August 31, 2014 - Opening Social

Well, this blog post will be significantly shorter just because I didn't really do anything today.  I woke up for Mass, went to Mass, and then went to brunch afterwards.  Brunch was super packed because they didn't have any breakfast beforehand, so we all crammed into the Mensa like sardines.

The weird thing about the Austrians - you can tell they're really trying hard to make meals that we Americans eat.  So for breakfast we had scrambled eggs and waffles.... but while the eggs tasted more like eggs than the main campus caf eggs, they also didn't taste quite...eggy.  They had put something in them?  And the waffles had literally clumps of sugar in them, which I thought was delicious but also really strange.  It was convenient because I didn't feel like standing in line for syrup or Nutella (Nutella is gross anyway).

Surprise - the waffles were too sweet for even Clare, so for once I enjoyed something that was sugarier than her.  We ate with a girl named Mary Beth Martin whom I met last year, but who never really talked to me then, and a girl I met in the airport named Mary.  (Not the Mary whose name I forgot yesterday and made her hate me.)

After breakfast I was supposed to go for a hike with Asaph and Kathryn but I couldn't find them and apparently they couldn't find me.  That's something I really don't like about the fact that we don't have phones on campus... we can't really contact each other to tell each other where we're going, and the university still hasn't gotten around to getting me my own Austria phone, which is mandatory.... they also haven't gotten me to fill out my form for living at the Kartause yet.  I've asked them about it and they keep telling me to wait, so I figure they're still a bit busy finishing up the orientation week.

Following mass, I just decided to go do some homework, since I couldn't find my hiking buddies - I sat down and started reading for Medieval History.  My gosh, we had 45 pages of reading to do just out of the main textbook, so I sat down and read all of that and took copious notes (because if we don't, we're screwed, according to Dr. Hass), and that took me literally two and a half hours.  Seriously.  For one class.

I then read half of the primary sources we're supposed to read for that class, and that took me another twenty minutes.  Then I read for Christian Marriage class, and it took me another thirty minutes... man, these classes are going to consume my life. We haven't even made any travel plans and I still have to fit that in.

After all that reading Asaph showed up and sat by me for a couple minutes and apologized for not being able to find me for the hike, so that comforted me a little bit.  Then all of us ended up going over to the courtyard between the church and the Franziskenhaus (the dorms, basically) where they had set up tents against the rain, and they had a catering service come in and provide a barbeque (I know, catering service for a BBQ...).

BBQs in Austria apparently consist of kabobs of all sorts of kinds, weird grilled pork, potatoes, a million kinds of dip for your bread, and sauteed vegetables.  I tried most all of it and ate everything there was, in very small quantities, and it was actually really good.

Clare and I decided not to socialize with students; we sat down with a professor and his family because they were by themselves, and we ended up spending all dinner talking to Professor Newton.  Neither of us have any classes with him, so it was fascinating to get to know him.  He's a very earnest man and I can see how he must have been very good looking when he was younger.  Apparently he has a large background in software development, only he did stuff far above and beyond what I did last summer, or anything Spencer does.

I guess he used to work for NASA finding all sort of research from charting positions of the stars and planets based on electromagnetic radiation information embedded in satellite photographs?  He also mentioned other engineering projects for other companies which sounded high-tech.  I guess Professor McNamara (my quiet Irish professor from metaphysics) does the same kind of thing.

Funny how both of them ended up such odd fields, philosophy and theology.  Professor Newton was saying that it was really that way, that theology doesn't contribute to anything practical but a search for the truth, and if any of his children said they wanted to go into theology he would require them to have a practical extra minor or major in order to support themselves, because it's very rare that he has a career in theology that supports him.

Hearing adults tell their story is really interesting a lot of the time because it seems so happenstance.  He met his wife on a pilgrimage where they were both helping disabled people for a couple of weeks.  He got offered a randomchance scholarship for theology studies which he only 'sort of' applied to, and ended up moving out to Gaming.

He now teaches at Franciscan and another institute where one of Clare's friends is going to school now, and he offered to drive Clare out with him while he teaches his class so she can visit that friend.  I guess he also has relatives that live there, so he is going to drive his daughters Aletheia and Gabrielle out to visit said relative while he teaches the class. So if Clare goes, she'll get a happy (awkward) time in the car visiting with the Newton children.

I think it was fun talking to him - he was a little odd but he didn't seem to mind my eye contact (I've noticed a lot of people have difficulty maintaining eye contact for a long time, but Professor Newton was particularly good at it).  That was really kind of him.  He was so engrossed in talking to us that he didn't notice when his wife got up and left, the other people by him got up and left, and his children all abandoned him to go find their mom.

Anyway it's evening again and raining really hard so I better finish up all that reading and then maybe have a bit of free time so I can draw or write before bedtime.  Then I'll get up early for gym time tomorrow.  Time management may be 'good' and 'organized' and 'structured' but it feels like there's just not enough time to squeeze everything in and it's driving me nuts.  I have no clue how I'm going to find people to travel with during the free weekends and 10 day breaks.