What an adventure! I hardly know where to begin. It is now 19:27 in Wien [VEEN] (or 7:27 pm for those who don't want to figure it out... haha) and somehow I'm beyond tired-- but I know I can't go to bed without writing this blog!
My flight to Frankfurt was pretty uneventful. Good food on Lufthansa Airlines. I got to watch Wall-E. Yay for Thomas Newman (my favorite film scorer). And I loved watching the sun rise up over Great Britain! I rarely ever get to see the sun rise , except over a mountain... and hardly ever do I get to enjoy it. That was really nice. I was lucky to have a window seat.
Getting off the plane was fun. The crew gave each woman a red rose before we walked down the steps and off the plane to get on a shuttle that would take us to the terminal, where I went through customs... tried to act like I knew how to speak German... and it didn't really work between "Danke", "Entshuldigung Sie, bitte.", "wasser" and "ya/nein".
My flight to Vienna was also good, mostly because I had a window seat and was able to look out over Austria and see the landscape dotted with little towns here and there. And occasionally I'd see a castle-type looking house, or a big church or something. We flew pretty low to the ground so that was exciting.
When I deboarded the plane (in the same fashion as I had in Frankfurt, minus the red rose), I began to think: What on EARTH have I gotten myself into?? This may be a little harder than I thought...
But, God was watching over me. When I left customs there was a short man with brown hair who I had never seen before. He held in his hand a sign that said "BYU". I pointed to him and found him. OHHH I was so grateful!!! He was there in place of Dr. Vincent, and he took me and Britain and Ty to the Austro-American Institute of Education (our school for the next few months!).
Britain had flown from Florida, and Ty had flown from L.A. We rode together in the car, completely in awe of the beautiful city of Vienna!! I felt prompted to take a few pictures of my surroundings.
My pictures can be found here!
I know you'll all fall in love with it like I did! I can't wait to go exploring. I'll do that tomorrow with Carli and Britain and whoever else will go with me.
So we show up at the AAIE, which is RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the Staatsoper [SHTAHTsoaper] (the Vienna State Opera House. This is the big time.) The actual place where we have classes is a pretty humble little place, but I love the historicness of the old staircases, the statues and other such things. There's a cute courtyard that leads to the entrance of the school.
There is where I met up with Dr. Vincent and Joseph, Amy, Shea, Rebekah, and Carli (Britain and Ty were already with me, and Naomi and Laura were still on their flights). I met Frau Weissgerber [VICE-gairber] , who will be teaching German and who gave us our transportation tickets for the week.
Then my host sister picked me up! Her name is Emily too! What are the odds? She is very nice. I also met her boyfriend and his dog. We took my suitcases on the Strassenbahn [SHTRASSen-bahn] down the street to her apartment. And now I've completely unpacked- so my little room looks great. There are pictures of the apartment from the link I showed you earlier.
Ursula, my host mother, came later. She is so nice and so accomodating. Earlier she called the AAIE to ask if I could skip a week of school to go skiing with her and the family at Tirol!!! Apparently it's the best skiing in the Austrian alps. I would SO have loved to go, but Frau Weissgerber said no (missing a week of class when you don't have very many weeks at all is probably a bad idea...). And its not like I can just skip now that they know where I'm going. For dinner, Ursula made me Kartoffeln (potatoes), spinat (spinach: thanks, Veronique!), and Eier (egg). It was very good.
Later I gave them presents of slippers, American candy, a calendar with the landscapes of America in it (and as it turns out, Ursula collects calendars... hooray!!)... and I'm saving some of the other gifts for later.
I really should have taken a picture of me with Ursula and Emily. Oh well. I'll do it later.
I feel very comfortable here. I'm glad its just girls-- it makes it feel more like home, since I'm used to living with a bunch of girls all the time!
Tomorrow I'm meeting my classmates at the AAIE for orientation at 10:00!
I'll keep taking lots of pictures!
Love you all! Thanks for reading this extremely long thing!!!
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