My dog, Luna, loves the dog park at Tempelhofer Feld. Pushkin also really loves the dog park and loves anywhere he can run off leash and play with other pups but Luna loves loves loves this particular dog park. It is as if her little soul takes off the moment the gate door opens and she is free.  The pic above is her go to look while here.  Her nose is covered in dirt that she has just been digging around in, her ears flying in the wind of the field and her mouth wide open.  The main dog park sits in the middle of the what was airport field, in between two runways that still exist but runways for bikes, pedestrians and skateboarders, not airplanes any longer.  Our walk to this huge park is a 20 minute lovely walk as well so the pups get ample amounts of exercise when we go.  It is one of our favorite things to do.  Her enthusiasm is contagious.

We tried to go for a bike ride on Sunday, Ana and I.  She has a brand new bike that is pretty awesome and I am actually renting a month to month bike that is working out well and when the weather changes, this fair weather biker will return the bike so as not to have to worry about property.  We rode through the streets to this point, a beautiful look out onto iconic Berlin from this vantage point and then made our way to Treptower Park.  Just a year before we made the same trek to the Park and it was wide open for us to ride around.  Not this time. It was so incredibly crowded that we ended up walking through the impressive park. I guess everyone in Berlin had the exact same idea…get out and soak up one of the last truly beautiful days of summer. The weather was perfect and everyone needed to take advantage.  At first we complained but then I thought, “well, we are all here so lets make the best of it.”

We rode a total of 15 km before wandering back into our flat for the evening.  Worth a Sunday afternoon kind of adventure.

 There is much anticipation in me these days…..we leave for Madrid for a week on Thursday and I can’t wait to get back to Spain. Plus the last time I was there, I was in high school and I am anxious to revisit as an adult.

I am anxious and excited about returning to school for a Masters program in October. The Masters is one in North American Studies which in some ways was an easy masters to pursue for a visa but I am excited about the course offerings and hoping it can be an excellent container for the writing I aspire to.  A whole new way of being an expat in the world for me is approaching plus it just highlights the ridiculous cost associated with education in the US compared to here. For one semester, including a transportation pass, for me to attend is costing me a little over 300 Euro.  Can you imagine???  Amazing!  What would it have been like to not have college debt as I was a young professional?

Anticipation marks these weeks in good ways and allows me to see my life here differently. True, I still am homesick but it seems to be constantly with good things on the horizon.  A chance for me to expand more…which is how I see it all on my best days. On my worst days I am thinking about how this is not my career and I am going back to school and nannying when I am close to 40…all part of the process of life.

More and more I realize that there is no set agenda for our lives but only space to live into them more fully. If I set my life against what I thought would be or what I think should be, it only holds disappointment while if I live presently and get excited about this space, it opens up opportunity and insight.

That is the space I want to live out of, that present space. That Luna loving the dog park kind of joy space. 🙂