bonjour brussels!

and we're backkkk. matt and i had an awesome time in belgium. we visited my friend megan in brussels. she lives in a teeny cute apartment and served us endless amounts of jasmine tea, fresh oj, and beer. beer... what a concept :) i still don't really like it, but some are ok. the first day we got to brussels we went to the cantillon brewery. it was pretty cool. it smelt bad... but we took a tour on our own into 7 different rooms and then we got to taste 2 different beers. they were quite sour. the first one tasted like white grape juice wine....called gueze. and the second was a red beer called kriek. these are types i think, not the actual names. for dinner that nite we went to get mussels and french fries. this is apparently a typical belgium favorite. it was sooooooo delicious. 

                      

  

the second day matt and i walked around.

 

it was freeeeezing in brussels. so windy and snowy. i took a ton of photos... over 200. (all on my facebook) we saw a palace, churches, the parliamentary building, the instrument museum(although it was closing so we didn't actually see it...), a peeing statue. we got a belgian waffle with sugar and chocolate covered strawberries. i now dream of both as a daily snack.... then we went to get a beer at le roy d'espagne and then wandered the streets to find moeder lambic and have some more belgian beer. they were nice and i really liked the interior. 

that nite we went to megan's boyfriend's (jerome) house for christmas eve dinner. it was most enjoyable! when we got there we had some apertifs and champagne. our first course was smoked salmon, capers, and onions with bread, foie gras(goose), and raw oysters. then we had deer meat, mashed potatoes, sweet potato/carrot mash, and grilled stuffed pears. everything was delicious... although i had trouble eating the oysters. (it's the texture) the family were great hosts. there was a secret santa and...we were made to wear santa hats. i took photos almost the whole nite through... fun. 

on christmas day we made a delicious brunch...walked around the town, drank hot wine, and then went to the christmas fair and rode the ferris wheel. we didn't like that too much... frightening. we shared another waffle with powdered sugar. mmm.... then to a bar for some hot wine & beer. 

on sunday we woke up early and drove an hour and a half to brugge with megan and jerome. it was awesome. i'm so glad we did that even though we only had a few hours there. we got some espresso to warm up and then tried to find a boat on the canal to ride, but the water was slightly frozen. it was so sunny out! gorgeous. for lunch we had mussels.... couldn't help ourselves. at 2:30 we headed back to the gare du nord station and got on our 4:30 bus back to prague for 13 1/2 hours.... the foreign police stopped us at 3:30am and we were so freaked out. we are still waiting on our visas... the guy looked through matt's passport and then just looked at my picture... and said nothing. my heart was beating so fast....PHEW. nothing happened. 

back in prague now and very thrilled to head to italy the day after tomorrow. overall great christmas in belgium and it was so nice to hear french speakers for 3 days. :) 

happy tears! only the best.

what a weekend. matt and i had the house to ourselves again while the others were in amsterdam.

on friday after i got home from teaching preschool and having a 1 hr adult one-on-one lesson, matt and i laid in bed talking about how the weeks go by so fast and just how content we both were with the weekend being here. then we both passed out for 3 1/2 hours and awoke at 7:30pm. we made some grilled cheeses and soup and stayed up till 3am watching big love. i'm all up to date with the seasons, but i started back at season 1 so matt could see what it's all about. just weird.

saturday we woke up late and went christmas shopping, ate some mexican at azteca, and drank some good margaritas. it is hard to find good frozen drinks here, especially margaritas for some reason. we then went to cantina to get another margarita, but they were disgusting. they tasted like filthy tap water mixed with flouride. then we headed to a bar nearby called klub ujezd. it's been open since 1990. the bartenders were trashed and a local came up to us and started chatting us up about how she is a guide for the clock tower in old town square. she was a character to say the least. after all of this we walked to wenseslas square for a smazeny syr(fried cheese)sandwich. so effing good.

sunday we went to our favorite place cukrkavalimonada... we ordered a sugar&lemon crepe and hot chocolate. matt tried the %70 and it was SO GOOD.  we did some more christmas shopping for our secret santa for when we are in bruxelles. i'm so excited. then i went to watch football with matt, but really i just distracted myself with bar food... it was most enjoyable.

the weekend was amazing. i really had so much fun.

10 days!

noma restaurant in copenhagen

noma from pocketfork on Vimeo.

my brother worked here

face hug

  

charles bridge and the castle

charles bridge

it has been snowing pretty much nonstop for a while. the 10 day forecast has snow displayed every single day. i feel like i am supposed to go snowboarding every time i get on a bus... why isn't it dropping me off at the ski lift? oh well. maybe one day i'll move to colorado.

my shoes are really not great for this sludge i walk through to get to work. i go to prague 1- prague 5- prague 10- prague 3- prague 2 depending on the day... i think you get my point. these aren't complaints, i just need better boots so i don't get home and take off socks that are wet near the toes that have also seeped through to my leggings.

today i have the lovely gift of sleeping in (although it's 9:45 am and i woke up an hour ago...) because my 11:30 am lesson canceled due to the ill babysitter. i have a 4pm lesson and until then i am going to enjoy lying in bed looking at the snow falling outside our windows. maybe.

countdown has begun. i can't wait for our 12 days off. brussels in 15 days! italy in 22 days! i think we may all just spend all of our money willingly knowing that our jobs pay us shit and we'd rather go back to america saying... "hey, atleast we traveled." if i had to spend my money on one thing... traveling is that one thing. yes.

i REALLY want to stick it out until our lease is up mid-june. there is talk of possibly heading back before then if our funds run out and the sound of that saddens me. i really like our apartment, especially our bedroom. i love our views and making dinners with good friends and if i'm feeling up for a walk in cold weather to go see a fairytale castle- i can! i can call prague home... for now. i just don't think 6 months will be enough here. i'm content teaching because it is so far beyond what i ever imagined for myself and i don't know if i'll ever come back to doing it if i leave sooner than later. i don't know how i feel about flying back to florida and sleeping... well, i have no idea where. also, my mom has plans to come visit in may and i really want to show her prague!

we still don't have our long-term visas and we still haven't paid our lawyers hundreds of dollars(which we don't have to until we receive the visa) and i can't fathom paying all this money just to go back....

nothing is set in stone. living is expensive and traveling is worth it while here. so that's my plan. trying to live it up the evecheese way and head back to a m e r i c a when necessary.

i miss kisa. i hope she remembers me and doesn't hiss and claw when i see her!

villagers

the plastics revolution

the chimbley sweep

hello. it's snowing in prague. a lot. i love the snow... i slip 'n slide all around and am always very close to falling on my ass. it can be scary.

no news on the long term visas yet. i think we may call around december 10th. by then it'll be a month since we've applied. here's to hoping!

matt and i are going to brussels for christmas. we're staying with my lovely friend megan(who i met in baltimore) and her belgium boyfriend, jerome. his family lives there and we will be going over there for deer and oysters! crazy traditions. and megan wants to make "glug" with me since we're both swedish.

for new years we are going with srew to italy. we got $44 roundtrip tickets to milan. we plan to take some trips while there... i want venice to be on that list.