School Begins!

Well, I have started to take classes again like a normal college student! However, it is not normal what so ever, because I am in WIEN!!! I remember I had the same feeling...and to be honest still do...when I started at Sewanee. Sewanee seems like an amazing summer camp for learning! And Wien seems like a giant adventure with learning thrown in! However, I realize that I am here to learn, and I cannot wait to make the most of my experience learning about culture here while mixing it with my academic passions!

I am taking two psychology classes-my major- and one education internship! I am also taking modern architecture and german, natürlich! I am super stoked about all of my classes, especially because I get to integrate Austrian culture into them! I am so excited to learn more about the schools here!! I get to help out in English classes, which students here start at a young age! Learning a language here is just a completely different concept! At first when I was learning German here I could not get used to it! I could not believe that we were already learning sentences when I did not even know the alphabet or numbers! Things that I expected we would learn first because they were simple, I mean, don't you learn those things first? Well, answer: in America yes! However, the perspective of language here is so different! They learn sentences, words, read articles, listen, speak, and they do not learn things like grammar straight off the bat! They do not spend time in class learning nitpicky things like we do in the English language, or in foreign language classes! Here English is much more prevalent than German in the US. I often hear English songs being played everywhere! About 80% of the music I hear is English! They believe language should focus more on conversation, while in the US, they believe in the written word much more. It was an interesting way of learning to get used to, but I have to say, I feel like I have learned a lot of German in only four weeks! Much more Spanish than I learned the first month at school!

So, anyways, I am super stoked about classes!

Other happening this week!

Grace, Courtney, and I along with Carolyn and Erica had a lovely Valentine's Day cheese and wine dinner on Monday night! I have to say, a lovely way to spend Valentine's Day with some wonderful ladies! We seriously killed some cheese! NOM NOM NOM!! Again, my new found love of cheese! Super duper tasty!

I have had some bad luck with the public transportation this week! Once the sbahn kicked everyone off, they do this sometimes, and another time there was an accident blocking the tracks! They have also been checking the tickets like crazy this week! As I mentioned before, Wien is on an honor system. Today when I came upstairs from my ubahn there was a blockade of people checking cards! That has not happened yet since I have been here! It was quite a strange sight coming upstairs to see it!

In other news......BOOKED TRIP TO PRAGUE TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEEAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!! I am going to Prague with my friend on the program Kristen!! Woop Woop!!!

Super duper excited!!!!!

Also, if you have not looked to the upper right of the blog page, I have updated the picasa picture album page with more pictures from my trip last week!! There are lots of pictures! And one album just with people because I realize not everyone wants to look at hundreds of pictures of buildings and many of them duplicated into black and white!

The weather here has been gross the last week :( I hope that it gets warm soon!!!!!

Long post revisited?

OK! Time to re-visit the long post as well as make another post about my last week!!!

For the last ten days I was traveling with other IES students through Germany! The break was after our three weeks of German intensive...which as I said before was VERY intense! I will speak more on it later!

But now I'm going to address the things that I said I would address last time and never did...whoops!

Learning German:

German...ohh man. Well, I was pretty excited to learn German, and my enthusiasm has not left me yet...but it successfully terrified me! We spent the first three weeks in Vienna learning German, which is GREAT! I am super grateful that I got to spend so much time learning a foreign language! I really love using German in public! It is also super wonderful when people talk to me in German because then secretly in my head I'm saying, "Yes, I'm blending in!"

If anyone knows me, or my mom for that matter (sorry mom, but you know its true) I am horrible at foreign languages!! Somehow Carter got all those genes because she is a Latin beast! Spanish was super successful at always giving me a deer in the headlights look, staring blankly into my teachers eyes wondering in my head what on earth was going on! German did that the first week...and part of the second...and hey, even the third! The first week of German was me with deer in the headlights. It was so strange to be learning a new language completely again! I have not learned a new language since 6th grade when I started to learn Spanish and Latin. I feel so strange that I am on a child's book level! After the first week of German kicked my butt, I had to reorganize! The second week I focused and started to tell myself in my head during class that I knew what was going on. Instead of looking at my Professor with blank stares I looked at her like I understood and knew what was going on. I literally had to tell myself in my head "Blair you know this!"...oh gheeze...I'm sounding like a crazy person! Haha, well, I am one so this is ok! By the third week of German I had gained the German confidence, at least more of it! WOOHOO! With something like a foreign language, you cannot be afraid to use it in public, no matter how much of an idiot you might look like. This was a little weird to get used to. I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten corrected by a person when I was trying my German. And one of the most frustrating things is when I am trying to talk to a person in German and they respond in English or tell me just to speak English. I love it when they respond in German, even if I don't understand everything that they say (or even any of it for that matter) because that means that I pronounced it right and did not sound like a foreigner! That is something that is truly an accomplishment! I love being able to go into the grocery store and get deli meat from the counter, or ask directions from a taxi driver, and especially reading a German menu, even if I am guessing what some of the ingredients are! It is super refreshing and I love it!! So so very much!!!

Vienna Night Life:

Now, this is something that has also taken some getting used to! I come from a small school with a frat scene. I had never been to a real club until this trip, in fact, I had barely been to a bar before this trip! So that was something completely new for me! Night life here means that you stay out until 5 or 6 in the morning....now THAT is something new for me too! At school parties shut down at 1, and by that point I am normally already heading back home!

The one awesome thing about the night life here though is that everyone dances! Now, I love dancing, and friends should know that I am a crazy dancer and look like a lunatic sometimes when I'm dancing! Well, people dance like me here!!!!! Its awesome!!!!!! I have yet to have a late late night yet, the latest that I have stayed out is probably 3, but at some point this semester I would like to have at least one good "typical" Vienna night! I forget how many young people are in Vienna because there are so many older people here! It is a city that a lot of people retire in and I normally see much more adults walking around then people my age. The night life here confirms that there is a young crowd of students!

Appreciation for food:

I love eating. I wrote earlier...at least I think that I did...about how I was trying new foods. Well, I have tried lots of wonderful things and gained a new appreciation for food in general! Especially eating slowly. I would never say that I am a fast eater, but eating is a different culture here. It is completely acceptable to sit in a coffee house for hours here, or sit at a restaurant for half an hour after you have already finished your food. People here have an appreciation for eating. So, I have tried to adapt this! The first time that I did it was when I went to a cafe (they are super popular here) and nursed a piece of chocolate cake, called Sachertorte, for over 2 hours! Now, those who know me know that this is quite an accomplishment! It is super easy for me to eat desserts, and they are my favorite food group! I really have no self control sometimes! I would study some German, then take a bite, and continue and repeat! It was absolutely a great feeling too! I did the same the other week with an eclaire! First of all, I ate it with a fork! Which is super strange, but they eat everything with a fork here! I nursed that sucker for about 25 minutes! Again, so refreshing to do something like that! I really have enjoyed eating many things with a fork and taking longer to eat them! For instance, pizza! I love that there are no slices and that I can just cut my way through! I am quite a fan of taking my time eating and enjoying good company and conversation!!

I have also developed a new love for cheese! My roommates and I all love eating cheese, and they have opened my eyes to a wonderful world! Cheese is very popular here! My favorite cheese place is Käseland, which is cheese land! It is found in the open air market and it is a small store filled with lots and lots of cheese! When you walk in, you almost have to leave! The smell of all of the cheese is slightly overwhelming! My roommates and I are in love with this one cheese they have (which I bought the rest of the wheel today) which has figs on the top of it! I have never really been a cheese person but now I find it completely tasty and wonderful!!!

I am still falling in love with being here. Here is a quote that I wrote down this past week while traveling:

"I am in love with life right now! I am in love with the independence, something different than myself. Something new and exciting. I am falling in love with a young love. A new, undiscovered love. An exciting love that opens your eyes. This new love of showing me this life. A totally different, exhilarating life. My new life!"

Time for a looong post!

Alrighty!! I have not posted in a while! A long, long while! And boy do I have awesomeness to talk about! I do not really know where to begin!

-Opera

-Vienna night life

-learning german

-nursing chocolate

-the ball

-nashe market

Well, I guess I just have to begin with the ball!!! Yes... A BALL!!! I went to a ball a few nights ago! I real ball, in Vienna, oh and did I mention that it was in a palace???!!! Yes, the palace that the royal family lived in! That palace! Ball season in Vienna means that there are about 300 different balls before Ash Wednesday starting with New Years eve! The preparation for this felt like prom all over again! Everyone was talking about it at school and all of the girls were asking about dresses. The guys had to wear tux/suit with a bow-tie (the best kind of tie!) and only long dresses were allowed for girls! I got back to my house with my roomie and some friends and we started to get ready haha, again, it felt like a dance for school or something! After about 10 some odd attempts of trying to put my hair in a bun and secure it with bobby pins ( I even watched some youtube to try and learn a "simple" updo! Such a thing does not exist!) I was ready to go! Some friends came over to our house and we all went on the tram together, which was quite a sight! Seeing people in full length dresses riding on the trains! Lesson learned from that journey: it is REALLY hard to walk in heels on cobblestone! Another thing that added to our ridiculous picture!

When we got there it was SO surreal!!!! I could not believe it! When we walked in we were surrounded by fabulous looking people, beautiful people, dressed to the nines! There was a grand staircase covered in red carpeting with beautiful, large flowers at the top! (Actually, the largest flowers that I have EVER seen!) It was so amazing! We walked in and were greeted by the opening ceremonies, which is basically a deb ball! We started to walk around and found the jazz room! Oh yes, one of many rooms that I would stumble upon that evening! The room was beautiful with people all magically knowing how to swing dance! (The whole evening actually seemed like something right out of a dance scene from Pride and Prejudice.) We then found the jazz room, which had a small jazz trio! After some dancing in both of those rooms, both of which seemed to require a man to dance with (there was not girl group dancing like I was used to) we went back into the main ballroom. OHHH MY GOSH! Is all I can say to that! I tried to take pictures, but honestly, nothing can capture the pure grandness and amazingness that was that ballroom! It was purely magical! The entire ceiling was so high and painted with beautiful murals. There were tables surrounding the wooden dance floor. And yet again, everyone knew magically how to waltz. (I later learned that people start to take dance lessons here at 16 and it is pretty regular and normal!) The crazy thing about the ball was that it was like prom in some sense because everyone was so dressed up, but there were people of all ages there! The ball was put on by the Technical University here, so there were a lot of students, but there were a lot more adults! Soon a 30 piece orchestra entered the stage and began to play various waltz musical tunes! The dance floor was so crowded, despite the sheer size of it! I kept bumping into people! It was so magical! The whole room, all of it! And that was still just the beginning of the night! Like any female, my feet got tired and hurt due to the heels on my feet! So, I stashed them in a plant and we went on to find other rooms!

We also stumbled into the jazz room, the piano lounge, multiple small bar and table rooms, and the salsa room! The salsa room was thriving with energy, and it was filled with people from our program and more people our age. So, we stayed there for a while and danced! The drinks cost money so I had the clever idea to take empty unused wine glasses and champaign flukes and fill them with tap water from the bathroom! woop! The evening was then filled with some more random wandering throughout the rooms of the palace and some more dancing! Then, I got caught not wearing shoes by a man that was working the ball! opps!!! He said "This is the Hofburg, you need to wear shoes!" Ya...I guess that statement does make sense... haha! Well, another interesting thing about this ball...it went until 5 in the morning! Something that I am not used to about Vienna night life yet! The late hours!!! Back at school I am usually in bed between 1-2! Here, you would never think about leaving a place that early! My friend and I were exhausted and ended up sitting down for a while before we could regain the energy (and the legs) to dance! Despite my best efforts to stay for as long as possible, I ended up leaving at 3 am! There were still so many people going strong at the early hour! Including many adults!

The entire experience was wonderful! And yes, we did all have class the next day! Sometimes I would just be dancing but watching other people, watching the ceiling! Rarely would I look at the person I was dancing with, not because I was not enjoying myself or trying to be rude, but because I was so in awe of everything that was going on around me! It was seriously so amazing! I really could not get over it! The whole evening was wonderful and I really had the most fabulous, surreal time!

Well, can I really top that? I am not sure! This is going to surely be a long post!

Maybe I can talk about the opera now?

This post is just making my life here sound so classy! Which is not really the case! The Vienna Opera house is RIGHT by my school! Sooo awesome, right? YES! Now, I am the type of person who has always wanted to see an opera! I had created this grand thing in my head about them and how much I would enjoy them and not fall asleep despite their long hours and foreign languages! Well, although getting a standing room ticket and standing the whole time may not be the most glamorous thing, it is WELL worth the 3-4 Euro that I pay! Oh ya thats right! I payed 3 or 4 Euro to go see an opera! So what I had to stand the whole time? There was a railing and I was leaning on it! It was all well worth it! And everything I imagined was so true! The singing was beautiful, the sets were amazing, and the building itself...WOAH! I mean, again, my camera can not possibly capture the sheer beauty that is the inside of this opera house! There is an orchestra seating section right behind the orchestra, surrounded by probably 5 or 6 rows going up in height. A huge chandelier is on the ceiling and it continues shining the entire performance because it has hundreds of thousands of crystals on it! I have only seen two operas so far, but they have both just been amazing! It is such an experience and something completely wonderful! I know that they are not for everyone, but they are for so many people on this program and I LOVE it!!! I also love how I can see one for so cheaply! I plan on going to many more this semester! It was simply wonderful! Thankfully they have these small screens in front of you that read the subtitles of what is going on! So you are able to understand what is going on even if you do not speak the language! The first opera that I saw was in italian and the second in german! I really could not get over them when I was there! The whole thing was just so elaborate!

And now I am blabbering AGAIN! I often find myself blabbering when I talk about things here! If you know me at all you know that I love adjectives! I use them too frequently, and often in strings so that I can describe something using many of them! Well, I am using so many adjectives here because so many things I simply cannot describe with words or even pictures! The beauty and amazingness of them are simply too much for me to handle!

Well, perhaps I should move on now to talk about more things here! I might have to come back to them! However, I made a list at the top of the post for me to remember as I type :) awesome! Since this is getting super duper long! I'm going to update the picasa pictures (link on the top right of the page in the column area) and then I'll save the rest of the journeys for another time!

In the meantime:

I LOVE Vienna! I am having the most wonderful time!

Culture shock-rail system

Well, I have a lot more to talk about, but this is something that I think is a pretty big culture difference!

I have to take two trains to get to school everyday, something that I am completely not used to at all!!! One of the reasons I wanted to go to a big city was for something like this, something different than my University! It takes me about 35-45 minutes to get to school everyday, and even though I am 90% sure that I will hate it by the end of the semester...or even in a couple weeks, right now I love it! Traveling by myself has made me rely on myself so much more and feel more comfortable in unfamiliar places and situations! That is my goal for the end of the semester: to be ok if I don't know where I am and be able to, as an abroad staff member calls it, "get lost" with confidence! Cheesy...yes, but I'm a cheesy person!

Anyways....back to the crazy thing! Thing I miss about the south as well as Sewanee: passing hello and talking to random people you dont know. In Vienna....not so much the same! It took me a couple of days to get used to it, and I don't know if I still am! Thing I love about Sewanee: honor code. Vienna has one too! Vienna is one of the most trustworthy cities! People are on their honor to buy a ticket for the subway! There are no scanner machines, and they hardly ever get checked! If you don't have your ticket, then you get a fine. I have only been checked once and I have been taking the train multiple times a day for about a week! The person who checked my ticket was dressed like a normal person too!

Another cool thing is that the people in Vienna are super polite in the subway! Everyone always lines up on one side of the escalator so that people who are in a hurry can easily pass!

Other things I will talk about soon when I don't have a German test the next day: Vienna at night, kabab stands, successful use of German, and other daily encounters!!

First full day in Vienna!!

Well, today was my first full day in Vienna!!!!! woop woop!!

It began with waking up to navigate the train system in a big city, something that I am not used to! The three of us navigated our route the night before! It was quite an image! We had a huge map of Vienna spread out on the floor, in addition to smaller maps of the public transportation, guide books, highlighters, and a ipad app! Finally we figured it out and we were able to make the route this morning...only asking for help a couple of times! We went to the center to get the address for the police station. Although we did not get busted for a crime, it is required for study abroad students to register with the police! Crazy huh?! Once we registered we went and ate at this super cute cafe and tried out our broken German! ...which at this point is quite broken!

My roommates have their German class before me so I walked around the 1st district, the absolute center of Vienna for about an hour and a half! It was wonderful!!!! I found so many tourist spots, but then some more local spots as well! If you do know me, or even if you do not, I am a sucker for churches! I love looking at them, walking in them, and generally looking around! I found three churches today! Some in the most peculiar spots! All of them were so beautiful! I was amazed how even the small churches could have vast detail! I also found some cool things like a local shop that made wooden string instruments!

And then I had German.....

Now, the last language I took was Spanish, and that was first semester of freshman year, so two years ago!! Spanish and I do not really have the best relationship...past or present! I do not have fond memories of Spanish, but rather stressful memories about how I could not memorize verbs or vocabulary! Well, now I am in German! Which besides the fact that it was soooo incredibly stressful today, I am still super excited to learn! The class, which is intensive German for the next three weeks, consists of me taking German for three hours every day! So I will be learning and it will be awesome and great! But only in the first hour and a half of me learning German EVER consisted of articles (definite and indefinite), verb conjugations, the "w-words," numbers all the way to 100, general introductions and how to tell about yourself! A little intense for me, but hey, I want to learn German!!

The evening ended with us and two friends having dinner in our house! Which was lovely because I felt like a real grown-up, preparing dinner and eating together at the table! It was great and we had a fun time! Oh, and have I talked about my house? Yes, a house! The abroad program gives you the choice to live in an apartment, which most students seem to live in from what I have seem. So I signed up to live in one! Ohhhh buddy! I am living in a three story house! Although this place is new and does not really have furniture (but really, who needs that?), there is a kitchen, dining room, living room, marble staircase, the middle floor could hold 150 people at least, and three bedrooms on the top! We also have 5 bathrooms! This is literally crazy and nuts and wonderful and fun! The house is beautiful and it is in a safe, residential neighborhood in the 18th district in Vienna! I got lucky somehow!

Tomorrow begins the super intense German!! Bring it on!!!!

The rest of my travels and orientation!

Well, I need to continue to tell the tales about the first days of the adventure!!

Ok, so Paris…thankfully I met another IES student, Ellison, while I was in the airport and thank goodness for that because the Paris airport was super confusing!!! I only know how to say hello, thank you, and do you speak English in French…apparently this was enough for the airport workers to believe that I was actually French! After just saying hello…which I don’t really think people were doing in the airport…(culture shock #1: not in the south anymore!) the worker talked back to me in French and when my eyes got wide and I froze, we performed some hand signals and broken English and Frenglish peppered with Spanish speaking. Walking through the airport, the signs were not consistent and nothing really made sense! Finally we found our plane and boarded!

After a surprisingly bumpy road and some more Frenglish, we landed in VIENNA!!!!!! Again, I was cracking up laughing…to myself may I add, and smiling constantly! I did not know what to do, nor could I believe that I was in Vienna!! It was the strangest feeling that was not dream like, nor reality…a weird medium place. We got off the plane and found baggage claim…somehow! Culture shock #1 started to sink in…the fact that I was not longer in a place where smiling at each other frequently happened. I felt helpless because I did not know how to say anything in German. We found baggage claim and thankfully, right when we were about to file the missing luggage claim our bags came out on the tram! We met some more IES students in the baggage claim area and a couple more joined us! We ended up making a big pod of baggage and students! All of us were eager and excited!

After waiting in the airport for more people to arrive, we left on a bus to our orientation in Deutschlandsberg, Austria! Deutschlandsberg is in southern Austria and it is BEE-U-TIFUL!!!! It is a smedium town with its own Vineyards and rolling hills! We stayed in a hostel and we met our roommates, mine are Grace and Courtney! We were thrown into the mix of meetings and power points when we got there after a traditional Austrian dinner of schnitzel!

Orientation was filled with a lot of fun activities! I went to a CASTLE! Yes, I am aware that they are everywhere in Europe (we passed at least three going back to Vienna today) but it was still awesome and it was my first one! The castle was filled with artifacts from the Celts and Romans, and some modernish glassware from the 19^th century! I learned that I never want to live in a castle because they are super duper cold! It was freezing! The castle even had a torture chamber! It was really crazy! The view from the top was absolutely wonderful! I could not use enough capital letters or exclamation points to get that point across! Austria’s small towns are in clusters, each with a main church and a main street and houses! The houses are a mix or modern and traditional. They are so colorful! It is like a dream town for me, since I am such a colorful person!

Other fun activities during orientation included: walking through the town and taking pictures, going into a beautiful church with gold motifs everywhere! (I am not used to Catholic churches, let alone churches with such incredible detail and extravagance), learning how to waltz (Why would I need to know this? Oh, it’s ball season in Vienna, yes ball season!!! The first one that we are going to is in a palace, in Vienna…WHAT?!?!! Yes, how sick is that? Super amazing! So now I am prepared for this cultural tradition!), eating more local Austrian food (I am a fairly picky eater, parents be proud of what I am eating right now!), learned some German and tried it out in public (which was pretty embarrassing, but hey, you have to try it out to learn, right?), watching a European sport sweeping in popularity called Radball!! (OK, THIS is the WEIRDEST thing that I have EVER seen!! EVER!! So you are in teams of two, and you are playing soccer…while riding a bicycle! Oh yes, a bicycle!! It is polo…FOR BIKES!! The sport it NUTS! I talked to some local Austrian kids and learned some phrases! I also tried riding the bike, which is super difficult because the seat is in the back and they do not sit down, so the bike has a weird balance that is very different from a normal bike! People were falling, hitting each other, popping wheelies, it was crazy! And super intense!!), and generally being in a honeymoon phase of culture shock! The phase that IES calls us being obsessed with everything around us! But that’s ok with me because orientation was absolutely heavenly!!

Today we got to VIENNA!!!!!!!!!! We left our dear hostel and drove to Vienna! Driving in was crazy! I really did not know what to expect! Vienna is not exactly like I pictured it, it is much more urban, which I knew it would be because it is a big city of over 1 million people! The buildings have beautiful architecture and I cannot wait to start exploring the city tomorrow!!! Tomorrow I begin to learn German!! I’m so excited to learn German!!! Yea!!

First days in Austria!!

Well hello hello!!!

I am somewhere in the south of Austria right now at orientation for study abroad Vienna!! woop woop!!! Now that I am rested and on this time zone, I am feeling great and ready to recount what has been happening the last few days!

The day I went to the airport was stressful, at least for me, probably for mom too! Since Atlanta is still covered in ice, we took Marta to the airport. When we got there, my bag was overweight...we had the weight wrong. So, after trying to repack and reduce the weight, we got a small duffel bag to put other things in. All worked out! I was so nervous the entire time that I was in the airport! I knew that I was going to have an amazing time, but it was so nerve-racking thinking about what I was about to do! When I got on the plane the nervousness hit! My stomach dropped to the floor when I thought about what was about to happen! I did not sleep at all on the flight...which was the opposite of what I was hoping for! Normally I am a moving object narcoleptic! You could ask any of my family members! It is common for me to fall asleep in cars within the first half hour. I am assuming it was because I was so nervous that I did not sleep! But I am not sure!

When I landed in Paris, my connection, my stomach dropped again! However, I was literally laughing out loud and talking to myself, which is not uncommon, and people started to stare.....

ok, i ended up skyping with people and now it is late and I NEED to go to bed!!!

ill finish later!