this little beauty is actually for sale. Can you imagine turning this palatial building into a home? Sounds fabulous to me. Maybe someday...

We remembered the beauty of peaceful parks and healthy springs:



Now, after all the effort to get my blog to work, my computer is nearly out of power. In order to make sure I get this posted I'll just add one last photo and give it a rest for now. I just want you to picture living in a town where this is a detail on the police station:

This is Only a Test

One of these days, I'm hoping that things will all work out smoothly, and I'll be freely adding pictures the way I want to, but thus far I've been facing issue after issue, and it's sorta driving me crazy. So I'm going to give this a go and see if I can finally get some of my pictures up on the blog.



All right, it looks like this is going to work, which means you'll be seeing my transit photos from the beginning of our trip. We've got an early morning view of PDX, a couple outdoor shots of the JFK terminal, and an attempt at artsy. I know, I know, it can all get a little overdone, but I have far too much fun taking photos, so hopefully other people can be amused at me as I am at myself. Let's give it a go, and see if I can finally get this photo blog up and running again.

How Long Can I Blame Jet Lag?

Well, we've been back stateside for a week, and I'm still dragging, still waking up between 4 and 5:30 AM, and still scarcely able to keep my eyes open past 10 PM. While this means regular workouts and journal updates have been happening, I still don't feel quite myself.

Our three weeks in Czech were truly amazing. They were both hard working, and relaxing. It was good to have a total change, and to reconnect with people and familiar locations that are near and dear to our hearts. Now we just need to keep motivated, and work extra hard to make the store flourish, enabling us to travel more often :)


I do still intend to write picture posts of our trip, allowing me to live it all again, and letting everyone else enjoy the beauty of our other home. I have been adding pictures to my Instagram account gradually, not wanting to inundate everyone too quickly. If you have an account you can find me there @morbidbeauty to get a preview. Hopefully I'll be lively enough one of these evenings to get things onto a computer so I can share more love in photo form. For now, I'm just enjoying having summer around for a little while longer here in the Pacific Northwest :)

Moje Kopf Spins

Nothing like a weekend spent mixing three languages to really make your brain whirl. Let me also note, that while standing up or walking might not usually feel fast paced, when your head comes into contact with an immovable object (i.e. a shelf) it seems a little different. I manage to smack my head once on each side, only adding to my lingual confusion, and leaving me feeling awkward, stupid, and in pain. Not my finest moment.

English is definitely my strongest (make that my only) language, but when you mix it up with German and Czech, I can follow about 70% of the conversation (if I'm lucky and know the main topic). When it comes to speaking, on the other hand, it's a mess for everyone involved. I throw languages together, which works okay, since the family can understand both, but it definitely doesn't make me look intelligent in the least, and is particularly confusing for the six year old twins.

All this to say, the trip to visit my husband's sister and her family went well, but I can't say my language skills improved much. Thankfully, there was a cute dog there, which always helps to alleviate the tension of feeling incompetent. Everyone who cares at all can speak the language of dogs. It's not hard to read their looks of curiosity, especially when food is involved.

Perhaps I hit my head harder than I thought, because this is all coming out weak and confused, but I'm trying to squeeze all the writing in that I can before we leave. It's not very late, but the added thinking required to communicate with a houseful of non English speakers is exhausting. Now for a good night's sleep before the trip to see Babi (Grandma) tomorrow.

One final note, while my general speaking skills might not have been I passively, I did enjoy showing the kids that's could count to ten in six languages. Not a very useful skill, but at least something :)

Here Come the Lasts

Three weeks I not much time to be home. It is so short that some of the firsts were also lasts. I was blessed to have visits with three special friends, but there were many others that were missed this time around. I am not ready for our time here to be over, even though I know there are so many things to do back on the other side. These days have been so precious, and I feel as though I am breathing better, and seeing things more clearly than I have in a long time.

Today was our last day working in the garden. We have filled holes and dug them, sifted rocks from dirt to create usable soil, mixed and moved cement for a stair base, eaten loads of fresh fruit, pulled countless (my autocorrect just chose the word pointless for countless, hmmmmm) weeds, and today we got a load of premixed cement that we hauled to fill the base of the future green house. We also spent time studying and following ant trails, we found a giant toad and an enormous grasshopper, and yesterday I discovered a mamma cat and her tow adorable kittens. There wer some long days, and seriously back aching work, and today was the last.

Yesterday was my last train ride, my last visit with friends, and my last time in Cheb. The moments I spend with dear people will remain with me, but it is always hard to say goodbye.

And, of course, in the next four days there are more lasts to come. We head to Germany tomorrow for some time with my sister-in-law and her family (this means ultra goulash in my head as I deal with Czech speaking parents, German speaking kids, and the bliss of occasional English from my husby.) On Sunday we're heading south to Susice to visit Grandma. Sadly, the dear elderly man who was her companion for the past few years passed on a couple months ago, but it will be lovely to see Babi again.

Then Monday will come. There will be packing, last minute shopping, and hopefully everything fitting before early Tuesday morning when we will get back on an airplane. Did I mention yet that I hate goodbyes? But that is one of the prices to be paid when you live life as a transient drifter. I have dear ones spread across the globe, which is a beautiful and heart wrenching thing all mixed up at the same time. I'm just going to hope these next few days slow down so the lasts don't pile up quite so fast.

Doing More Weeding

Working at the garden involves a mixture of heavy labor and waiting. There was a point in time when I wanted to be in perpetual motion. This came from a skewed perspective on body image, along with an inability to hold still in general. While I no longer twitch my legs constantly before sleeping (husbands don't take fondly to endless bed shaking) I do need to keep busy or I go a little stir crazy. It doesn't have to be much, but I need something to do. Just sitting and staring at space doesn't do it for me.

So when we are between jobs, or I am considers incapable of helping with a certain project, I weed. I guess I was in training before I came with the work I was doing in my own yard. Thankfully, I haven't gotten blisters this time around, and I have gained some patience in hunting them all down.

It is amazing how liberating spending time at the garden can be. Sure, there is a lot of hard work, but when I am there I am transported back to a simpler time in life. Breathing in the fresh air, feeling my muscles burn, and knowing that I don't have an alarm set for the morning is so refeshing. I'm not going to lie, I'm going to miss this life, but I'm hoping to bring the peace I've regained here back with me.

I've also been doing another kind of weeding. I am busy in my spare time going over my book for the fourth time. There are so many little details to dig into deeper. There are unnecessary adjectives to prune, useless phrases to dig out, and frustrating repetitive moments to eradicate. If I can convey the same meaning with less, I am. If I can make a sentence more direct, I do. I am learning more and more about my original drafts with each passing perusal.

I have never been good at editing. I like to write something once, and be done with it. Sometimes, when I do edit, I have not waited long enough, and the words sound right, because they have freshly come from my mind. But even in my journal writing I have tried to cut down on repetitiveness. Words like "really," "just," "always," and "only" can easily be overusd. I have also found a number of incidents when I have used a more unusual phrase twice on the same page. Horrifying.

There is another thing i have discovered that is diaconcerting. I shy away from being direct. Rather than saying, "he was angry," I say, "he appears to be angry." It bothers me that in my writing I am afraid to say things straight. If I do not know how my characters feel, how can anyone else? Why am I afraid to give voice to the reality? Does this issue run deeper than my writing? A few things to ponder as I clear the way for my book to be purified and ready for mass consumption.

The Gift of English

When I stop and think about it, being a native English teacher really is a unique situation. While I generally think it is unfortunate that most English speakers don't learn other languages, the truth is that we have been given a gift that we scarcely realize. We speak the international language that is desired in every country, and this simple fact can make all the difference.

Over the past week or so, I have journeyed back to the city where I taught for three years in the Czech Republic. Cheb is a smallish town of about 33,000 (according to Wikipedia) and it is all easily walkable. Again, I would have some great pictures to post, if only... Anyhow, the first time I went back I visited another teacher who has been there for 8 years, and is about to return to the US in a couple of weeks. While I was there with her, she was in the process of saying goodbye to friends and former students, and I tagged along with her.

When I was there teaching, I didn't think about how unique our situation was. It didn't take long for a large portion of the community to know us. Whether we were in grocery stores, cares, or on the street, we were recognizable as "the Americans." We had a certain position that was respected, and curious at the same time. We were allowed a level of freedom that most other language speakers would not have. For instance, if a German person came to teach in a medium sized US town, few people beyond that person's students would know who he/she was. They might be noticed for their accent, but that is about all. And the likelihood of them forming friendships with their students, and spending time with them outside of class would be slim to none.

I am not trying to say that we native English speakers are in any way better than speakers of other languages, only that we have been given a tremendous opportunity to see the world, and be welcomed into a global community. It makes me wish more of us were willing to go out of our comfort zones and be changed by the beautiful people and cultures at the world has to offer. I am so thankful to have been, and through my husband to continue to be, a part of the Czech culture. To anyone out there who has the freedom to pack up their lives and see the world, I say, go, teach, and I so doing, learn.