you tell me and I'll tell you

See if you can guess what city this is. Scroll down for the correct answer.



If you guessed Prague, my birth city, you're right. I took the picture when I was there last fall.

So, what does that have to do with anything, you may be wondering. Well, the story is that Tim and I decided to to head off into the wild blue yonder, you know, live a little, and planned something we have been talking about doing for years. We decided to move to Prague for a while - a year for now and then we'll see if we want to come back or stay longer. The move is scheduled for this coming August. Yes, that's four months from now.

These are our reasons for doing so:
- to have a chance to spend time with my relatives (grandmother and dad) and friends from whom I have lived apart for many years.
- to give Jonah (and Tim) an opportunity to learn Czech (because I've come to realize that it does take a village to raise a bilingual child)
- for a change of pace: you know, living in a European metropolis with higher density than Portland
- for the adventure of it
- because and while we can

I can't even tell you how excited (and anxious) I am. I have been fantasizing about this for a while. Those of you who know me well know that I tend to always have one foot out the door, in another place: always dreaming about living in other places or traveling. That's why it's so amazing that I have stayed put in the same city for so long - twelve years this month, to be exact.

As a child I moved so much that it's not until recently that I have lived in the same house for about three years. In fact, three years is the longest I have ever lived in the same building.

So, this will be an adventure. Because we don't own a house, we will be getting rid of tons of stuff and putting the rest in storage. One of the biggest challenges of moving will be finding a home for our two kitties whom I met as kittens and have known as my furry babies pretty much ever since I moved to Portland from the East coast.

I'm sure the move will flip Jonah's world upside down since where we live is what he has known his whole life. Also, he is at an age, Freud's anal stage, when he likes things just so (a temporary version of an obsessive-compulsive disorder), if only for the mere experiment of exerting his power over the world around him. This might be quite a challenge! But, I have been reteaching him the Czech he used to know as an 18-month old and hoping to keep pushing it a little more every day. So far, knock on wood, he hasn't yet shown any resistance. On the contrary, he has been asking me to teach him words. The advantage of this stage is that he does adjust quickly and that he can understand simple explanations. So, with enough preparation and with some direct involvement with packing, for example, the transition will hopefully not be too drastic.

Wanna see more pictures of Prague? Here are a couple more that I took in 2006 & 2007: