My Journey Home-Bratislava

I’ve been in London for 2 full days now with Kimmy and I’ve been having a blast. What a beautiful city! I’ve loved everything we’ve done so far and I still have 2 whole days left =). Although, starting my trip home started a couple days ago, so I should probably re-cap.

May 18^th was my last day in Vienna, so Ben and I went to visit Schönbrunn and walked around a little before settling on a bench to just relax. We sat and talked and enjoyed being there together one last time. We then had a fairly relaxing evening, saw some friends then headed home to get some rest for the busy day ahead.

On May 19^th we had some chocolate croissants from Der Mann with coffee before heading to the train station to go to Bratislava (with all my huge bags in tow). We checked the bags at the train station then walked around the city, seeing a few sites, like the Castle there, St. Michael’s Gate, etc. Since we didn’t have a big breakfast we were starting to get hungry so we found a little place (a brewery type restaurant for a local beer) and decided this would be a good place to eat. Plus the fact that a half liter of beer was only 1 Euro 70, also helped make our decision ;). We had some delicious food, Ben got garlic soup that had a bunch of cheese at the bottom, and I got a half chicken in a blue cheese sauce with fries. It was delicious! After that we walked around a little more just exploring the city and saw a few booths with homemade knickknacks and stuff for sale. We checked those out and kind of meandered on back towards the train station where we would take the bus to the Bratislava airport.

We got on the bus with our huge bags and took it on out to the airport. Since I was flying Ryanair their desk didn’t open until about 7 (my flight was at 9) and we got there around 6:30, so we just hung out at the airport which was nice. When the desk finally did open I was nervous to weigh my bags to make sure I kept them under the allotted weight, since it was very expensive if your bags went over. They were supposed to be under 21 kg and under 16 kg and my bags were 20.8 and 15.8 kg. Woot woot! Once huge burden had been lifted and I immediately felt much better about traveling. Ben walked me to security we said our sad good-bye.

As I was going through security my name was called on the speaker overhead, so I asked what that was about. The security agents all said, “ah you is ok” so I moved on. I walked through security, through customs, where the lady seems confused seeing I only had one stamp in it when I came in through Dusseldorf back in September, so I quickly showed her my Vienna ID and she allowed me to pass on through. I settled in near my gate and my name was again called on the overhead speaker. What the heck do they want? They didn’t stop me in security when I went through and I kept telling them all I was the person being called on the intercom. I freaked out a little when I realized I had to go back to security, so I did and quickly told and agent that I was the person they had been calling and asked them what to do. “You wait here madame.” Oooohhh kkaaaay. I waited while the agent went in the back room to get another man who then came out and asked me to follow him. Oh my gosh, do they think I’m some sort of threat to security? What’s wrong? He quickly asks me if I have a lighter in my bag (which I had bought as a souvenir for a friend of mine) so I tell him “yes” and he says you can’t have that in your checked baggage. Well ok, this sucks I guess I have to throw it out now. So I got to my bag in the bag room, then removed the lighter and gave it to him, he looked at it and told me to put it in my pocket. Ok? I was glad I didn’t have to throw it away, but I was confused as to what kind of security rules allow you to have fire on your person, but not in your checked bags. Oh well.

The rest of the trip was fairly calm, waited to get on the plane, with the typical Ryanair mad dash to the plane. I had terrible expectations for Ryanair, but it wasn’t too bad, so that was nice. Besides the screaming baby behind me, the flight overall was fairly uneventful.

The "RyanAir" Mad Dash to get the best seats!

Now I know I’m in London now, but I think I’ll hold off on my London blog until after I get home.  So I know you all are on the edge of your seats, but you’ll just have to wait to hear about my London trip.

I'll leave my heart in Vienna

Well Ben and I just spent a lovely but quick weekend in Prague. We have been wanting to do a trip to Prague since before we arrived, and continually put it off until now and I’m really glad that we finally got to go.

We arrived in the Czech Republic late on Friday evening, found a cab and had them take us to our hotel. We stayed in a really nice, reasonable place with complimentary breakfast in the morning, and was (of course) walking distance from all the down town attractions. We quickly got to sleep and set our alarm for the next morning.

When we woke up the next morning we had a lovely breakfast and tried to fill ourselves up with the free food so we wouldn’t have to pay for much more food for the rest of the day, it is interesting how people’s characters come out when a free breakfast is involved too. There was one woman there (it wasn’t me I swear!) who took about 3-4 baguettes worth of bread to her table for her little family of 3. I understand that it’s a free breakfast but there’s’ no need to take THAT much bread for yourself! Geez! Anyways, after breakfast Ben and I headed downtown taking pictures the whole way of the lovely architecture. We walked through the old gate into the old part of town and walked around near all the souvenir and crystal shops. At the end of the road there was a huge town square of sorts with the big clock, and every hour everyone gathers around to see it chime and have the little robots dance around. Since we had some time before the clock would start chiming, we went to check out a church right near the town square. It was beautiful! It was definitely a “Bohemien” church with beautiful art and amazing architecture and statues. It was all very baroque so the church seemed much lighter than other churches we’ve seen. We then walked across the town square to the clock to see it chime. The chiming itself wasn’t super impressive, in the context of todays technology, but when thinking about how long this animatronic clock has been dancing around at the hour, it was really neat to think about!

When the clock was done chiming we decided to head over to the castle, and along the way found a Hard Rock Café! No, we didn’t eat there, but it was really neat to see, and I almost got something from it, but decided against it. We continued our journey to the castle and crossed the beautiful bridge where many jewelers and artists were selling their work. It was all very beautiful, but didn’t get to buy anything from them unfortunately. On the bridge we came across a sculpture of sorts that apparently is rubbed for luck. There’s two pictures, one of a woman and one of a dog, and apparently you rub the woman for good luck, and the dog is bad luck, but people were rubbing both, and I didn’t get to get close to either of them since there was such a huge line, so on we went with our journey to the castle. We trekked up a huge staircase to get to the castle and when we got to the top we had a beautiful view of the city. We took some pictures and enjoyed looking at the city before walking farther into the grounds of the castle. Apparently, we arrived there just in time for the “Changing of the Guard”. Since the castle is technically no longer a castle, it is currently a political building which is guarded, and we saw a little bit of the changing of the guards before moving on to the next part. We saw a tiny part of the garden then moved to the other side of the castle where we saw another church. This one was older than the other church we had previously checked out and was more of a neo-gothic style. Once again, another beautiful church.

We then left the castle area, tried to see Kaftka’s house on the way down, but apparently you can only get to it if you’re in a tour group, which is unfortunate. We walked down another set of stairs and crossed another bridge and made our way over to the Jewish Quarter of Prague. Since it was a Saturday the area was very quiet, but we still got to see the synagogue and the outside of the Jewish cemetery. Also, while we were there we did some crystal shopping! We had seen other stores, but Ben showed me the store where he bought crystal for his parents when he was there in 2003 so we went to that shop. Thankfully, they said they will ship our crystal for us, so we bought a few things 2 gifts and 1 thing for ourselves. All together, it was pretty expensive and would love to come back to buy more nice things, but for now I think we’re good. After some more shopping around we had a later lunch/early dinner at a restaurant had some local Czech beers and enjoyed our time there. We even met an older couple from Arizona who were on vacation there. So we talked to them for a little while before they had to leave. When we finished our meal we walked outside and, BAM! It was raining! The whole day the weather had been gorgeous, bright, sunny, and warm, and now it was raining. Thankfully, I had my umbrella so I busted it out on our walk back home, stopping a few times to get souvenirs. We got back to the hotel around 4 and spent the rest of the evening in our room watching hockey on TV, playing games on the internet and eating our snacks for “dinner”. It’s a good thing we got back when we did too, because not long after getting back the storm had hit and we could hear the pouring rain outside with thunder and lightning as well.

The next morning we had another filling breakfast then checked out of our hotel before walking around downtown again, looking for more gifts and other types of food. For lunch we got some foods that were being sold from booths in the town square. I had a yummy Langos which is basically a flat piece of fried dough and you can pick your “topping” they had Nutella, ketchup, or garlic. I chose garlic. Ben had some kraut, but got a little bamboozled with the price since the guy said you had to buy it by grams, so Ben wanted 100 g of it, and the guy pilled on a bunch more anyways. Oh well, he seemed to enjoy it even though it was overly expensive.

After our lunch we headed back to the train station and waited for our train to arrive then hopped on the train to start our 5 hour journey home. After we arrived back in Vienna, we met up with our friends at a Heurigen for some wine and food and of course just overall conversation. It’s been great to spend as much time with our friends as possible before heading back home.

It was interesting though, as we were riding the U-Bahn to meet up with our friends, I felt so peaceful. I felt like I was home after being in Prague where I didn’t know where anything was, and didn’t know the language that was being spoken. Riding the U-bahn once we got to Wien felt comfortable to me, and it made me feel relaxed because we were home. I will only be able to call this amazing city “home” for 2 more weeks, and then I leave. I got kind of teary eyed thinking about it. I have loved everything that has happened in the past 8 months for Ben and I. Yes, it’s been stressful at times and I thought to myself, “Why did I leave the States and a job to come here?” But I know it was all in God’s plan for us. I am so grateful for this opportunity, and when I leave I know I’ll be leaving a little of my heart in this city because it will always be special to me. I pray that Ben and I will get to come back often, and maybe (if we win the lottery or something) we could have a flat here to come to during the summers or during holidays. We will see what the future holds.  

More Esswein's in Europe

I just counted (again) how many days I have left in Vienna. Fourteen. Only 14 more days left before I head to Bratislava, then London, then home. There’s still so much to do! I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

Well a few big things: First off, I just started working with another family about 3 weeks ago. Crazy, I know since I’m leaving so soon, but they’re American and have a 6 month old baby. The Dad works for the UN and they just moved to Vienna, so the Mom said she’d be willing to have me babysit at least for a little while that I’ll be here. I’ve really enjoyed this family and wish it would have worked out for me to have worked for them longer, but hopefully we will be able to keep in touch.

Secondly, Ben’s parents just visited us! They arrived on Tuesday the 17^th of April and we got to do a lot of the touristy things since they were here, obviously St. Stephan’s and Hermesvilla as well as the Hofburg, plus Café Landtmann . During the first weekend they were here, we took a trip to a little Austrian town, Mittersill where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, did a little exploring in the rain, and checked out the castle there. We also got to go to Munich (which was only 2 hours way) to meet up with a second-cousin of Ben’s mother. We had a good time, but weren’t in Munich long (next time I go to Munich I need to spend more than 24 hours there! Haha). We went to a Bierhalle got some souvenirs, then headed back to Mittersill. Ben’s parents left for Italy the Monday after they arrived and were there there until that Thursday, then they came back to Vienna to spend more time with us before heading back to the States. Thankfully they arrived home safely and they were even able to take home some of our space bagged clothes and souvenirs.

Thankfully, we’ve been doing better financially so we’ve been catching up on all our souvenirs, and will hopefully be able to finish soon. I believe we only have 8 or so souvenirs left to buy, and since we’re going to Prague this weekend, we’ll be able to get a few out of the way while there. The plan for this week is to get as many as I can, but also try to enjoy being in Vienna. While I’m thinking about it, here are a few things I want to do before I leave:

-Another picnic or some sort of gathering with the rest of the Fulbright gang before I leave

-Prague

-A nice brunch out by Heitzing (Ben and I have found this place that has a great deal for a huge breakfast, and haven’t been able to go yet!)

-Hookah bar

-Finish buying souvenirs and ship them home!

-Heurigen (as many times as possible)

-One more opera- “The Barber of Seville”


Ben and I are doing a last little “vacation” before I leave and are going to spend the weekend in Prague, checking out the castle, doing some shopping, and overall just enjoy being together for one of our last weekends left before I head home. I plan to get a lot of shopping done, mostly crystal.  

Prost! Ben and I at Cafe Landtmann on a lovely afternoon with his parents.

45 Days and Counting...

On the train coming home from babysitting today, I got out my Planner to make a “To-Do” list for tomorrow since I don’t have any work. I looked at the date, and it really hit me, “Wow, today is April 4^th, and I’m leaving Vienna on May 19^th.” I counted it up and have a total of 45 (or 44 depending on if you start by counting today or tomorrow) days left in Vienna with Ben. Over the past few weeks I’ve been so excited about going home to see my family, my friends, Murray and start settling back down to life in the States, I completely overlooked the fact that this city of Wien has been my home for almost 8 months and I’ve gotten in to my own little routine here. I’m really truly going to miss this city and this amazing adventure in my (our) life is almost over. Ben and I spent so long preparing for this trip here, but now that the end is coming near I feel like I’m not really prepared for it. There’s still so much to do and like I said, I’m really going to miss this time in our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, Ben and I have been able to do so many things while here, but there is still a lot that we want to do. Example, we need to do our trip to Prague! We are planning on doing it the first weekend in May, taking a train on May 4^th in to Prague then spending the night there, then doing all the sight seeing and shopping on May 5^th, taking a late train back to Vienna (Fellow Fulbrighters: if you are interested in joining us for this weekend trip let us know via FB!).

There’s also the things that I don’t think we’ve taken ENOUGH advantage of while here! The cafes, the Heurigens, the down town adventure, and more. So for the next few weeks, I plan on trying to do all these things more and more, even if it means just me going down town to the Hofburg by myself to sit in the park with a Käsekrainer.

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about what type of things I will be excited for when I get back to the States (mainly food items) and thinking about all the things I will miss, so while they are in my head, here are just a few of the things I’m looking forward to vs. things I’m going to miss:

Can’t wait to have in the States:

• ·         In’ N’ Out Burger Cheeseburger
• ·         A Chocolate Milk Shake
• ·         Buffalo Wings
• ·         Starbucks-Ok, now I know that it won’t be the same as the “real” coffee here, but I do miss my sweet little treats from there like the White Chocolate Mochas. I now put Starbuucks more in a category for being like a “Milk Shake” or “Dessert” place than a “coffee place”.
• ·         Availability to a car- I’ve loved the public transit here, don’t get me wrong. But it will be nice to have the freedom of a car again, where I can leave when I want, arrive when I want, park right next to where I need to be, etc.
• ·         My friends and family
• ·         Vanilla and Peanut Butter – Aww, The simple pleasures in life! I’ve done some baking while here, and they don’t sell Vanilla extract here the way that we have it in the States. In the States it’s a liquid. Here it’s in sugar form, which obviously is harder to bake with. I miss regular Vanilla for my baking. Also, we have not had peanut butter once since being here. It’s not big here. Although, I have become a huge fan of Nutella, I still can’t wait to get home and have a classic PB & J sandwich.

Austrian things that will be missed:

• ·         Coffee – I’m going to miss having a Melange with the delicious Julius Mienl coffee
• ·         Pastries – All of them. The Sacher Torte, Apple Strudel, Chocolate croissants, and more.
• ·         "Grüß Got" – I LOVE this greeting! Translated it means “God’s Greeting”, which I’ve always found so welcoming. It’s really just used as a “Hello” here, so it’s just a nice way to acknowledge someone’s presence, but still. I love this greeting, and might try to take it back with me to the States.
• ·         The kids I babysit – I’ve had ups and downs with all of them, but they will all be missed in one way or another.
• ·         Schnitzel, Berner Wurstel, Käsekrainer and other assorted Viennese food
• ·         The freedom/Routine – Ben and I have had a lot of flexibility and time to be able to just spend time with each other. We’ve gotten in to a routine where we have our morning coffee together, maybe with some pastries or cereal and play cards, listening to the radio and talking. It’s been nice to have the ability to sit and talk with out feeling a real time constraint. I’ve also loved my little routine when going to work. Walking to the train station, picking up a “Heute” and looking through the articles (Is there anything that I might be able to translate? Anything that looks interesting) Then getting on the train, flipping to the “Spiel” page and doing the Sudoku while traveling to my destination.
• ·         The opportunities- Yes, we’ve been living in Europe for 8 months, and no we haven’t really been outside of Austria much. It’s been nice just being close to say, Italy, Switzerland or France. We haven’t been able to go unfortunately, but because we’re so close, the opportunity was always there!
• ·         The walking/Public Transit
• ·         The Fulbrighters – We’ve been so blessed to have such an amazing group of Fulbrighters here with us and willing to socialize with us! I’m glad we’ve made our little clique, and Ben and I look forward to coming to visit all of you in the States once we get back (Yes, I just invited ourselves to visit you all! Haha).

I’m sure there’s a ton that I’m missing on both lists, but this is what I could think of for now. Well, I’m off the enjoy the beautiful weather, in this beautiful city that I’ve grown so fond of.

Sacher Torte & A Baby

Only approximately 8 more weeks for me left in Vienna. I can’t believe how quickly time is passing! I leave Vienna on May 19^th, then go to London for a few days to visit Kimmy and see the sights. I’m trying to enjoy everything here with Ben, but as I’ve stated in the past, it’s exciting to think about going home to see my family and friends.

One of the main things I wanted to try to do before going home was to practice making the Viennese specialty, the Sacher Torte. Yesterday, I invited some friends over for the day so we could attempt to make the Sacher Torte as well as some other baking goods like chocolate chunk cookies and hot cross buns. The Sacher Torte recipe I had was in German from the Hotel Sacher Cookbook, so I needed Tessa and Ann’s help to translate and it was quite the complicated and detailed process. We spent most of the day making the batter the perfect consistency, allowing the cake to bake, then letting it cool, cutting it up to make a Marillen Marmalade layer, then making the icing to cover the cake with. We all had a part and we were glad we were all there to attempt the first Sacher Torte we’d ever made. Now hopefully the next time I’ll need minimal help haha. Later that evening we all had a piece and from the feedback it sounded like many people thought it tasted fairly similar to the Original Sacher Torte, so now I will be able to use this recipe in the future. There are a few things that I would think I would try to tweek for next time, but overall it turned out very well.

Another big thing that happened this weekend is that the Easter Market opened at Schönbrunn! We went there on Saturday but just got to look around quickly, so we will be going back sometime soon to try the g’spritz Wein as well as the yummy food. Well and of course do some shopping! They had a lot of beautiful booths with lots of fun gifts to buy. I can’t wait to go back and shop!

For those of you who didn’t see, Ben and I also became and Aunt and Uncle this weekend when Ben’s younger sister gave birth to a 9 lbs. 1.06 oz, 20 in, Azaileeya Rose at 4:05 am on March 25^th, 2012. We welcome this little girl and can’t wait to see her when we get home.

A Night to Remember...

Well a lot of stuff happened this week. Some good, some bad, but at least it shook things up a bit. I’ll start with the good exciting stuff that happened this week.

First off, I booked my flight to come home in May! I’m going to miss Vienna, the people we’ve met here and obviously my husband since he will be staying here for another month before coming back home. But I also can’t wait to get home to see my family, friends and of course my little Murray boy. The other big exciting part about coming home is that I will be stopping in London for a few days to visit my cousin Kimmy and obviously see the sites. I’m so excited to go to London and do as much touristy stuff as possible! I’m very much looking forward to the entire thing. So for those of you who are wondering about the dates, here’s the plan for my trip coming home:

Ben and I will take a train to Bratislava and spend the day there on Saturday, May 19^th, I will then fly from Bratislava to London. We were able to find a good priced ticket on Ryanair, but it doesn’t fly out of Vienna so we figured we could at least make a last little day trip out of it as well. I will arrive in London late on the 19^th and will stay until the 23^rd. On May 23^rd my flight is bright an early out of London Stansted airport at 7:35 meaning I will have to be at the airport by like 5:35 or so. It will be quite a long day, but it will be nice to start my journey home. From what I understand I will arrive back in San Francisco around 16:00-17:00 (4:00p-5:00p for you non-military time folk lol) on May 23^rd, so it will be nice to be back home and the plan would obviously be to stay up as late as possible to try to avoid jetlag haha.

The other good news is that my cousin Kimmy will be visiting Ben and I in Vienna next weekend! We can’t wait to have her and we’ll have lots to do! It’ll be so nice to see a familiar face again.

Now for the “bad news”. Well Ben and I have really enjoyed going to opera while here and Carmen was playing on Thursday so we got Tessa and Jeff to come along with us and we we’re all really excited. We stood in the standing section for Act I and II humming along to all the beautiful music and trying to follow the plot line as much as possible. As the third act came around, I was standing in the corner, and because Carmen is such a popular opera, we we’re all jam packed in the standing area. Even the walk ways were filled with people standing. Anyways, after the set change in the 3^rd act we had a few minutes to chat, and I turned to Ben to tell him I started feeling really hot, which I didn’t think was unusual since there were so many people in this little tiny area. Ben gave me his program to fan myself and I tried to sit down for a second, and that didn’t work. The opera resumed, so I stood back up and was feeling really uncomfortable, nauseous, and hot. I couldn’t stand there any longer and told Ben I had to get out of there. Of course I was in the corner so had to try to push by Ben and Tessa and Jeff, and as I started trying to leave, I got really dizzy, I turned to Ben and the next thing I knew Ben and Jeff were grabbing me by the arms and trying to help me get up off the floor and out of the standing section. Ya…I definitely passed out at the opera. I was quickly guided out of the area and started to pass out again so I became very disoriented, and all I heard was one of the ushers giving me directions in German, making me obviously even more confused. They began speaking English and I laid on the floor and propped my feet up. The ushers came over and gave me some water, then the doctor came over to check my blood pressure. Tessa translated what the doctor was asking and basically told me that my blood pressure was really low and after telling him how I had coffee on an empty stomach and apparently not enough water he concluded that I was just dehydrated and to drink as much water as I could. He opened up his first aid kit and put some drops in my water (which I still don’t know what it was) and told me to drink it up, because when a stranger puts drops of an unknown substance while in another country, you know you’re supposed to just follow orders haha. So obviously I was very embarrassed and felt bad that our whole little group had to miss that last part of the opera, but I was so glad everyone was there and were as helpful as they were. I quickly felt better and we left before the crowd got out. We all got something to eat and laughed about the situation, which made it all much easier to deal with. Clearly we all had a night to remember at the opera, and will have a great story to tell everyone in the future =P.

For those of you who are concerned, I’m fine now. I was just dehydrated and quickly was able to rehydrate myself. Damn you strong Austrian coffee! If I had just had the watered down coffee that I’m used to from Starbucks this never would have happened! Oh well, like I said, now I’ve got one hell of a story. 

"Nine" vs. "Nein"

Not much new going on here. But, on my way home today on the train I thought about how I should write another blog when I get home, just discussing some reflection I’ve had since being here in Vienna. Maybe it’s just the two cups of strong Viennese coffee that I’ve had today, but here it goes!

Well the biggest “news” is that I got another nannying job for the duration of my time here (yay!) so now I will be working with 3 separate families Monday-Friday afternoons, and be getting an extra 30-70 Euro a week, depending on the week. This new family also has younger kids, a 3 and a 5 year old. Today I only got to meet the 3 year old, but man was he a cutie! And such a goofball. This family lived in London for the past few years (even though the Mother told me she’s actually Dutch, and her youngest son was actually born in Malaysia, so needless to say they’ve done a lot of traveling and moving around) and so their English is very good. The three year old has a precious (but faint) British accent when speaking English with an underlying Dutch accent. Seeing this 3 year old go from speaking one language with his mother to another language with me really reminded me of how I want to have my kids learn many different languages from a young age.

Ben and I were actually just talking about teaching our future children other languages this morning too. I told him how I had been looking into job possibilities for when we get back to Southern California, and how frustrating it was for me to find a job that looked like an amazing opportunity, a job I would be great at, a job working with kids in a non-profit setting, then just to scroll down further seeing that I MUST be bilingual in Spanish to even apply. Granted it’s my own fault that I never learned Spanish, it never interested me. I was always more in to “exotic” languages like French, or Italian, and eventually Sign Language (I’ve always been a speaker with my hands anyways, so it came much more automatic to me). We discussed how we want to be able to open those kinds of opportunities for our kids and teaching them other languages besides English. I’m not expecting my kids to be multi-lingual per say, but even just giving them tools and vocabulary in certain languages besides English I would imagine could be very beneficial.

Regarding the topic of “language”, I’ve noticed a bunch of little things that I just find interesting since arriving here back in September. For one, noticing the fact that the “context” of a word has more to do with when the child learns it vs. the actual ability to make the sounds. For example, in English, a child wouldn’t learn the word “nine” until maybe they were about 3 years old and begin to learn to count, learning all their numbers. In a German speaking country the word “nein” (pronounced “nine”) is one of the first words a child will learn, because it means “no”.  The ability to say the sound “nine” is not difficult, but when the child will learn to say it all depends on the cultural context of the word. I know I’m kind of rambling, but stay with me. I remember in college learning about how in different cultures, a child’s first words (when translated into English) may not make much sense to us, and aren’t “typical” first words for a child. We discussed how in some cultures, the first words that a child will learn are the words to identify feelings, like “love” or “hurt” vs. the first words in our culture which are “labels” like “Mom”, “Dad”, “Ball”. This is all stuff that I had already known, but when actually living in a different culture, it makes it all stand out and it’s much more clear to me. It’s just really interesting to notice the cultural language differences.

Even though I’ve noticed many differences in language while here, there are similarities I have noticed as well. I was working with one of the 3 year olds I work with yesterday and it was so cute to see her try to tell a story in German. I obviously didn’t know everything that she was trying to say but I would understand when she would get “stuck” in her story and start saying “und, und, und, und, und” like how any American kid would do when “stuck” in a story, “and, and, and, and, and”. It was very cute.

Maybe this is all sticking out to me now because I just turned in my Loma Linda application for the Communication Sciences program, and I’m trying to get in the “Communication Sciences” mode.

Also, I find it fascinating that while I write this I’m watching two Austrians have a conversation in German (Our landlord and a “handy man” to fix our windows). Just from watching these two converse, I also noticed that they are talking simultaneously to each other, which I’ve noticed as well here. People having a conversation will talking at the same time, and I have no idea how they catch what the other person is saying when they are talking, but they do it. It looks way too complicated to even try, haha.

Besides my rambling, not much else is new. I’ve been baking a lot this week and want to try to make a Sacher Torte here sometime soon, which I want to “perfect” by the time I leave. Also, we just now bought ground coffee to make at our apartment, we were just buying all our coffee at the local quick coffee spots, Anker, Der Mann, Ströck, etc. But now we can make our own coffee at home, which is actually fairly dangerous. We bought the Julius Meinl coffee and have been making it fairly strong, leaving me jittery and energetic all day. Thus why I had this urge to write a random blog ;)

Liebe,

Katie