Byebye Belongings

Today the movers came. I worked on "packing" (I put this in quotation marks because all I had to do was put things into piles for the movers to pack for me) all day yesterday. Hours and hours. I was up until about 3am getting things together, looking through things, deciding, "Will I want this in Prague? And, if I don't, will I ever want it, or should I just throw it away?" What a long day.

Today the movers came and they didn't have enough boxes or supplies. They were, apparently, under the impression that I already had everything packed myself. I had offered, but the woman on the phone said that because it was international, they have to pack according to customs regulations anyway, so to just make piles of stuff. So, they had to leave and come back, thank goodness the company is located not too far from where I live.

It was uneventful. I felt very strange sitting by while they did all the work. I'm a helping kinda girl, but after I asked several times if there was something I could do, I could tell they wanted me to just leave them alone so I did. I sat by and did a crossword puzzle while they packed and packed. They had arrived around 8:30am (after coming back with supplies), and left around 11am. Not bad!

And that's that.. all of a sudden this is more real than it has been yet (though still not 100%). I am left with a completely empty closet, enough clothes just for a few weeks, no shoes in my closet except the few pairs I'm taking along for the short term. Am I so materialistic that I feel this empty without my things?

I think it's just the realization setting in that this is really happening. For real. In a few days I will be living in Europe. In a country I never thought I'd even visit, so much as live in.

OH well. I will have my proper last hurrahs and say goodbye, as we all must do at some point in life.

Is this real or...

It's really sinking in now.

Yesterday this is how my schedule went:

4am: wake up
5:45am: take off to NYC
7am: arrive in NYC
7:15am: have breakfast with girl I met in line for breakfast at the airport
8:30am: get a taxi to Czech consulate
9am: arrive (first and only one in line, woohoo!)
9:30am: consulate opens, I am called in
9:33am: I am done
9:45am: I get a cab back to the airport in hopes of an earlier flight back to PGH (no such luck, so I did crossword puzzles and waited for the plane)
12:30pm: plane takes off for PGH
1:45pm: arrive in PGH

Sounds like kind of a pointless trip, but I have my visa for 90 days (to start) so I'm all set. I have to go get my long-term visa sometime in October, then.

So, today was spent getting things ready to go. My room looks so empty (read: clean, for once). Everything is just about in order, the last thing to go through are my clothes. I have everything ready for the movers to pack. They're coming tomorrow morning between 8 and 9am. I wonder how that works? I hope they aren't mad that there's stuff in three different sections of the house (there's a big pile in the basement room, a big pile in the kitchen, and a big pile upstairs).

I went shopping yesterday after I got back from NYC and, in addition to some cute new clothes, I got a little present for Jose because he's been so helpful with all my questions, helping me with apartments, etc. I also have a little something for Leila, and I absolutely cannot wait to give it to her. I am deliberately taking it in my suitcase and not packing it in the air shipment because I wouldn't be able to wait :)


Well, I really should get back to work. I've got a long evening ahead of me, as I haven't begun the clothes yet.. and that's by far the biggest job. I am a shopping junkie, after all, and cannot part with any of this stuff.

Countdown

OMG... 6 days.

2 weeks...

In 2 weeks I will have spent my first night in Prague as a RESIDENT. Not just a tourist, but I'll live there. That's crazy.. every time I think of not living in Pittsburgh I get weirded out. I've traveled more than a lot of people around where I live (and less than a lot of people, of course), but I've never called anywhere else "home". The rest of my time here is pretty well booked, so this is pretty much it.

I said my first big goodbyes to my family, because my dad and his wife and my little brother and sister have gone to Kuwait, and won't be back until after I'm gone. My farewell happy hour is this Friday. Saturday I'm sure I'll go out somewhere with my friends, and then Sunday will be my last salsa night. I'll work Monday and Tuesday next week, I'm off Wednesday to get things ready to pack, Thursday the movers come to take all of my things to be shipped, Friday I'll work, Saturday I'll pack my suitcases, and Sunday... I'm gone.

Oh yeah, and one of these days I have to go to NYC to pick up my visas - I hope that's sooner than later - I'm getting nervous about it!

I hope this works out as well as I'm hoping it will. Here's hoping I wasn't just temporarily charmed by Prague, only to arrive and absolutely hate it. Here's hoping I make good friends who I can talk to like I talk to Tara, Ash, Maira, and Shannon. Here's hoping I find a place to live and that I am okay financially. Here's hoping for happiness.

Oh, Pittsburgh... I am going to miss you.

I wish I had one

Today on the bus a little girl got on with her dad, somewhere around Sewickley. I noticed that the girl had a fake tattoo on her cheek. I didn't pay much attention until I noticed - this was a tattoo of Danny Tanner, Uncle Jesse, and Joey Gladstone from FULL HOUSE!

I was *this* close to asking her (well, her dad) where she got it, but then I looked just a bit closer and saw that it was the Jonas Brothers :(

The week

It's been a long week, and it's finally Saturday. You'd think a week in which I had two days off would be relaxing, but it wasn't. There's so much to do and no time to do it. I keep thinking on weekends I'll get some preparation done, but the weekends are so busy and I still can't help but feel that I deserve SOME downtime. Maybe I need to stop thinking I deserve such a luxury, just for a month or so until I'm settled. :)

Wednesday night I went with a group of people from work to see the Pittsburgh Banjo Club for *maybe* the last time. Maybe I'll try to make it once more before I leave. Jasper cracked me up; I invited him to come and he told me later that he was expecting some hot club, but there we were at the Elks Lodge, the youngest people in the room (everyone is over 65 or so). But he had a good time and that made me happy :) Shen was a first-timer, too, and she loved it as well. I'm glad when activities I plan don't flop.

Thursday I was off. I took my mom to her physical therapy appointment (she had a recent shoulder surgery and can't drive for a while), picked up my brother at the airport, and took it easy the rest of the day for the most part.

Yesterday after work we had happy hour. Diana, one of my favorite people in the world, is here from the Prague office, so we went to have some drinks after work. We all had a blast, we had a good group that pretty much died down after a few hours. After that Shannon and I went down to Station Square and had dinner at Bar Louie, then went dancing at Barroom which really wasn't that fun (lots of hoes, not a lot of cute boys, you know the drill). My bro picked us up around 12:30am or so, and we got back to the house a little before 2. I think I was asleep before I even got into bed.

Today Raquel is having a picnic at her house. I made a pineapple upside-down cake this morning, and I need to make a tortilla española now. I don't know what's going on with how I'm getting there, but my bro will take me I'm sure. I think it will be a really good time, despite the gray skies. Tomorrow I have to take my brother to the airport very early, and then do some running around for my mom.

Whatever I end up having to do tomorrow will not be a fraction as cool as going to see thousands of cute puppies, which is pretty much how I imagined tomorrow would go :( It probably didn't really look like that but even one would have been worth it. Oh well, sometimes dreams just don't come true.

:)

Sorry I'm boring. I'll be more interesting starting August 1.

Apartment hunt and Dreams of Praha

Let me just start out with a giant thank you to Anette, a colleague who had the lovely idea to, rather than search a gazillion different real estate websites, post my own ad on expats.cz stating my budget, what I'm looking for, and in what area of Prague. I did this yesterday and today someone e-mailed me my dream apartment. It's in my budget, has all necessary appliance, and is close to work. There's also quite a bit of green around it, so while I'd be close to city area, it seems there will also be a decent amount of quiet. Let's all just hope and pray that it's not rented to someone else by the time I get there to see it.

Maybe I won't have to wait until September to get my place! It would be nice to be settled as soon as possible.

Now, as mentally prepared as I am for this move, I haven't even begun to pack. I still maintain that there simply isn't that much to do. The only thing I *am* worried about is coming up with 36000Kc right away - 11,000 for first month's rent, 11,000 deposit, 11,000 agency fee for finding me the place, 3000 utilties. What a pain. Oh well, so I sleep on the floor for a month.. good for the back, right? ;-)


The other day Farid, a work colleague in Prague, told me that I was in his dream the night before. He said that it was a very realistic dream in which he met me by chance in the street in Prague. He said, "Alia, you're here already?" and that I simply replied that I was. It was funny, but for whatever reason this triggered a lot of Prague dreams for me last night. I woke up several times, and each time I went back to sleep I swear it just brought on another one.

I don't remember too much, but I do remember that in one of them, I was walking around the city taking a lot of pictures with my new camera that I'm so excited about, and then Farid and Tiago passed me on the street. Tiago was friendly and gave me a hug, and Farid just said something like, "Alia, you take far too many pictures," and did this French finger-shake no-no-no motion and kept walking. Maybe it was payback for when I snubbed him in his dream. :)

In another, which was a lot less pleasant, something had happened that I wasn't able to find an apartment in the first month, and didn't have the money to pay another month in the Ariba apartment, so I was seriously homeless in Prague. The dream was like a movie, just a lot of flashes of scenes - one in which I was too proud to ask someone from work if I could stay with them for a little while, one in which I was sitting on the cement steps a bit down the street from Andel hotel where all the scary drunk bums congregate (except I was alone) and sitting there crying and a lot of people I knew passed me by without looking, and I remember wondering why nobody would stop for me. (Please don't worry about me on this one, it was just a dream, and this situation would never actually happen!)

The third one was by far the strangest - this is the one I remember in most detail, the others were spotty. In this one, I was in a place that looked like some Asian city (for some reason I "knew" that it looked like Singapore, actually, but in reality it was Prague, but everybody was Asian and most signs were in Chinese). Moff was there at the same time, and a lot of us from work decided to go to a movie. So the inside of the theater looked just like the one on Radlicka that I went to with Leila in Prague, but I wanted the colorful popcorn and Moff wanted some of the regular one. The regular one was there already, but when I told them I wanted the sweet one they said, "Oh we have to make a new batch." I asked how long it would take and they said 5 minutes, so I said I'd just wait for it.

Then somehow I ended up outside and I couldn't find the theater again. I was lost and alone, but then I saw Maira on the street (of all people to run into in Asia-Prague). She said she was on her way to the movie, too, but somehow we got separated. Then I got to this long series of outdoor shops and each one had a sign with the title of a different movie - every one but the one we were going to see. I ended up getting there when it was over, and Maira was already there and had seen the whole thing.

Who knows what any of that means.. probably just some apprehension rising to the surface. I feel like the last dream would be a scene out of Marzio's book.

sreality.cz

Tonight I spent some time looking for apartments. I learned enough Czech (and by "enough" I mean about 15-20 words total, 10 of which are the numbers 1-10) while I was there to figure out how to search apartments on this site.

I found 5 or so apartments, and wrote an e-mail for each one, that I really liked. I had two favorites, and both are pretty close to work. I hope they're not gone by the time I get there. I can't get over how much cheaper the apartments are on that site versus expats.cz or prague.tv. What a ripoff - I'm so glad I have Katy who keeps me in check and doesn't let me get tricked.

I'm really looking forward to living alone, and I think I made the right decision. I'm 26 - it's time for my own place. I've had apartments before but always with a roommate. If Tara were going with me, there would be no question about living with her, but she's not - and I just can't live with strangers. I would feel trapped in one little room, even if it were a shared living space. If it really is draining me financially once I'm there, and if I meet someone great who I think I could really live with and get along with, I'll do it, maybe in a year or so. But for now, I just need to do this.

Plus, it's soooo much fun to decorate :)

Speaking of decorating, I redid my blog layout. Pretty, huh?

Things to do:
-Go to NYC to apply for visas.
-Go back to NYC to pick up short term visa.
-Pack SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
-Go to Raquel's picnic this weekend.
-Make baklawa and tortilla española for Raquel's picnic.
-Banjo night tomorrow.
-Pick up Ahmad from airport Thursday.
-CPAS ANL.
-Migrations project.
-Get a good night's sleep (yeah right).
-Figure out how to move to another country.


It feels good to write that down, albeit out of order and incomplete. I am feeling very overwhelmed. My solution? Go take a shower and do Games Magazine crossword puzzles until I fall asleep.

August 3

August 3 is the day I'll start work in Prague. I imagine I'll be there one or two days before.

It's going to be a really busy month.

It might get pushed a week, we'll see what the visa specialists say.

I am really excited, and also really, really scared. This is huge.