happy thanksgiving!

i am thankful for all of you :)

blog 73: camp onawana. we hold you in our hearts...

off to summer camp for two weeks! many stories to follow :)

bug juice, swimming, canoeing and hiking... here i come!

lovelovelove

(picture above is of my actual camp!)

blog 72: a lovely little saturday

a lovely little saturday of:

- strawberries and espresso for breakfast
- a quick house clean and some packing
- taking pictures out in the sunshine around the city
- playing with friends
- prague island hopping to watch different musical concerts (a special event this weekend only)
- going where the wind takes me :)

sounds like a great little saturday, and that's just what im gonna go do, ciao!

lovelovelove

blog 71: people tell me keep on dreaming...

and that's just what i'm going to do.

it's finally up and running. slowly but surely, watch for changes daily :)

alexandrahowden.com

blog 70: don't rain on my... baguette.

Once a week, usually wednesday, i make two stops on my way home from work. the obchod and the květinářství. As i leave with my grocery bag in one hand (a fresh baguette of french bread peeking out the top, fresh veggies, fruits, and chesses at the bottom) and my bouquet of flowers in the other (once a week i allow, and budget for, myself to buy a fresh bouquet of flowers, kate spade's words to live by...) i smile as i walk down the sunlit european streets.

Although today I did not smile, because my baguette was not basking in sunlight, but soaking up murky gray rain. By the time I got home, the first two inches of my bread were sopping wet. And i'm not one to complain, especially about nature, but it has been raining here for the past three weeks. and today? it was ra.in.ing. that's some serious rain.

so as vitamin D deprived as i am, im not even asking for sun for that reason, this is for the sake of my fresh bread. i just hate soggy bread. rain, rain go away.

love love love from a soaking wet prague.

blog 69: who am i this time?

One of my grandparents' favorite shows on BBC is "Who Am I This Time?". I've watched the shows a few times with them, okay, okay and a few times on my own, and constantly found myself relating to that title. Who am I this time?

I started studying languages when I was eleven, in seventh grade. Technically, if you count my half year of studying french in third grade, seven. Anyhow, I have been studying languages with somewhat regularity for the past twelve years. Now, jumbled around in my head are, a lot of English, a good amount of Spanish, a decent amount of Czech, a little bit of French, and an even smaller amount of Italian. (Poor Italian being the shortest affair with these languages of love.) And after all this? All I can say is thank goodness I can still speak English. I can barely put together a phrase in any one of these without something of the others coming out. "What time are we going tonight?" "Nevím." "Oh, shoot we're supposed to leave by siete." "Quelle heure est-il?" "Already?" "Oh mio dio, we've gotta get running." That, is just a peek into what goes on in my head, and most of the time what my befuddled friends and roommates hear. Let's just say, it's a good thing i can still speak English.

In the end, I think i've decided I need to marry a man who can understand all these languages, (and maybe more, because knowing me, Ill end up picking up some more along the way...) so at least he will be able to understand what's going on in my head :)

láska, amour, amore from prague!

blog 68: Mamma Mia, here i go again...

if there is one thing i have realized after a week in the Šumava Mountains with my preschoolers, it's that little kids hate to be bathed. but more so than that, they hate having their hair dried with the hair dryer. each day after we would get back from "hiking", our long walks around the mountain countryside, we would shower the kids and then had to dry their hair. the boys would squirm and hide their heads and do anything to get out of the reach of the hairdryer.

it wasn't only the boys though; the girls didnt love the hair drying portion of the day either. they would stand there and every two minutes ask "are we done yet? can i go?" i finally had to have a talk with a few of them explaining that "it's just part of being a girl!"

one day i was drying Tomáš' hair and mid-squirm he started jumping up and down singing Mamma Mia. he looked up at me to see my reaction and burst out in a fit of giggles and i just belted it out with him. we both started jumping up and down singing (yelling) Mamma Mia over the hair dryer and dancing around the bathroom. not only did the hair drying go by so much faster, but i learned a new trick to make unpleasant things go by faster! Let's just say, this isn't the first time that knowing every word to every ABBA song has come in handy in the Czech Republic :)

love love love from back in the city!