Gaming reminds me a little bit of how I would imagine New Hampshire - everything is quaint looking buildings, mostly with red roofs, and a huge amount of foliage, a lot of pine trees mixed with deciduous trees. Our window actually looks out at a wall of trees and a couple of weird plants with some berries on them, and behind that wall of trees you can sort of see one of the mountains.
We got led on the tour by Mr. David Pipp, who so far is one of my favorite people here. He's actually incredibly funny and relatable, jumps up on top of things, tells stories about his children and previous students who got into bunches of mishaps, and is very understanding. He took me down today privately to the administrative office to enquire about my suitcase after I came to him asking if I could get a phone to call the airport. He had to sympathize with me when I told him about how living four days straight with essentially the same clothing is really uncomfortable.
Mr. Pipp took us walking out to see the row of houses just across the street from the Kartause where the majority of the professors and their families live, all in a row down the street. The kids seem to run about the little town at will - I saw some of Mr. Pipp's kids on bikes near Gertrude's (the store where they sell school supplies), and out on the sidewalk in front of the houses some of Dr. Carreno's children were outside, Dani and Lina, and they waved at us and said hello.
The children are adorable. We had an opportunity to sign up for Ministry for Moms today, which is something they offer on main campus as well. I never signed up on main campus when I found out about it last semester due to the heavy workload I had, and also because the homes of the professors were so far away from campus and I had no way to get there. However, I decided to put my name down on the sign up sheet to offer my services as a piano or guitar teacher for any of the kids for one time period per week, and I also wrote that I was available to do some cleaning and bonding with the kids. I think it will be a great opportunity to meet some of the kids and the families of the professors and really make some lasting friendships.
The kids of the professors are all really intimidating - most of them speak two or three languages because one or more of their parents is pretty much guaranteed to speak more than just English. For instance, the Carreno children speak English, Hungarian, and French, and they only really speak English because of the Franciscan students who come and hang out with them.
So, be happy, Mom and Dad, I'm actually signing up for something extracurricular that makes me get to know people! ... like I said, eight year olds are lots friendlier than 20 year olds.
Speaking of which, I ate breakfast this morning with Monika, Clare's and my Bosnian roommate, Iryna and Veronika from Belarus (which apparently is located near Russia), and David from Hungary. I ended up going with all the exchange students because I asked Monika if I could go to breakfast with her, and we actually had a lot of fun talking and hanging out. They tried to teach me some of their languages and laughed a lot and they actually didn't tell me whether or not my pronunciation was good. Which, since they didn't correct me a lot, could mean that either I'm excellent at picking it up, or really bad.
I guess I probably shouldn't worry about it so much, since I'm not concerned about correcting their pronunciations - I really like their accents, they're so cute. It was really fun and my face hurt from smiling at the end.
David's language Hungarian was probably the hardest to pronounce, with Bosnian or whatever Monika speaks, being the second hardest. Russian's the easiest to get.
Apparently in Belarus there's this tradition in families where, when you sit down to eat, they say, "Have a nice meal!" in Russian. They taught me to say it, it's something like "pree-YAHT-nah-vah ah-pee-TEE-tah". Spelled in Russian it looks like this: Приятного аппетита!
Through the rest of the day I've been able to talk to a couple of people - I met a senior classics major named Kevin, talked a little with Jamie, and met on and off with the exchange students I met this morning. This was kind of my lucky morning, considering the exchange students only eat in the Mensa once a week or so. I really liked them a lot.
A lot of the other students have formed little groups where they sit together and don't talk to anyone outside of the group, which sort of bugs me. Oh well. I'm sure along the way things like that are bound to happen, but I'm feeling a little bit more optimistic about my chances for making friends.
I haven't really wanted to mingle with anyone else today anyway - my suitcase still hasn't come, which has meant I've been rewearing clothes. It's amazing how fast you can go from showered and feeling clean to feeling disgusting after putting on the same pair of jeans you've been wearing for the last four days. It's made me pretty miserable and grumpy to be honest. I hadn't realized how much I depend on smelling good and wearing clean clothes for my self confidence. I've been avoiding people, standing alone, and just feeling really unhappy all day.
Finally I went down to the office to track my bag and it looks like it'll get here later tonight, hopefully.
We finished all our meetings for today and classes start tomorrow - we'll have more meetings I'm sure, but I'm looking forward to some more control over my own schedule. Once we have classes, the rest of our free time will start being ours to go out into the town and walk around and exploring. One of my goals this semester is to get up really early and go hiking up one of the mountains so I can see the sunrise. I've heard it's fantastic. Since I've been waking up at 6 consistently every morning - which is about 9 PM Pacific Time - I might as well make it 4 and then go for a good tiring hike.
I really like Gaming - Mr. Pipp told us that everyone in the city has been expecting us and asking after the American students who are so friendly and polite. Everyone we met on our tour waved at us and said Grüß Gott, which translates roughly to "God's blessings be with you". We were told that most everyone would greet us as we just walk around the town.
What surprises me about Europe is that there's a ton of designer clothes stores. Even in Gaming I've seen at least two high-end retail stores. No wonder European people dress really classily. The only options around here seem to be 1) Expensive and 2) Super classy.
Here's some pictures I took earlier today while on our trek around Gaming - I'm sure I'll get some better pictures later. My SD card converter is still in my suitcase, so you don't get to see any of my camera pictures yet.
The Spar is the grocery store where we can get our ordinary items.
The Gasthof is a food place? I think?
Dude! those are some smart kids maybe I could learn a thing or two from them! Maybe we could import a few of them to be teachers and I could be their nanny while they teach me;P
ReplyDeleteI think I might be a guitar teacher for one of them!!!
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