Long time, no see! It’s been such a busy summer and Tim and I have tried to live in the present moment as much as we can. We’ve had one of the best summer’s of our lives (well, as good as it can get while being safe and considerate in the middle of world-wide pandemic).
Back in December, we signed a contract to move and work at the American School of Kosovo for the 2020 school year. So, when our lease for our apartment ended in June, we moved in with Tim’s parents for a few months to help us gradually minimize our material goods and to live cheap for a bit. We spent the month of June planning our wedding and working a lame job painting apartment walls with a bunch of lowlifes. This really made me reflect how much my time is worth and the value of money over happiness. We really wanted to make some extra cash over the summer, but it wasn’t worth it to work a painfully awful job.
Three weeks later, we spontaneously walked off the job, got married at the end of that month, and honeymooned, which you can read about here. Two days after getting back, we turned around to take a spontaneous trip to the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana. We visited relatives & family friends, dry/wild camping, and visited the magnificent Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. We met some new people at our campsites, like a 70-some-year-old hippie who did headstands in the gravel and told us all about Burning Man Festival.
On our last night at the campsite of our final destination, Glacier, our car got broken into. Someone literally smashed open a rear-side window and took a lot of our belongings. Thankfully, our necessities were in our tent, but we still had about $500 in goods stolen. This brought to my attention again that material goods don’t matter, nor does owning things that are expensive. After two weeks of wild camping, we just wanted to get home. So, we drove 20 hours through the night with the wind-noise of our crash-wrapped window in the background.
Coming back from that, we got ready for our move to Eastern Europe and we golfed a lot (I was antsy being a caddie for Tim and loved the sport so much I picked it up myself).
On August 13 we packed up four bags of checked luggage and traveled for 18 hours with flights and layovers to get to Pristina, Kosovo. The flight went smoothly, except the gate assistant almost didn’t let us board the plane in Chicago because he didn’t believe we were allowed into Kosovo. After 15 minutes of dispute, talking to the gate assistant’s boss, and proof from the U.S. Embassy, we boarded.
The night we arrived some workers picked us up, showed us around our fully-furnished 2-bedroom flat in the city (which they provide for us), gifted us with groceries, and took us out to eat! The food here is amazing, especially the meat (which makes me thankful that I am now a retired vegetarian). Our flat is actually a two-story-house. We live on the second floor and another American teacher lives below us. We also have a gorgeous balcony, as well as patio furniture and a grill.
The lifestyle isn’t a huge culture shock. We have all the amenities that we did at home. Actually, this apartment is a lot nicer and spacious than Tim and I have ever had! We live at the dead end of an alleyway so we feel very safe as well. The city is very compact, so we can walk just about anywhere we need to. Like, the grocery store is less than a five minute walk away. There is also a lot of life in the city. There is a popular street that is also very close to our flat that is jam-packed with beautiful restaurants and cafés.
But, Kosovo is still considered a developing country. There is construction and new buildings going up everywhere. Including behind our house. So, during the day on Saturday is was pretty noisy. But, on our second day here, Sunday, I woke up before Tim and it was quite. There was the quiet sound of children in the background and birdsong. I felt so light and alive that I literally yelled out the window “Hello, Europe!”
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