It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Well this past week has been pretty eventful. Besides the normal nannying for myself and archival work for Ben we had a few interesting things to do this past week. First off, it’s been getting really chilly so I’ve had to go shopping to buy a few more accessories to keep me warm. On Tuesday Ben and I went to the Ambassador Reception at the U.S. Ambassador to Austria’s house. Apparently every year the Ambassador has a Reception for all the U.S. and Austrian Fulbright students. It was a very fancy affair, so we both dressed up and braced the cold to venture over there. It was a lovely event, with free champagne and wine along with delicious appetizers and finger foods. Didn’t get to speak much with the Ambassador, just when we entered, otherwise we socialized with the Fulbright gang and of course the Ambassador’s German Shepard who was greeting all the guests and searching for crumbs. After we were all kicked out the Fulbright gang headed to a pub to keep the party going, so needless to say over the whole night we had lots to drink and were very merry.

The other big thing that happened this week? The Christkindl Markt’s opened around Vienna! For those who don’t know about the Christkindl Markt’s they are beautifully decorated Christmas Markets in multiple locations through out the city of Vienna. The main one is at the Rathaus-Vienna’s City Hall building. The market’s have yummy food, punsch, and lots of booths with plenty of Christmas stuff to buy, decorations, presents, snow globes, candles, and more. I’ve already been to the Christmas Market’s around town 3 times this week, but am proud to say that I have yet to buy anything. I’ve got to look around more and see what Christmas presents I want to buy for everyone.

We’re really getting settled here, but still dearly miss our friends and family back home. We are looking forward to the days that we will have some visitors from back home!

A few upcoming events we’re looking forward to:

-The Fulbright gang is going to a Vienna Capitals hockey game this Sunday!

-Thanksgiving! Obviously the Austrians do not celebrate Thanksgiving but we are planning on participating in a Thanksgiving potluck, which should be delicious and fun.

-My birthday! My 23^rd birthday will be on Dec. 1^st and we will be attending the opera to see “La Boheme” maybe go out for dinner, but mostly the opera.

-Getting our Residency permits! We should be getting them sometime this week, please pray for no complications!

What I miss....

It’s already November and we’ve been in Vienna for over 6 weeks now. I can’t believe how quickly time is passing! Well first I have to get some of the unfortunate issues in place. Unfortunately due to complications back in California we STILL haven’t been able to turn in all the paperwork needed to apply for Residency. This is becoming a potentially bad situation, because we don’t know how long it will take for the residency paperwork to go through, and worst case scenario I’ll have to leave in December because I didn’t get my residency. Please keep us in your prayers while we continue with the process of applying for residency.

Other than issues with paperwork, our time here has been going well. I’ve been having a fun time with the family I nanny doing different things each day, and overall just loving getting to know the very nice family that I am working with. Yesterday was Halloween and for the after school English course we had a little Halloween party complete with sweets (I’m still recovering from all the sugar I had yesterday).

Last week was pretty calm, but Ben and I did get to see another opera, “Fidelo” by Beethoven. It was really awesome, and had such amazing music! Besides the amazing music, the sets and costumes were so elaborate and were breath taking. I mean they had a working drawbridge on stage in the final act, quite impressive.

Today was a holiday in Austria so since most things were closed we decided to go a little out of the city limits to walk through the woods to see all the changing colors of the leaves. It was pretty chilly but overall a great time. After our walk through the woods we went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, it was delicious and it was nice to have something a little more close to restaurants that are in America.

Recently, since we’ve been gone now for over 6 weeks, I’ve been starting to get a little home sick. So I’ve started a little list of the things that I miss most:

1.       My Family (Mommy, Daddy, brothers, Aunts, Uncles, cousins-I miss them all so much!)

2.       My Murray boy. Every week when I Skype with my parents I get to see him, but he doesn’t understand what’s going on so it’s not as fun as I would hope. Vienna is so dog friendly, and I see dogs everywhere, and whenever I see a beagle I get a little choked up thinking about my spoiled little Murray.

3.       My friends- Mainly Chelsea haha. When walking around town and something makes me laugh, I’ll immediately tell Ben, but sometimes he doesn’t get the joke, so it’s times like those that make me miss my friend because I know she would laugh along with me =)

4.       Starbucks-Yes they have Starbucks here, but to be honest now that I’ve had real Austrian coffee, I know that it is of much better quality. However, as the holiday season begins I really start missing the special holiday Starbucks drinks (Peppermint White Mocha) in the red Christmas cups. I basically miss when I could get a Starbucks and blend in as opposed to here where having a Starbucks makes me stand out.

5.       Food-Knowing how picky I am about food, I didn’t think I would enjoy much of the new food here, but thankfully I’m really enjoying trying to new food here. However, I do miss certain types of food from back home. In-N-Out for example, and good ‘ol fashioned Mexican food. There’s only 2 Mexican Restaurants here in Vienna (and apparently one is a gay bar-don’t ask me how I know that), I haven’t tried the Mexican food yet, but I’m excited to try it.

6.       American TV- I’m enjoying trying to learn German by watching the Simpsons, or old Nickelodeon cartoons in German, but sometimes I just wish I could watch one of my trashy reality shows and relax. Besides television shows, I greatly miss watching the Sharks! All the games are on in the middle of the night here (like around 3 am) so I have yet to listen/watch a game, and I feel like I’m having hockey with drawls =(

7.       Text messaging- ‘nuff said. I can’t just shoot a text to someone when I have something to say to them.

8.       ABC- When I left my job at ABC I was super excited for this new adventure, and thought it would be a nice time for a break. Even though, I truly am enjoying the break, I really miss my kids, and I want to know if they are still progressing the way they were when I left. I hope they remember me, because when I get back I’d love to come by and visit all of them.

9.       Target/Walmart-Yes I know this makes me sound like a cheap ‘Murican, but I really do miss the convenience and price of these shops. We were only able to pack so much when we came here, and now that it’s getting really cold, I need to go shopping. But instead of being able to go to just one store and find a bunch of stuff for cheap, I have to go to a bunch of different stores trying to find things that fit.

10.   Church Family- I like to think that I have a few church families. Cambrian Park Church, RBCR, and the Esswein family church. I miss being able to go to church on Sunday and chat with the people I see to catch up. I miss feeling like part of the family. While here we’ve gone to a few churches, but they aren’t as intimate where everyone knows everyone. I would love to find a church to get involved in here, so make sure you continue to pray for us to find a consistent church while here.

From Oct. 23rd...

(I wrote this blog on Oct. 23rd, but forgot to post it until now! whoops!)

This past week we got to do a lot of fun stuff that you have to do while living in Vienna. Firstly on Tuesday I went shopping to try to get some warmer clothes and a little more fashionable clothes-everyone here seems to be very fashionable so I’ve been looking around seeing what’s “in” and I was able to go shopping to get some more clothes that will help me fit in to the culture around me haha. That was fun, and thankfully most of the clothes I found had their US size as well as their European size, since they’re different. After spending the day shopping I went home got out some of my new clothes and got dressed up to meet Ben downtown to go to the Opera to see “La Traviata”.

We just did standing room at the Opera because it’s only 4 Euro a person, but you can’t buy your tickets ahead of time, so Ben got there earlier than I to wait outside. I got there in JUST enough time before they started letting people in, so we waited for about an hour and half before we were allowed into the Opera Hall, and we quickly lined up with the rest of the Standing Room folk, to wait to be ushered into our spots. Thankfully, we had really nice spots, so we marked our spots then walked around the Opera House and took pictures before it started. We had a great time and at the intermission got a coffee in the lobby, after the intermission a few people had left so we had a little more stretching room which was nice. When it was over we quickly got our jackets from the coat check and since we were starving we walked across the street for some good old American Subway for dinner. Overall, it was a great experience and we’d like to do the Opera again when possible. I also really enjoyed the story of “La Traviata”, the only thing I didn’t like was that they made it more of a “modern version”. Obviously the music was all the same, but the costumes and acting parts of it were all modern, and I would have enjoyed seeing the more traditional version, but we still enjoyed it.

Otherwise the week was pretty laid back. I worked an extra day this week and we ended up going to an indoor swim hall on Thursday which was a lot of fun. They had a water slide, a “whirlpool” section and most of all the water was nice and warm (which was great since it was so cold outside!). However, it was interesting to see how different our culture is from the European culture when it comes to even in little things, like how they run a pool. First off there was just one giant locker room to keep your stuff and to change meaning men and women used this huge locker room to change. There were a few stalls (which I used to change in to my swimsuit) but otherwise there were a lot of men, women, and kids running around naked and getting changed. Very interesting. Also, with the water slide, if that was in a pool in America there would be lifeguards at the top telling you when to go and exactly how to lay down when going down the slide, but not here. They just had a light above the slide that would change from red to green when you could go down the slide, and you could go backwards, forwards upside down etc. they seem to be must more trusting of people here, and don’t patronize them with having a lifeguard there having to explain to you how to go down a slide.

This weekend was also fairly laid back since I have had a cold since Friday and haven’t been feeling super great. However, we did get to do some fun stuff. Yesterday we had a “Sigmund Freud Day” by going to the famous Doctor’s old residence and museum here in Vienna. I really enjoyed the museum much more than I thought I would. We all hear about Freud’s sexual theories and his “Id” “Ego” and “Superego”, but the museum wasn’t as devoted to his specific works, it was more of a memorial to an extremely brilliant individual and his family. Most of the things we saw were orginial manuscripts of his works, pictures of his family and friends and a few items here and there that belonged to Sigmund Freud. They also had focused on the tragedy surrounding Freud and his family. Since he was a Jew living in Austria during WWII, he and his family had to flee to London to avoid being put into Concentration Camps. Most of Freud’s sisters were taken away to concentration camps where they died. They also discussed the fact that the SS had mad many visits to his home (the home that we were in for the museum) mainly looking for gold, money and other valuables to steal from him. It really was quite an interesting to learn more and more about his life as a person and an individual how he loved his family and seemed to have a great sense of humor as opposed to just focusing on his seemingly odd sexual theories. The other thing at the museum that intrigued me was the room devoted to Anna Freud (Sigmund’s youngest daughter) who also became a psychiatrist, but her work revolved around child development and such. They talked about how she opened a daycare in Vienna for under privileged kids, but it only stayed open for a year before she had to shut it down and flee to London with her parents to escape the Nazis. They even had some of her original typed notes for observations at this daycare, talking about how these kids started associating her with food because every day when they arrived she was sitting by the window with an apple or orange that she would share with the kids. Just some interesting little tid-bits that I learned while at the museum.

After spending the afternoon at the Freud museum, we went down the street to Café Landtmann which was Freud’s favorite place to go for coffee and food, which is right across from the University where he taught. He would apparently sit here and do his writings while sipping coffee. It is an extremely expensive restaurant so Ben and I just had coffee there to say that we’ve been there haha. But it was very good coffee and we sat in a booth and talked sipping our coffee before we left for our next little journey.

Since we were out we decided to take a trip to the hotel where my parents were thinking of staying when they come to visit so we checked out the rooms and were able to figure out how close it was to the U-Bahn station and downtown. After our “research trip” we went to our favorite cheap pizzeria for a delicious late lunch/ early dinner, then headed home.

Now it’s Sunday and everything is closed, since I’ve been sick I slept in too late to go to the church service we were thinking about. So today I think we will just be staying inside, relaxing, staying warm, trying to get over this cold and planning out what we want to do next in this wonderful city =)