Hi loyal readers! I’m sorry it has been awhile since my last entry. We have been in our new home for two weeks (already!) and a lot of my time has been devoted to building, painting and organizing everything in this wonderful apartment! After four TOO MANY trips to Ikea and lots of frustrating fun hours spent on making all this furniture, we now have a fully liveable and comfortable home. Yay! We have had a great time designing it and, no doubt, you would all think the style suits us perfectly. Unfortunately, we still have a few hurdles… from our cable not working (yet) to the dresser I painted that looks like a 5th 1st grader’s handiwork. Both of these things will be taken care of in due time. Overall, we are so happy with our loft and so excited to start hosting guests! 

Other than getting the place set up, things around here are starting to fall into a routine. Jaro goes off to work in the morning and I have a little schedule of my own. So you may be asking yourselves, what exactly does Jaro do? How did we get this sweet deal living in (both western and eastern) Europe? Well, I’ll tell you. 

Back in April, Jaro was approached by his manager about an opportunity over here with Nike. Since we had been talking about needing a change (read: getting out of Chicago), it was the perfect timing! When Jaro started at Nike a few years ago, one of the higher-ups never forgot that he mentioned wanting to work on the Euro Championship of 2012. Why this specific event? Well, Jaro is a full-blooded Ukrainian, fluent in the language, and they are co-hosting the tournament with Poland. To make a long story short (ahem, Stacy), they ended up needing someone and his name was brought up! So, Jaro is now the Nike Brand Manager for Ukraine, specifically for the Euro Champs 2012. At first, we thought we would be living in Ukraine full-time, but due to some difficult work visa issues, that got nixed and here we are: Splitting our time between Kyiv and Amsterdam. Why Amsterdam? The Nike Euro Headquarters are located in Hilversum, a town just outside Amsterdam. This arrangement is actually better for us as Amsterdam is a comfortable place for me to live while Jaro is taking care of business. I’m so proud of him for everything he has accomplished and for bringing us here. Such a great experience to kick off our marriage!

So… what do I do? Going from workaholic to workaphobic… I mean, workallergic… I mean, simply NOT working… has been great. Once we knew this was happening (is this really happening?), I decided to not work for a full year. Now that we are settling in to this Euro life, I’m really enjoying my daily schedule of exercising, market-browsing, and cooking! Things I never had time to do before! Cooking has become a real treat (pun intended) and I’ll find a way to start sharing delicious meals that I exhaustively effortlessly throw together. Real housewife of Amsterdam? You bet.

About pictures: I finally delivered, yeah? I have posted albums on Facebook and Flickr of our Amsterdam trip in August, and our Barcelona and Kyiv trips in September. For those of you out of the loop that want to get in, look me up on Flickr so I can add you as a contact. More Euro stories (hopefully interesting & funny ones) coming soon!