What the TEFL?!?!: Musings on Reverse Culture Shock

The other day I had a flashback of sitting in the classroom at TEFL Worldwide, face planted in my lesson plans, stressed and overwhelmed, waiting to use the two copy machines and for some advice from Terry. I was surrounded by all my TEFL peers, who came from so many places for different reasons, at different stages in their lives, with different histories and reasons for being in Prague enrolled in this course. There was something about that camaraderie that was unique. We all suffered through this challenging course, spent Friday nights getting wasted, Saturday nights doing homework, while simultaneously adjusting to a new country and language. We all freaked out before finally calling our one-to-one partner, took the exceedingly long tram journey back to Praha 9 at night, sat awkwardly in Galerie Fénix to get our daily fix of internet, ate potato balls at the beer garden behind TEFL/Hotel Pivovar, spent many nights on the hill that was Letna beer garden, overlooking Praha 1, and of course, were tricked by a pastry that seemed to be filled with chocolate, but was, obviously, actually filled with poppy seeds.

All I could think was, “Wow, I did that?” It’s crazy to think how different my life was during the one month of my TEFL course in Prague compared to now. There’s this weird thing that always happens to me when I’m back in America after an extended time living abroad. For some reason, whenever I’m back in the States, it’s hard to believe my life abroad was real. That everything really happened, and that that girl traveling Europe by train, working on farms abroad, teaching English to nerdy engineers at a Czech energy company, was me. I don’t know why this happens, and it certainly doesn’t work the other way around. When I’m living abroad, my American life and history definitely seems real…just further away and not as important. Perhaps it’s because when I’m abroad there’s usually at least a couple Americans around who can validate my past, even if it’s just a, “Yeah, I always love Taco Bell when I’m drunk too!” When I’m back in America, there are rarely many people who can validate my European existence. Maybe I’m just too busy doing exciting stuff when I’m abroad to think much of America. Or maybe I’ve just lived in America longer. Perhaps if I lived abroad for more than a year at a time, it would stop seeming so transient at some point. Who knows?

All I can say, is reverse culture shock is much more of a bitch than the good ol’ regular stuff. It has always been really hard for me to understand distance and endings. When I came back after a year of living in Brighton, England, I’d sit down and visualize the path the bus took from town to Uni, what all the bus stops looked like, remember what songs I was listening to as I passed them, and be so overwhelmed that I could know something so intricately and so detailed and not be THERE. How could I know exactly what the corner in the refrigerator that held my favorite wrap in the Sussex Uni shop looked like and not be able to GO there and get it?! It’s still a very hard concept for me to grasp.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my year, because there was absolutely no time for reflection during it. It was always one adventure right after another, lots of friends, lots of new friends, lots of alcohol, lots of emotions, and not much thinking. In some ways, it was very freeing to not have any responsibilities. My family didn't even know what country I was in for the majority of the year. Hell, even I didn't know where I would be a few days ahead, with the unique ability to hop on and off trains granted me by my rail card. I’ve always been something of an over-thinker and over-planner, so it was great to step so far outside my comfort zone and just go with the flow. I say that in a completely positive way. If I was asked what I would do differently, the only change I’d make is to remember to take a daily vitamin this time. Once my funds became limited, I basically lived off instant noodles and French fries. Paired with never getting enough sleep and my body was not happy. I am convinced my body is a reservoir for all of Europe’s Rhinovirus strands. Within me the future Super Cold is brewing, watch out. I’ve gotten sick more this year than any other year in my life.

When I left America last time, I was running away. I think almost every expat I met was. From a shitty relationship, from the unknown after graduation, from boring jobs and a predictable future. Though, I guess you don’t just up and move to a foreign country when everything in your own is perfectly to your liking. Of course all of us were leaving something unfavorable behind. Now that I’m back, I feel more like I am DECIDING to live abroad again. I am becoming bi-lingual, I am saving money, researching visas, e-mailing alums, and making connections. I’m not planning to move because I don’t want to live in America, I’m moving because I want to live in Europe (Germany).

I’m still working on the why. I like that I don’t need a car, that nobody uses dryers, that it’s not just the liberal hippie types that hate excess packaging and think it’s silly to waste things, that I can’t find all the shitty processed foods I eat over here and have to actually cook myself real meals. I like that the variety of Americans I meet, the ones that actually live abroad, are always DOers. They don’t just talk about shit, they make it happen, and tend to be more independent, confident and adventurous than the average people I meet at home. I like that the Europeans whose countries I’m sharing often have such different backgrounds from mine, if only because our countries had very different histories. It never ceased to amaze me how casually my students in the Czech Republic mentioned waiting in line for their food during communism, or what foods didn’t exist to them. Of course, it is something from their past that was routine and familiar, not much to think on for them. To an American who can really only imagine communism from the perspective of a history textbook, it is crazy to think how someone even a few years older than me could have such a completely different childhood. It’s weird to think of what it would be like if America was communist when I was growing up and I wasn’t allowed to leave to go on vacation to Canada, like my family often did. Or what it would be like to not have pineapples or bananas.

Things like this just make me realize how absolutely small my world is and how little I really know. It’s easy to feel smart when you’re surrounded by people who know the same things as you, who were required to take the same courses in high school, know the same collective national histories. There is definitely sometime about throwing myself into foreign situations and finding my way out that I’m addicted to. I want to learn and understand everything about the world…how could I just stay in one place?

I write this as another fall comes around, making me a bit nostalgic for all my TEFL and Prague friends, for cooking in my flat in Prague, then curling up on my couch and watching shitty American TV on the internet. For sitting in the beer gardens shivering, just to get as much time out of the not-quite cold yet weather, for dancing in Chateau Rogue while my friends have dance offs and kids on drugs break their glasses on the dance floor, for parties in the Bubenská flat, for the entire experience that was Cross Club, beers and movie nights at the Globe Café, for the high pitched sound the tram makes while accelerating, for the little lady at the Potravíny near my flat that always held up “Coriander!?” when I came in. Even more, for the walk home from Hlavní Nádraží, that always involved a stop in Mama Coffee, where my Czech ordering skills slowly improved, followed by a walk through the park and the vineyard to get to my flat.

While my life in Prague was not the perfect one for me, it was a good one. I’m happy at whatever Powers That Be for putting myself and such an amazing group of people together in one place for the time we had. The past year really did change my life. When I arrived in Prague that first day, I absolutely never imagined what lay ahead for me. While it will never be exactly the same, and that’s okay, I’m still very excited to go back for New Years to kick it with the kids holdin' down the fort, and even more excited at the prospect of living only one country away next year!

In the meantime, things here are not so bad. I’ve downsized to one job, which means I can actually have a life again, picked up a volunteer position teaching English for which I start training soon, and hopefully will soon acquire a free German tutor/conversation partner through Smith. I love my apartment, love my housemates, and while I still feel like I’m just waiting for time to pass until my next adventure, this break and peace from constant activity and new things was surely something I needed, if only to keep my body from acquiring yet more strands of the common cold. After this year I’ll be re-charged and ready for the next venture! In the meantime, y'all should come kick it with me in Northampton!

How I came from Prague to live in Northampton, MA.

If you read my blog, you know I've been back in America since May. What I don't think I've explained is why. I've been waiting until things were settled before telling. As both of my jobs and my class begin this week and I am sitting in my new apartment, I'd say we're good. So, here's a summarized version of the past year for all of you who are new here:

I graduated from Smith in 2009 and set off in late July of that year for a month long intensive Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course at TEFL Worldwide in Prague. The course kicked my ass and I (mostly) loved every minute of it, except being stressed all the time and writing papers on Saturday nights, but it really did prepare me for teaching English. After graduating, I was unemployed and almost homeless for a bit before finding an awesome flat and securing two jobs in Prague. My main job at Excellent Skola said they would sign my work visa papers, but not help with the visa process at all. Let me just mention, that any visa process is pretty complicated and terrifying, but of course this one was entirely in Czech.

After applying to 200+ jobs and attending some 15+ teaching interviews, this was as good as it was going to get so I took it. Lots of people want to teach English in Prague, so there is a lot of competition. They gave me the phone number of a lawyer I could pay to do my visa and he stopped returning my calls, so I found my own. My landlord Jiři liked to take frequent month long vacations to Miami, and as I needed a notarized and signed document and lease that guaranteed me a place to stay for a year, this significantly slowed the already time-limited process. At the end, the lawyer I hired to help was shitty and didn't get my paperwork done in time, nor did she bother telling me she was running behind after an entire month, so the day before my tourist visa was to expire, I found out I wasn't getting my work visa.

This was somewhat okay, because by November, I was stressed all the time. I liked my other job at TeaTime Skola, but my main job exploited me as much as they could. Though I signed a contract agreeing to this exploitation because I was desperate, it got to me over time. There are only so many times I can watch my boss take 30% out of my paycheck for taxes that weren't going to the government (I wasn't on the books) and healthcare I wasn't getting before wanting to cutabitch. Add all the shit they yelled at me for constantly that wasn't my fault, like asking my boss where my class was held because they didn't include it in their e-mail, and I was done with this company. When I had a crying mental breakdown because of a scheduling conflict, I realized I could do better. So, I put in my months notice and my last day was something around December 15th. While I loved Prague, there were some things missing in it for me. I was basically drunk the entire 6ish months I was there and while I do love getting completely schwasted and going to absolutely mind-shattering clubs (see: Cross Club) while dancing to experimental techno music and buying weed in stores behind the bar, I like having at least an OPTION of doing other things. I did not find this option. I'm sure my ideal community was there somewhere, but at that point in my life I wasn't willing to sit at a job I hated to find it.

Plus, my goal was to travel. I had so many friends living all over Europe and no time off to do so as my jobs were barely covering my rent. I figured if I left I wouldn't have to pay rent to begin with and so through some questionable means, I "extended" my tourist visa. I traveled to Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Ireland and England. I worked on farms in exchange for food and a place to sleep through HelpX, stayed with friends, and couchsurfed (via Couchsurfing.org. You can read about all of those adventures in this blog, but needless to say, even though I ran out of money at the end, got a horrible stomach virus while sleeping in a tipi with no indoor bathroom and came home bedridden with mono for a month, this past year was easily the best year of my life. I met so many amazing people with a similar sense of adventure. People who actually do things instead of talking about them. During my travels, I heard some amazing life stories and bumped into some people who had been traveling as long as 6 years! I made friends on planes, trains, bars, you name it. I felt as if I had really found my "people". It also made clear several things:

1) I want to live in Europe. I am still figuring out how to explain this decision well. There are many levels to this desire that I can explain if you ask, but what it comes down to is this: When I am in America, I find that I spend my time counting down to other days, hoping time flies quickly to the next vacation, adventure, etc. During the two years of my life I lived in Europe, I woke up every day excited about my life and felt generally more balanced between work/leisure.

2) To achieve #1 without being a slave to large language schools my entire life, I need to be at least bilingual. Thus, I have been learning German. While I am not yet fluent, I have been learning pretty rapidly. My education started in January while I was traveling and working on a farm in Germany, but I did not actually begin studying until March. Starting in March, I got hold of a German text/workbook and put time aside every day to do part of a chapter. I can now say, I am pretty much done with the book. Starting in June, I found a private German tutor whom I met with twice a week for most of the summer. She was a huge help and while our first lesson began with me not even understanding how to tell time, our last lesson was conducted almost entirely in German. Through Couchsurfing, I also found a German conversation partner, whom I met with a couple times and became friends with. I am also auditing intermediate German at Smith this year, but I'll get to that later.

This brings us to the now. I decided to apply for a Fulbright grant that will provide me with a job, visa, health insurance, and a travel stipend to teach English in a German school should I win. While I was originally planning to go back to Germany in August, I realized toughing it out in America for the year was worth it for this opportunity. Luckily, Smith College, my alma mater, agreed to let me apply through them even though I graduated, which increases my chances of succeeding and provides much-needed structure and support.

Once I decided to stay in America for the year, I made a choice to move back to Northampton, MA, where I attended university. It's a great little town where I still have some friends, rent is not too expensive, there are lots of lesbians, and endless amounts of coffee and vegan food. I can also audit classes at Smith for $50, so that helps my German cause. Not too shabby. After 2 trips to Northampton over the summer, I found a great apartment right near my favorite coffee place and one of my favorite bars for a very good price. I live walking distance to town, have a big kitchen, two porches, a closet in my bedroom and a backyard. Let me tell you, this was not easy to find. Of the 15 or so places I looked at, most of them were tiny and disgusting or with older women or men trying to replace their children. In one place I wasn't ever allowed to have people over for more than 15 or so minutes. In another, the roommates wanted absolute quiet at all times. Or there were the people that were too hippie for me, and I generally think of myself as a pretty progressive person, so that's saying something. It's all about balance.

Getting a job was much easier and I secured several interviews before I even moved up here. I now work at a small cafe in Haydenville and at Trader Joes. As I have a class 3 mornings a week, it made a 9-5 pretty impossible. I will probably have endless coffee in my life and a discount on awesome food so really things are pretty great. Now it's all about working the kinks out of my schedule as I am currently working 7+ days in a row without a day off starting tomorrow. After not having a full-time job for over a year, this is going to be interesting. Though, I think the variety will help.

My Fulbright application is due to Smith in late September. I've been working on it all summer and I have to say, I don't know how people do this while still in school. It has all been a LOT of work, but so far I've learned a lot about myself and what I want in the process. I've also learned how to write for a grant, which is an entirely different kind of writing from anything I've done previously. Before the end of this month, I have to complete my German language evaluation as part of the process. This is the part I've been shitting myself over. Almost all applicants have studied German in university for at least two years while I only began 6 months ago. I must say, I have a lot more motivation than I had while I was in school, if only because I don't HAVE to do it. And damn, have I studied hard. I know more German than I ever knew of French after 8 years of studying it. I am still terrified though because I'm not sure I've managed to cram 2 years of university-level German into my brain in 6 months. Wish me luck!

That's the general gist of it all. Basically, I am here this year to learn German, apply for the Fulbright grant and refill my bank account. My feelings about being back are mixed, but after my crazy year, it is nice knowing I'll be in the same place for 12 months. In August/September of 2011, I am packing my bags and heading back abroad whether I win the Fulbright or not. Until then, I'm looking forward to another New England fall.

I will definitely have more updates in here during the year, but I figured this post was very overdue.

Schluchtenscheisseren (February 7-12th)

After less than two hours of sleep, I was definitely not up to anything crazy for my first night in Prague. I talked to Andrea and Viktor for a bit and then headed to Shakespeare to catch up with the rest of my friends. I finally tried the hot pear juice, which I’d meant to do my entire 5 months in Prague, met New Nicole and somehow managed to stay up until midnight or so. The next day was my birthday, so I slept in and then met up with more friends for Mexican food and margaritas at Cantina in Mala Strana. I’ve been craving Mexican food, so it was definitely nice. After dinner, a lot of people went home because they had work the next day, so Miriam, Sara, Josh and I hit up Bukowski’s. Viktor gave me a couple free drinks for my birthday which was awesome and we chilled for a bit. On the way home, we bumped into another group of people, one whose birthday was ALSO that day (go figure), who let us into Blind Eye, which was open illegally for some reason.

Birthday drink!

After only two nights back in Prague, it was back on the train to Vienna this time to see Lizbee. My first night I met her awesome friends and got treated to delicious homemade curry. It was cool to see her and crazy to be around someone from Tyler again. The next day we had a wander around Vienna, which is very pretty and looks similar to Prague, ate amazing falafel where Lizbee, Molly, Kayleigh and I talked about sex for at least an hour and a half. Then Lizbee and I got some BonBons and were off to the Wien Museum to see an exhibit called “Madness and Modernity” and wander around the rest of the exhibits until we both reached the point of sensory overload. Next was Naschmarkt, which was basically my version of heaven. Tons of different types of hummus, olives, vegetables, falafel, bread, dried fruits, spices and candies going on for a long block between metro stations. Freaking amazing. I procured a vegetable that looked like a spiky alien, apparently called a Romanesca, that we cooked for dinner with rice (it was good!).

Lizbee's flatmate's cat, Hecate. It was the weirdest/cutest cat ever.

Cathedral? Or something. Pretty!

The mystery vegetable that is a Romanesca

My last day I wandered around by myself because Lizbee was sick, bought pens, ate vegan “Chicken Cordon Bleu” and had coffee at a little vegetarian restaurant and went back to Naschmarkt to buy more snacks and spices for the train ride the next day. At night we went to this amazing Nepalese place called Yak & Yeti that had all-you-could-eat dumplings for 12 euro and it was also mind-blowingly good. We sat in this cool room in the back where you had to take your shoes off and sit on the floor on all these rugs and pillows. Mmmmm.

All you can eat dumplings. Best everrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Myself and a sick Lizbee

Mythological Creatures in Germany

 

You’re sitting in a bed, in a house, in the middle of a farm in northern Germany. There are two spiders you’ve been watching for days in two separate crevices of your bedroom. You’re afraid to kill them because of the sound they’ll make when you squash them, an ongoing problem, but also because you’re living on a farm and you don’t think you’re supposed to do such things. What if they eat some pest, contribute to the greater good? The last thing you want is to murder the Greater Good.

You have dirt stuck under your fingernails and that makes you feel tough. Yet when you go to bed each night you shut the lights and rush under the covers lest some creature gets you. After telling your host this, she gives you a key to lock the door at night, which is when you realize it’s mostly mythological creatures you’re afraid of and keys won’t keep them out anyway. You’d prefer a unicorn over the bogeyman, but in reality it’s probably just the mice having tea parties in the walls again.

There is a lot of time to think and you’re not sure if you’re running away from something or towards it. Maybe you’re just running, so may as well enjoy the running for its own sake, and you are. Make a note to live in the moment. Page through a found self-help book and stumble upon the fourth Secret to Life: “Live in the moment.” Go figure. Think about how it’s even possible to live in the moment, anyway. Your to-do list rings in your mind and you think you will write it down soon, a list of things to do and pay for when you have access to fast internet again. You should probably book a flight back to America eventually. Ponder whether you really want to go back to America. Think about the unknown abyss of the future. Of all the things everyone else is doing and how you can’t make yourself want them. Of being a vagabond indefinitely. Wonder how long that last paycheck and what’s left of that money you’ve saved since you were 17 for just such an occasion will last. Probably not the rest of your life. Or through the summer. Same difference.

There’s always this problem: When you leave America, you think of all these things you might want to do when you get back, all these people you don’t want to loose in the woodwork and this sense that you need more closure than America has already given you, that bastard. Closure from what, you don’t know. Just closure. You always want things to be completely beat to death before you leave them. You’re not sure how this fares for a country. You think of your friend who asked why you’d ever even consider leaving the Greatest Country in the World for more than an extended holiday? How could you ever fathom never coming back for good? You don’t dislike America, per se, but you want to become an expatriate indefinitely just to oppose that thought whole-heartedly. You do miss pumpkin ale though, quite terribly.

You’re not looking forward to the second bought of reverse culture shock, even if it’s months away. You realized when you went to England that being able to understand all of the language spoken around you is stressful. You want to listen to everything at once, trying to understand all of the people chatting on the bus up Elm Grove, and eventually turn your headphones back on in defeat, exhausted. Make a note not to compare everything to Prague when you get back, but know it’s a losing battle. Hate how obnoxious you’re going to sound. You’ll miss the public transportation, sitting on trains and the trams, the Czech language. All the languages, really. You’ll miss feeling useful on this farm, more useful than you ever felt during your 4 months teaching English. You’ll miss the Friendly Sheep, her especially, looking at you with big eyes when you come to refill the water bucket at night. Her mother forgot her so she likes humans and you like her.

You’ll even miss not knowing what the fuck is going on around you half the time, what with your 30 word approach to each respective language. You think you’re just starting to get a hang of the metric system. You know that minus 8 degrees Celsius is cold and you don’t even need to convert it to Fahrenheit. You know what you weigh in kilos.

You think of a passage you read in Into the Wild yesterday, “I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” You hate yourself for being such a hipster sometimes, but think that if you call yourself a hipster it negates your hipsterness so you’re probably safe. Whew.

You’re not sure if leaving is easy, but that passage resonated with you somewhere. Goodbyes were always hard for you. Hard to understand. What is an ending and what should it mean? What does it mean to everyone else? You always put them off until last minute, clutching your drink, sipping slowly until it’s warm and flat in the corner of the pub, and then somehow you make your feet move to the train, bus, plane taking you away from those you care about while you sit teary-eyed and confused at the whole debacle, doubting. You could just stay here, you think. You could. But you don’t. You’ve made a habit of crying on public transportation in the last few years, but maybe you’re just on public transportation a lot.

Everything feels so profound when you’re leaving. Goodbyes are hard, but leaving is easy, you decide. Leaving places is easy for you, but if there’s one thing you’ll ever regret from your life up ‘til now it’s your inability to leave people when you should have. Like America, everything always needs to be beat to death until nothing interesting enough is left to ask any more questions. You think of how much time you wasted being unnecessarily unhappy since you were 15 and hope you at least learned a lesson this year besides how to conceal your inner-thoughts and desires from yourself. You wonder if you like to travel just because you’re afraid of getting trapped in relationships you don’t know how to get yourself out of. Then again, you also like staring out windows. When you discovered you could stick your head out the train windows in the Czech Republic there was no turning back. You were a dog in a car. Tongue out, smile wide. There’s something about being in trains and buses that makes you feel content. The motion. No matter what you do, you’re being productive. You have a destination and you’re working on getting there. You can sleep the time away, you can twiddle your thumbs. No matter, still going.

You’re inwardly proud of yourself for breaking up with Prague and believe it’s a first step in the right direction. She was a beautiful lover, with castles for eyes, cherubs carved into her skin and a clock delivering both death and the twelve apostles to you on the hour, but you never really paid attention. Cobblestones flowed in every direction, creating a path between you, but you two had some fundamental differences you just couldn’t shake and you were tired of fighting. She was fun, but you wanted to be understood more completely. It was precisely the hardest decision of your life.

Mostly you hope you can transfer your new decision-making methods to the next person you’re with that gives you that familiar wordless anxiety at your core. You know, the one that splits the pros and cons list right in two, ruining any attempt to have things laid out for you in a logical fashion, clear as day. Prague split you right down the center: Sixteen and sixteen. But somehow your fingers typed the letters and your voice led the conversations you needed to move on to the next phase of your life. Maybe you’re really growing up.

You’re not sure about this growing up thing. Not the growing in itself, for you don’t really mind getting older. You noticed your first wrinkle forming and viewed it as a rite of passage more than anything. Since you don’t remember Coming of Age like all the books say you should, this will have to do, won’t it? You’re worried about when the line is drawn between when you can have fun and when you can’t. Not the Sex, Drugs and Rock-n- Roll, like everyone else, though you could always use a bit of all of them, you guess. You don’t want to have to put away your sense of adventure and the absurd, much less pass up a good playground. You don’t ever want to be one of those people who talks about things they can no longer wear, play or do because they are “too old”. You think you won’t really mind the whole being wiser thing, however. You’re sick and tired of losing sleep over these things you’ve yet to experience.

But there you go thinking outside of the moment again. You’re not sure any fully functioning human brain is capable of this. You damn anyone that never dropped you on your head when you were a child, but maybe thinking ahead is not so bad. You always did like making lists…

"Fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows..."

On January 10^th I had my goodbye dinner at Maly Buddha, an Asian-influenced tea lounge-cum-restaurant with lots of vegetarian options by Prague castle in Hradčany. On a Sunday night on the 10^th of January, 15 of my friends showed up to bid me farewell, enough to book three full tables and an American waiter just for our English needs! The food was delicious and the company great; I’m really going to miss these kids. Luckily, I’ll be back for a few days for my birthday on February 8^th.

From the left: Sara, Bryan, Jess and Ali

Miriam, Josh, Jillian, Pete, Klara and Dusan

Katie, Anna's friend, Anna, Viktor and Andrea

After dinner I decided I should finish how I started, which meant U Sudu, one of my favorite bars in Prague that has a couple levels underground and is a maze of caverns. Later, I went with Jess, Sara and Miriam to Red Room—another expat haunt where I always seem to know everyone by the end of my 5^th month. There is live music that may or may not always sound like Jack Johnson. This can be good or bad depending on your taste, I guess, but I generally vote bad. It’s the kind of place you’re not sure you like, but forces attract you there nonetheless.

The trek to U Sudu from the restaurant in the snow

Eventually, I had to get home and pack up my life (again), so I bid everyone goodbye. The fact that Jess won’t be here when I come back for a visit made the reality—the ending of this strange life in Prague I’ve grown so accustomed to since August 8^th—set in. I walked teary-eyed to the tram and packed from midnight or so until 4:15 am. My procrastination skills are one thing in my life that seems to stay constant.

Oh, and because I never actually put up a picture of the babies on the TV tower. Here they are!

After a hearty 2 hours of sleep, I was off to Hamburg, Germany. I woke up at 6:15 am, rushing madly with my suitcase through the snow, terrified I was about to miss my 8:31 am train and almost in tears over the rough snowing terrain and the lack of cooperation from by oversized suitcase. I didn’t factor in the extra time it’d take to lug my heavy suitcase by myself through the snow. When I got there the train was of course delayed by over an hour because of the weather. Finally getting on the train, I wandered confused through the compartments. They looked much more posh than I was used to, so when I heard a woman speaking English I asked if I was in 1^st class. She laughed, told me no, and offered to share her compartment with me.

One thing I love about traveling is you meet so many interesting people. There’s definitely a sense of camaraderie that exists between those living out of a suitcase for some period of time. This woman was a roughly 40-something massage therapist from Vancouver traveling through Europe and Northern Africa (re: Morocco) for several months. She started in New York and had already visited many places in Southern and Eastern Europe, aiming to see as much opera as possible. Opera’s not really my thing, as far as I know, but whatever inspires you, all the better!

As we watched the Czech landscape slowly fade into a German one and the voice on the train switch languages, we talked about rock-climbing, back-country skiing, how I’m fed up with academia, her travels, the Czech language, books we’ve read, her son and daughters’ tree-planting gigs, etc. Eventually some German people got on in Dresden and we talked to them for a bit, too. It still amazes me that everyone can speak English.

My compartment friend, Enid, got off in Berlin and I was on my own. Unfortunately, the internet told me I only had one train to take, so I was startled to find that I needed to switch in Berlin from the conductor. Again I rushed, only to find the train delayed. I am already tired of snow. Once onboard, we go one stop only to have the doors break because of freezing conditions. Out in the cold again, we all wait for another train that shows up packed, leaving us to stand the entire 2-hour journey to Hamburg. Alas.

Four hours later than expected, I finally made it to Hamburg and was greeted by Kassia, a friend from Geology class at Smith my senior year, who took me to German Smith College (a.k.a. the Smith Center in Hamburg). I met another fellow Smithie staying with her, Stephanie, and we were off back to Kassia’s dorm. After looking at German TV, some tea and making small-talk with Kassia’s German dorm-mates, the first thing I did in Hamburg was sleep. After my long day of travel, I couldn’t think of anything much better than that.

Šťastný Nový Rok (Happy New Year)!

Reasons New Years was amazing, number one: There was a cute dog at the party.

Two: I went on a wandering adventure to Riegrovy sady (a park) to watch fireworks, lanterns and be really excited. I lost my voice by screaming things such as, "Mám ráda všechno!" "Mám ráda přátelé!" "Mám ráda stromy!" "Mám ráda Nový rok!" all night. To translate, "I like everything!" 'I like friends!" "I like trees!" "I like New Year!" What can I say? My Czech vocabulary is fairly limited and I had consumed a bit of alcohol. More importantly, these things are all pretty wonderful.

We tried to represent what we felt 2009 was like with one face each:

I believe Kt thinks there have been better years.

Ashley's year was apparently slightly sideways and somewhat happy.

Jess was really excited....while sleeping...with pretty red booze. All year.

Excited, confused and somewhat angry? Or getting pummeled up the ass. You choose.

I don't know what this is. But I like it. The ghost of 2009 is trying to drink Jess's booze.

We had fireworks! Well, Ashley did.

They are PUMPED for explosions in the sky. And I'm apparently having an orgasm. Or a seizure. Hope you all wanted to see my O-face. It's going to be a good year.

We said a lot of "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!"'s. Friends! Fireworks! Living in a beautiful European city! Being outside! Everything is wonderful!

There were these really cool lanterns everyone had that I'd never seen before. You light a candle in the bottom of the lantern, let it fill up like a hot air balloon, then let them float up into the sky bein' all pretty! Sometimes they even light trees on fire. That's when it gets really exciting. Poor stromy.

I wish I could take a picture with my eyes for you, because up on the hill you could see fireworks coming from miles and miles away in every direction in the distance. It was beautiful. I felt like all of the Czech Republic was celebrating right there with me. Slovakia, Poland, Germany and Austria, too.

Here's one of the lanterns in action, being lit by some people and held until it's filled up by air.

Ashley, Donal, Jess, me and this dude who photobombed my picture rather fantastically.

I don't remember what we were spelling, but I bet it's mind-blowingly awesome!

Brian and his dog (re: adorable animal above), suited with a glow stick for the occasion.

There was free sangria for ladies at Bukowski's after midnight. We really like free sangria. And Bukowski's. We were all too opilý already to drink more than a pitcher though.

Kt is doing something shifty? That dude with the curly hair in the background was wearing bunny ears and staring at me intensely the entire night.

There was a dance party?! Tancovat!

Josh came later to play with Kt and I and help us fail at drinking free sangria. This is Swordicorn.


I can honestly say my life since graduation has been pretty amazing. If you had told me this is who I'd be a year ago I would've told you it wasn't possible, that I didn't have the balls. My mind is constantly being blown, expectations met and surpassed and I'm loving every second of it. I've never met so many crazy, determined and exciting people and I'm only at the tip of the iceberg of my travels. I can truly say I'm "living the dream" and I am stoked for what's to come!

I hope every one of you that reads this has a happy, fulfilling, and inspiring 2010! Thanks to all of you who played a part in the last one, for it's all of you who've made my life that extra bit fabulous. Just think of all the potential this year holds...