A Blog from Prague

I am so happy to be back in the blogging world! We have had a fantastic time during all of our travels, and now we are finally in Prague. I should have made posts along the way, because it feels like there is so much to write about I don't know where to begin. We didn't even take hardly a second to stop at Internet cafe's except for to make necessary travel arrangements and to let our families know we were ok. We just packed it all in.

We arrived in London on June 13th (Brig's birthday). We had a horrendous flight over because one-year-old's don't do well on overnight trans-atlantic flights on Air India. (Funny that we were on Air India...they had Indian music, Indian meals, and lots of wonderful Indian people, definitely an adventure.) London was wonderful. Our favorite things in London were the Tower of London, the Tate Museum, and enjoying the different parks. Jane's favorite thing was the pigeons.

On June 20th we flew to Rome. Another disastrous flight because it was delayed, causing us to miss our rental car which we had already paid for and our hotel reservation. We loved seeing the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. Rome is an AMAZING city, but it was too crowded, hot, and dirty to be toting around Jane in. We left a day early and drove to a wonderful cottage that we had rented about 45 minutes outside Florence. It was on a picturesque farm that was owned by an amazing four-generation Italian family. We had such a great time in Tuscany! We spent a week there driving around to different Tuscan villages, walled cities, and of course Florence.

On June 26th we flew to Madrid. We loved Madrid! I loved being able to speak Spanish to people and was amazed how much Spanish came back after years out of practice. Our favorites in Spain were the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofia Museum, and my favorite was seeing Carmen. Brig watched Jane one night so I could go see it. I loved the Flamenco dancing, and I have always loved the music to Carmen. It was such a treat! Brig's favorite thing about Spain is that they serve cups of actual chocolate and then little churros to dip in the chocolate. He thought he was in heaven! The highlight for Jane was that she took 10 steps all by herself while walking in Puerto del Sol.

On the 29th of June we flew to Paris. Our flight left at 5:30am so we ended up sleeping at the airport. Jane amazingly slept through the night in her stroller. We were totally burnt out by the time we got to Paris and really didn't do it justice, but we had a great time. We went with one of Brig's mission companions to the Louvre. Brig and I had a great time seeing all of our favorite paintings we learned about in Humanities at BYU. One of our favorite parts about our traveling was just walking around the different cities and getting a feel for them. Paris is one of our favorite cities. We can't wait to go back someday (without Jane).

We rented a car in Paris and drove to Germany. We spent a few nights in a town called Saarbrucken where Brig served twice. We stayed with one of Brig's good friends Peter and his family. They were wonderful to us! We also got to go to dinner with his friend, now our friend, Eva. We then drove to Altendettlsau where we spent almost a week with Joel and Autumn Shumway. Joel is my good friend Megan Shumway Barney's older brother. It was so great to be with them, and so nice of them to let us stay at their house. Jane LOVED the huge room full of toys and two boys to play with, and we loved the company of Joel and Autumn and the free accommodations. After three weeks of just the two of us to talk to, we loved hanging out with Joel and Autumn. We left almost every morning to drive to a different city that Brig served in. We had lunch with a good friend Beata in Karlsrhue and spent a day in Frankfurt and walked around the temple. The weekend we spent mostly with Joel and Autumn. Germany was definitely the most beautiful of all the countries that we went to.

Monday, July 9th Autumn took us to the train station to go to Prague. We are so happy to be here, to finally be settled down. There was some drama though at first. We shipped our laptops over because we didn't want to drag them around and risk them getting lost or damaged. It turned out that we shipped them to the wrong address! I spent all day Tuesday trying to track them down. I had multiple post office workers tell me that the package never came to Prague. I have never prayed so hard in my life. I know it was a miracle that we finally found the box. When the worker brought it out i just cried. I can't imagine what would have happened if we would have lost our computers! Our apartment makes me feel like I time warped into the early 1900's. After a good day of cleaning and taking down creepy knick knacks I finally feel like I can live here. We have a roommate. He is also a Miami Ad School student, but he goes to the Hamburg campus. His name is Andres and he is from Sweden. He leaves at 8:30 in the morning and gets home at about 11pm. I don't see him much, but he is Brig's partner at the agency. Brig says he is a super nice guy. The best part is that our apartment is right in the heart of the city. Jane and I can go for a five minute walk and be right where all the historic sites are.

Leo Burnett is the advertising agency Brig is interning with. It seems like things are going well. Brig is so happy to be creating and working again. He is especially happy to be connected to the internet all day. Our apartment doesn't have internet, which is something I am really trying to work on getting. It is so hard to live without it.

Jane is so happy to be done with traveling. She loves exploring our new apartment, and yesterday really started experimenting with walking. Brig sat down in front of her and she let go of a chair she was holding and just took off toward him. She didn't even realize what she was doing until she was in Brig's arms. She was so proud of herself and thinks it is pretty cool that she can walk now. She has made multiple attempts since then on her own.

Just in case anyone really needs to get ahold of us, I have a cell phone (which is absolutely free for incoming calls) it is 420 607 688 641. I am not quite sure what the international code is. I think it is 011, or maybe 0011.

We can't believe that we are living our dream of traveling and living abroad. We are so happy and so grateful. We miss all of our family and friends! Hope everyone is doing well

Pictures will come soon!