T-minus...

So I have less than a week left in Prague. Five days, actually. I fly (I have a one-way ticket) from Prague to New York on Tuesday. After a month of bouncing around at home (seeing friends, family, my sister's college graduation), I head to Kusatsu City, Japan, in mid-July, for another year of teaching English.

It's been almost a daily weighing of wants, needs, likes and dislikes since late December before this decision was made. Months of deciding simply whether to stay in Prague for another year or head back to DC eventually morphed into choosing between DC, Prague and Japan. I spent countless frustrating hours listing reasons, both positive and negative, on each of the three, and ended up choosing Japan. The answer to "Why Japan?" is not simple, but the biggest reasons are that the opportunity to live and work there is not something that will not come around again, and it's the place where I will experience the maximum growth.

So, that decided, it's been a roller coaster of emotions these past couple weeks as I prepare for the next month, and the next year. I've had amazing amounts of fun lately. With the spring-time weather, a budding romance, and general comfort level with life here, it's been unspeakably difficult facing how little time I have left. But I feel confident that I have made the right decision, and that the months of deliberating were not wasteful.

The things I will miss are many, as are the things I will be happy to be away from. There have been times in the recent days when I've muttered, "Thank God I don't have to deal with that much longer," followed about an hour later by, "Jeebus I'm going to miss this. Wait, why am I leaving again?"

I will not miss the toilet paper, loud American and British tourists, Tesco and its old women, the salary (both size of and frequency of receiving), unpronounceable 14-letter street names and bald, and toothless gypsy women on trams. I will not miss the omnipresent body odor on public transportation, the omnipresent dog poop on the sidewalks or the omnipresent cigarette smoke in, well, everywhere.
I'm going to be happy to rid my life of Celsius and the 24-hour clock (I've been on it for 9+ months, and still last week I mixed up 7:30 PM and 17:30), though the metric system is pretty darn handy.
I won't miss our kitchen sink with its insane water pressure and wildly inconsistent water temperature. Nor shall I miss our dish drain that is so horribly engineered you're lucky to have plates and bowls stand upright after someone sneezes. I am absolutely counting down the number of sit-down showers I have left to take, and number of loads of laundry that I have to hang-dry.
I won't miss the long, dark, grey, cold winter and its slippery cobblestone. So long to the consonant combinations ctvtr, stsk and zmrzl. And I most certainly will not miss the inability to read signs and communicate with locals about anything other than where the bathroom is. I am happy to distance myself from the impending heart attack from the food. And the Charles Bridge at 2 in the afternoon.

Yet, of course, I will miss the people - friends and students (too many to list individually...), the daily bombardment of gorgeous women, and the locals who I can convince I can speak Czech fluently.
I will absolutely miss the beer (with its quality, price, and drinkable-everywhere quality), medovnik, beton, the chocolate croissants served at Karlovo Naměsti, česnečka, cest'aky, and the 24-hour klobasa, smaženy syr and Becherovka stands.
I will miss the city itself - the architecture, the public transportation, the parks, both those overlooking the city and those invisible-from-the-street little nooks that are their own separate world. I will miss dungeon bars, having a castle on the skyline, the cobblestone (especially marvelling at public works "repaving"), and experiencing picturesque scene after picturesque scene.
I will miss hearing "fakt, jo?", "do pičy!" and "ješte jedno pivo!" I will miss having a beer in movie theaters. Hell, beer anywhere. And at any time. I will miss making up English names for Czech places simply because the Czech name is rediculous to pronounce ("whale bar", "boob-grab alley", "crack bar"...).
I will miss our Sunday brunches. Having free time from 12:30 to (at the earliest) 16:00 everyday. Being done with work at 12:30. Access to a bar across the street, on the corner, around the corner, down the block, up the block... I will miss the quiet of the city. I will miss the wealth of countries, currencies, languages and cultures so near. And the Charles Bridge at 2 in the morning.

I will miss the way people cheers each other when a new beer arrives at the table.

There is much to be excited for too, upon my retun, and my eventual trip over the other pond. Much to do in my final days here. Will be back with some final thoughts before I make the exodus.