dear friends – leaving behind 3 countries and living in my 4th makes it difficult to keep up with friends and family – so this is to all of you who haven’t heard from me for a while. for those of you who are busy, here is the short version: we left dubai in june, spent some time in my husband’s home town of prague, czech republic and in august have moved to our new destination – bali, indonesia. we are all fine. so far ((-;
for those of you who don’t mind a bit of reading, here you go…
leaving dubai after 8 years wasn’t so dramatic as leaving it after 2 years. if you didn’t know us then – dan quit his job in 2010 and we left in june, feeling sad, broken-hearted and generally miserable, especially linda who really hated wearing socks – however we made a decision and returned in september of the same year – without jobs but with enthusiasm. it has proven to be a good decision – as we mostly enjoyed the 6 following years and eventually the jobs found us too ?but still it wasn’t completely easy. the decision to leave was brewing for the last year or so and was speeded up by our kids’ admission to green school of bali. we love dubai and our dubai friends and pets and my yoga students – but felt the time has come when we all needed change. kids might not agree with my last statement.. it was definitely very hard for them to leave what has been their dubai life. we had a few stressful weeks of selling furniture, car, looking for home for maty and goldie (thanks to all involved in the process, you know who you are!!!), garage sales, sad and funny (and often repeated) farewells and finally the movers came.. last 3 days in a hotel in very dubai style and off we go with 205 kg of luggage and our ancient cat oskar. i even got a cold after 3 or 4 years – so you can imagine how taxing the experience was!!!
5 weeks in prague swooshed past like crazy, trying to fit in family and all friends (ok and some yoga of course) – which has proven to be a task beyond my capabilities – my sincere apology to all i didn’t manage to see! getting new passports, arranging visas, vaccinations and on top of that dan was also working his regular job whilst trying to fit in czech beer and pork.. hard i tell you! we had the sweetest guests from the land of sand, more guests from countries far and near (thanks for making the effort!!!) and also a little rest but not much. unpacking all 53 of dubai boxes which conveniently arrived 1 week before our departure to bali added a nice touch to our stay. deciding what to pack to bali was quite an interesting task. with the foggy idea of simplifying our lives (brought up by the excessive amount of “stuff” we have realised we owned once we were wrapping up our dubai life) we made up our minds to travel “light” – with our luggage only. yes you read it right. no container. no boxes. no 45 dresses and 27 yoga pants and 50 yoga books. no 10 wet suits and 5 pairs of fins. no vitamix?!? well. i guess we can always send a container later.
our kitty sadly for us stayed in prague (as bali doesn’t allow any animals in), his retirement to be governed by my mom. he doesn’t object at all – probably because unlike me, my mom is not a vegetarian. he is actually so far from objecting that i’m feeling very jealous.
today at 2 a.m., after 36 hours on the road we have finally arrived to the island of gods. our new home looks lovely and seems like a cat (possibly cats) are included.
will write more about bali once there is something to write (-;
hope you are all having a great summer, would love to hear from you!!!
lots of love,
jarka, dan, lola and dom