A Few Surprises

It's Saturday again, and I figured I should write before another week runs away. I have been busy this week playing catch up in my classes. When I picked up my new Studentplan after the Easter break I found out I was moved up a class! Yeah! I am smart. Well at least smarter than my test said I was. Anyways, I of course had tests this week in my new classes. Luckily they are not going to count toward my final grade, but at the same time it was a little nerve racking because I didn't have the same preparation as the others. I think I did alright, but I guess we will see next week.

My new Studentplan is much better. I still have to go to school on Fridays and it is a little later in the morning than it was before, but I am still home by 2 so I have plenty of day left. For the rest of the week however I don't think it could be any better. I start pretty much every day at 8:15 and am done by 1:15 at the latest. I is really nice having the afternoons free. I don't particularly like waking up at 5:30, but I know I will get used to it pretty soon. :)  My classmates are really friendly and there are a few who speak English which is good and bad. It is good that I can talk to them easily, but at the same time it is bad because we say things in English that we could have said in German. Nonetheless I enjoy having someone else to help translate or understand a word.

I have noticed that my German is getting better. I don't always know every word that I want to say or that I hear, but it is getting better. The other day Chris and I went to the bank by ourselves and that was a bit of an adventure. We started out alright speaking German. I didn't exactly know how to say what I wanted to in the best way, but I got my point across. Then the teller asked me something that I thought I understood, but I guess I didn't because she switched to English. I was kinda glad, and disappointed at the same time. I wanted to be able to say that we did it all, in German. At any rate I learned that I can do some of these harder errands on my own. I was also glad the teller spoke English because I didn't remember the word for transferring money. She knew what I want to do though and got it all worked out for me. I like that we live in a small town. The lady at the bank was the one who opened our accounts and so she knew who we were and that our German wasn't very good to begin with. She was patient and listened to me attempting to describe my problem in what I am sure was almost incoherent grammar. At least the trip was successful and I know that if I need to go back I can. :)


Last night we had a bit of an adventure. It was around 1130, I had just gone to bed. I was lying on my bed, in the dark obviously, listening to my book. I listen to a book on the train when I am by myself. Right now I am listening to Wives and Daughters. So, there I am and without any noise I see a light flashing in my window. I am on the second floor, so I don't see lights of cars driving by or anything, and it was raining so I thought perhaps it was lightening. We haven't had any storms bad enough for lightening and thunder yet, so I was a little excited at the prospect of seeing some lightning. It's one of my favorite natural phenomenons.  Unfortunately, the flash was too regular and frequent. So I look out the window. Now I have to tell you that this is a bit of a feat in itself. The ceiling of my room follows the lines of the roof. In other words, I have slanted ceilings, and the windows are a little high. What I have to do to see out the window well is to open it and stick my head out; oh and I have to stand on my tippy toes. 

I look out the window and there is a firetruck blocking the road right outside the house. I couldn't see why they were there or what they were doing, but they werem't running about, nor could I smell smoke, so I wasn't too worried, but at the same time fire trucks don't just block the road for no reason. I look around a bit and down the street to the right are a few more lights. By this time Chris had come into my room to see if I had seen the lights. We looked out of all of our windows, and even tried the veranda to see if we could get a better view of what was going on, but we couldn't see anything. By where the lights were we guessed the action was taking place in front of our friend Jan's house. Chris sent him a text asking what is going on. He said it was a car accident. 


We had kinda figured that is what had happened, but Ben and Iris weren't home. They had gone to Iris's brother's for dinner. I had texted Iris a few minutes before and we hadn't heard back from her yet. Of course we start to worry a bit that it might have been them. Jan however didn't say anything about seeing Ben's car, and so we were pretty sure it wasn't them. He would have said something otherwise. Then we got a text back from Iris. Everything was fine and they were coming home soon. 


 At one point while we were watching the lights on the firetruck and straining to see what we already knew we weren't going to see, we saw a tow truck drive by. We were hoping he would drive back the way he came so we could see what kind of accident and how bad it was, but it never came. I finally decided I would just have to find out what happened in the morning and went back to bed. It was 1230 or so. 


This morning we discovered the accident was a head-on collision and the one guy at least attempted to flee the scene. Our source of information was Facebook, so we don't know for sure, or how the people involved are faring right now. We didn't hear any sirens last night, so I am going to assume that means things turned out just about as good as the could considering the circumstances. 


I don't have a video this week. I really wanted to have Trier done for you, but I just have so many clips and photos to arrange and choose between it is getting a little on the overwhelming side.  I want the videos to be good and entertaining, so I have put a lot of pressure on myself. I think I am going to try and do this one a little different again. Instead of trying to show you everything in 15 minutes I am just going to take the highlights. So it might be a little shorter and I will probably leave somethings out, but I will at least have something to share with you in a more timely manner. I still have all of the raw footage, so I can always compile it later into something else. That will be the plan for now.  I have so much to say, but this post is getting on the long side, so there will be more coming soon. Right now I need to go do some research for an oral presentation on Monday!

What a crazy week!

Chris and I on our way to Trier. My very first train ride!

Awesome graffiti in Trier

I promised I would have a new post by Saturday, and boy do I have things to talk about.

A fountain in the Palace garden

Courtyard between the Dom and Liebefraunen Kirche

The trip to Trier was fantastic! It was like we were on a private tour of the town, and it really is a beautiful city. It would have been nice to spend another day looking at the rest of the town and spending more time with my new,  Chris's old, friends.

The group, minus me, out side the Basilika

The whole group in font of the Porta Nigra

 I will be writing a blog this up coming week devoted to Trier. :) Oh and I will have a video too, but in the meantime here are a few pictures.

The first thing you see walking into the Liebefrauen Kirche

When I checked my email after getting home from Trier, I had an email from the American Austrian Education Commission... I GOT THE SCHOLARSHIP!!! I am moving to Austria this fall for a year. Out of all the different applicants I was chosen to teach English to Austrian middle schoolers.

Kaiser Thermine

 I am super honored. I will technically be a teaching assistant, but from what I understand I will be doing a lot of teaching. I have three schools in Bad Aussee, I will be working in. It is a small rural town in the mountains!

Glockenspiel in Munich

 All I need to do now is, well a lot, but first I need to make sure I will be a college graduate by August 15th at the latest. I think I can make it happen! I will be filling you all in more on this very exciting development as well. Lots to do, and lots of decisions to make. One of the biggest is if I should or can afford to go back to the states for a month before I head off to Austria. 

A little waterfall on the way down from Neuschwanstein

Just after I got that super exciting news we all, Ben, Iris, Chris, and I, headed off to München (Munich). Let me tell you being a tourist is a lot of work! Lots and lots and lots of walking. The three days were wonderful, and of course I wish we had another day or two to spend looking at the sites and museums and things. I think that is always going to be the way things are.

looking good girl!

It so beautiful it looks fake!

 I am always going to want to spend more time, seeing more things. But on the upside München isn't very far from Bad Aussee, so it will be easy for me to go back. :) I will be dedicating at least one post to München as well soon. I have lots of videos to work on and posts to write... Till then...

Chinese tower in the English gardens

One night at dinner

Hofbräuhaus

The face of Chris in front of his favorite Castle...?

Hornschwangau

Neuschwanstein

Some observations

One of my curses as a writer is how slow I think. At least that is my excuse. I will "think" about something for an extended period of time, which really means occasionally actively thinking about what I will write, but mostly continually reminding myself I need to write something. When it gets to crunch time I will sit down and actually write more than a few sentences or disjointed thoughts, and come up with something decent. So that is my excuse for not having posted more frequently. If I were to really think about the truth of it. If I don't tell myself I am going to write about this at this time, I just wont do it. So with that in mind I am giving you all a deadline for my next blog. I will post my next Saturday :) Hopefully that works. 

I have spent almost two months now in Germany. Two months!!! Oh the time has gone too fast...  Anyways, for the most part life is the same. I wake up go to school, come home to do homework and chores, and then go to bed. I haven't done any traveling yet, but plan to this weekend and next week. However occasionally I see something or we do something that reminds me I am not in the states anymore. I know I have talked about a few of them already, but I thought I might share a few others. 

One of the first things we notice when we got here was the size of the cars. Here are pictures of Ben and Iris's cars:  Ben's car would be a mid-sized, and Iris's is small, but a very common size. There are bigger cars, Ben's parents is a four door and bigger than the most we have seen, but not the biggest. Where the cars are smaller it is natural that the parking spaces and garages are going to be smaller as well. And they are, they are very small. 

Another thing is the old ladies' hair. Yes of course that is something I would notice. Like in the states, most of the older ladies wear their hair short, but here they color their hair the same way a teenager would in the states. The other day, I wish I had a picture of it, I saw a lady with purple hair and pink highlights! I am not making this up. I would just say, oh she is a little eccentric and leave it at that, if I didn't see others with "abnormal" hair colors. One lady, and I actually liked this look, but didn't really think it was age appropriate, either left her hair white or bleached it platinum and then had a wide red streak in her bangs. I have seen a lot of different versions of funky hair colors. I will have to remember to take some pictures for you all. 

Sorry this post is sort of random. I will work on another for next week. My travels will help with that. But please enjoy the very cheesy video of a parking garage! :)