Testing
Krakow dragon statue
Inside the Franciscan church in Krakow
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
September 30, 2014 - Testing Testing
I got a new blog layout but it messed up how text looks after pictures. For some reason everything got really small and it's super annoying.
Testing
Another part of the FUS tour group
Testing
September 30, 2014 - Poland!
This last weekend the majority of the students took a pilgrimage to Poland. It wasn't technically a university sponsored trip - we paid 270 euro for expenses covered - but the university organized it for us because there were so many students interested in going (185 of 202). So we had the buses come get us at 8 PM on Thursday night shortly after dinner, and we set off on the 10 hour drive to Czestochowa, Poland.
It was really funny because the back of the bus is usually where the "in crowd" ends up sitting, though I'm not sure why that's how bus politics end up working. Clare ended up grabbing a seat directly in front of the popular kids, so we ended up there the whole weekend and I was highly entertained. I ended up talking to them some too, though not a whole lot.
The bus ride was kind of uncomfortable - I think it was just partly because they were playing a movie of some sort for the majority of the bus ride, and it's really hard for me to sleep through those. Also, I was on the aisle seat, and I didn't figure out until the drive back that it had an arm rest I could have put up to rest on.
We arrived in Czestochowa in the freezing rain and walked up to the Jasna Gora Monastery which houses the sacred icon of the Black Madonna. At 6 AM they then unveiled the image while everyone knelt, which was accompanied by a huge drumroll and a trumpet fanfare. The Black Madonna itself was incredible to see - while I don't like icons much, there were so many jewels and so much gold detail that it was fantastic to just look at. The image is apparently miraculous, and you could still see the scratch marks on Our Lady's cheek where it had been slashed with a sword and struck with an arrow.
After that we got a wonderful hot breakfast at a random hotel, and were given some free time to explore Czestochowa. It was raining or drizzling for most of it, so it was pretty grey outside. Nevertheless, it was pretty. Clare and I joined up with Leslie and went adventuring for shoes; Clare and Leslie were both looking to buy some new flats to replace their shoes. Walking around Europe has been hard on everyone's footwear. My sneakers are shot, so are my boots, and now my casual walking shoes are starting to get that way too. Looks like I'll have plenty of room to bring back souvenirs.
We got some delicious pastries there in Czestochowa. Note about the currency and prices there - there are roughly 4 zloty in each Euro, but prices are also ridiculously low. I think the Polish economy just hasn't caught up to the rest of the world yet, that's the impression I got from Mr. Pipp. Those pastries were 2 zloty each, which is about 50 Euro cents and about 60 ish American cents. That's absurdly cheap, and the pastries were both huge and delicious.
After that we got on the buses and loaded up to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of one of the largest concentration/death camps of the Holocaust. I didn't take any pictures there obviously, and I don't really know how to describe it in words save that I think it's important for everyone old enough, if they have the chance, to visit it.
Following our Auschwitz-Birkenau tour we got in the buses once again and headed to Krakow, Poland, where we checked into the hotel where we would be for the next two nights. We were served dinner and then after that I didn't feel very good, so I retired to my room for a bit to shower and recoup mentally. After being around people in such close quarters for so long and then visiting the concentration camp, I just needed to take a brief break.
The next morning we got up and were taken on a walking tour of Krakow. We actually got to see the university where St. John Paul II studied, and walked around on the waterfronts where he spent time. We had a tour also of Wawel Hill, and went inside the basilica up there, where we had mass on Sunday. The Wawel basilica is enormous, has relics of St. John Paul II in it, and a huge amount of tombs where they laid royalty to rest. There is also a crypt containing the bones of Frederyk Chopin, the pianist, and a copy of the miraculous Divine Mercy painting commissioned by St. Faustina.
Krakow is the 'city of the dragon' due to an old legend about the town. Once upon a time there was a shoemaker who had a true love, and in this city where they lived there was also a dragon who demanded sacrifices every year. One day the shoemaker's love was chosen to be sacrificed. The shoemaker wanted none of this, so he set off to do what no one else had been able to do - slay the dragon.
First he stuffed a flock of sheep full of sulphur so that when the dragon ate them, it got extremely thirsty, and went to quench its thirst. On drinking from the river, the water combined with the sulphur (?) and it died.
So legend goes. But right outside the basilica there are some massive bones hung from the wall right next to the main door, which are said to be the dragon's bones. Studies have been more recently done and show that they're bones from mammoths, which is still really cool.
I think Krakow is definitely my favorite city that we've visited so far. In addition to having extremely cheap prices for things, making it the perfect place to get gifts for people, it has both a combination of old architecture and buildings and sites, and also newer shops, malls, and it seems extremely busy and active both day and night. I loved it - it was full of activity, people to watch, views to see, and symmetrical buildings to admire. (I have discovered I definitely have this thing for symmetry.)
We walked around it and got to see some of the beautiful churches, including a Franciscan church which contained a full scale replica of the Shroud of Turin. After that we went to the Main Market, which is an enormous square which is basically the heart of the city. The marketplace had tons and tons of booths selling bunches of touristy items, pierogies, and actually a lot of the items they were selling were of very beautiful craftsmanship, like the handmade pipes, carved boxes, and a lot of the carvings they had. I'm not sure if Poland is well-known for its carvings, but it sure had a lot of them.
In the marketplace there was also a lot of street entertainment, including one man who was lying on his back juggling a soccer ball from foot to head to nose to knees; accordion players who were serenading us with Vivaldi plus occasionally an opera singer; a stage that was almost always filled with Polish people dressed in traditional Polish clothing singing traditional songs; and on Sunday we saw a few guys who were doing some awesome break dancing. I took a video, so when I have better internet I'll upload it here.
The Polish marketplace was also filled with a bunch of pigeons, and I think pigeons are kind of sad because if people drop bread for them, they can't hold it down to tear away pieces, they just peck at it and toss the bread everywhere until they can just get a little bit. So I went over and put my foot down on a large piece, and soon enough I had pigeons standing on my shoes, crowding around my feet - it was really ticklish and funny.
Also, this guy:
Clare and I started off wandering with a few people, but everyone broke off into even smaller groups, and so it ended up being the two of us wandering around buying presents and sticking our noses into various shops and booths. It was actually a lot of fun for me, I loved it.
That afternoon we went to the Divine Mercy Shrine, which I will tell you right now looks like they tried to make a bishop's hat of some sort? But it looks like a spaceship with a tower, and it just seemed weirdly too modern. That shrine was separate from the actual church containing St. Faustina's relic and the original Divine Mercy Painting, though, thank goodness. We went into the church itself and it was just a very holy place. I really liked it - I think of the religious places we've seen so far, I've connected the most with the Divine Mercy version of Jesus.
We prayed the Divine Chaplet, then were taken for a talk with a religious sister there at the shrine. She was incredibly sweet and gentle and funny and she told us that on October 5th, the feast day of St. Faustina, we should go check out www.faustyna.pl (I forgot why though). She sang us a song and I don't remember much of what the talk was about, but I do remember thinking that when she talked about Jesus as her spouse, I kept thinking, "Boy, Jesus is a lucky guy..."
After that Clare decided to do a holy hour, I think she needed it to settle her mind a little bit. I wasn't sure where the adoration chapel was but I went exploring on my own anyways, I looked through the shops there and didn't see much, I went for a walk around the shrine and its grounds on my own, did a little praying, and climbed to the top of the tower to see the view of surrounding Krakow from the viewpoint, which was absolutely gorgeous and worth the stairs.
Following mass at the Divine Mercy Shrine we got driven back to Krakow, where we were expected to find our own dinner. Clare and I were sort of wishing we could find people to go with, but we didn't, so we set off looking for the marketplace to grab some pierogies, ... in the wrong direction.
We walked for about ten minutes going the wrong way and looking for the streets we needed on our map. Eventually we concluded that because we had seen absolutely zero of the streets we wanted, we needed to turn around. I had asked a lady for help, but she wasn't very interested in helping us and so I was kind of discouraged after that. We passed a couple of university age Polish kids who stared at us and seemed very amused. Krakow is very much a university town; I felt comfortable around the kids but also kind of gawky.
We eventually ran in to some other Franciscan people who gave us kind of vague directions to get to the marketplace. Ensue us wandering around until we hit the marketplace, and we got some really good kebabs and pierogies - I wasn't sure about the kebabs as much, though. They're cooked meat on a stick, but they separate the meat with something that looks like just a layer of fat,and the meat is really fatty itself.
It's really hard to eat healthy here. Some of it is my fault because of the Milka - the chocolate is so good! - but it seems like there's a lot of bread, pasta, rice, or spaetzel (some kind of egg-noodle mix?) here, and the combinations just seem kind of hopelessly unhealthy. Also I've been still sick for the last week or so, being in Czestochowa in the rain made my cough come back a little, so I'm in recovery again and because of traveling, cleaning, and school (or general goofing off/socializing) I haven't had a lot of chance to exercise. So that's one thing I miss about the Franciscan campus - the gym. I'll be super excited to come back and drop whatever extra pounds I might have put on (not really sure if the walking everywhere has been canceling it out, I can't tell much).
Anyway after dinner we went back and caught some Z's, and the next morning we had free time again in Krakow.
We wandered, bought some more stuff, and I got kielbasa for breakfast. My absolute favorite thing about the food in Poland is the meat - I don't like meat much, but the sausages were great.
We had a lot of time, so we just did some general aimless walking, and eventually we ran into a group of those break dancers, which cheered us up directly before we headed back to the buses to Wadowice, St. John Paul II's birthplace.
We didn't have much time in Wadowice, so we went into the church there (apparently it's the site where John Paul II decided to join the priesthood?). I didn't like the decor much, the basilica in the Krakow main square was much more beautiful. In the Krakow basilica there was a huge amount of lavish decoration, but it was tastefully done with a good color scheme and with symmetry, with the eye being led upwards and to the main altar. In the Wadowice basilica it just seemed extremely aimless, the decoration was random and spontaneous, and I felt like the only thing that made the church cool was that there was a relic of Padre Pio there and a relic also of John Paull II, both of which I got to pray at.
Clare and I tried out some pope cake - I guess JPII really loved the cake and asked it to be made whenever he came, so now it's produced in all the little cafes there. I didn't like it so much, I feel like cake needs to be more substantial than a flaky top and some cream puffy stuff. I also got some little pastry thingies with my extra change, just because you can't convert change back to Euro after you leave Poland.
There was this really old lady in the doorway of the basilica there who looked to be close to 90 who was praying the Rosary both when I got there and closer to when I got the pastries, and I was just so sad for her. She seemed so nice, and when I saw people giving her a few zloty (the equivalent of less than a dollar) she was so thankful. I gave her a few zloty also, and then when I got the pastries I went back there because it had been an hour and a half and she was still sitting there, and I gave her one of them. She looked so startled and pleased, I was really glad that I got to at least connect with her a little bit.
Finally we got back on the buses after Wadowice and headed back on the long bus drive to Gaming. I was so glad to get back. It was fun adventuring, but I kept thinking, man, I have midterms next week, and I need to do reading and I was just really tired of being on the move all the time. On the bus ride I did quite a bit of reading, was forced to watch Frozen, and when we stopped to eat dinner Clare and I both got to talk a little more with Allison Thilges, a girl who knew Maria last year. She's really nice.
We arrived at Gaming at three in the morning and the last day or so has been spent cleaning, reorganizing the room, studying, and catching up. And as soon as I put pictures into this blog post that's what I'll be off to do - study hard and start researching to write my papers. I'm starting to feel really overloaded with the semester...
Also they have started turning off the internet at 10 PM every night, both in the main dorm building and also in the building where they said they'd leave it on until 1 AM so that people could skype.
I'm really aggravated with this. They said it's for the sake of us developing temperance, but you can't really force a virtue on people by just denying the privilege to exercise it on their own. Not only that, but I can't research for my Charlemagne paper or for my metaphysics homework, which specifically says use online sources. I also can't Skype. The authorities were saying that students could easily figure out a time, but by the time it's 10 PM our time, it's only 1 PM back at home, and people are usually either at school or work or I haven't gotten everything done that I needed to, so really what they did was screw over everyone from the West Coast. So thanks a lot, Gaming campus.
Bonus perks - on returning to main campus, while I was gone, they added Wifi to the dorms and made it so that you don't have to use quarters in the laundry anymore, you can just use your debit card. So I'm trying to keep my chin up and not get really, really, really angry with the staff for their little "we'll make this campus a social place! ... past 10 pm!" jaunt.
It was really funny because the back of the bus is usually where the "in crowd" ends up sitting, though I'm not sure why that's how bus politics end up working. Clare ended up grabbing a seat directly in front of the popular kids, so we ended up there the whole weekend and I was highly entertained. I ended up talking to them some too, though not a whole lot.
The bus ride was kind of uncomfortable - I think it was just partly because they were playing a movie of some sort for the majority of the bus ride, and it's really hard for me to sleep through those. Also, I was on the aisle seat, and I didn't figure out until the drive back that it had an arm rest I could have put up to rest on.
We arrived in Czestochowa in the freezing rain and walked up to the Jasna Gora Monastery which houses the sacred icon of the Black Madonna. At 6 AM they then unveiled the image while everyone knelt, which was accompanied by a huge drumroll and a trumpet fanfare. The Black Madonna itself was incredible to see - while I don't like icons much, there were so many jewels and so much gold detail that it was fantastic to just look at. The image is apparently miraculous, and you could still see the scratch marks on Our Lady's cheek where it had been slashed with a sword and struck with an arrow.
Jasna Gora Monastery
After that we got a wonderful hot breakfast at a random hotel, and were given some free time to explore Czestochowa. It was raining or drizzling for most of it, so it was pretty grey outside. Nevertheless, it was pretty. Clare and I joined up with Leslie and went adventuring for shoes; Clare and Leslie were both looking to buy some new flats to replace their shoes. Walking around Europe has been hard on everyone's footwear. My sneakers are shot, so are my boots, and now my casual walking shoes are starting to get that way too. Looks like I'll have plenty of room to bring back souvenirs.
We got some delicious pastries there in Czestochowa. Note about the currency and prices there - there are roughly 4 zloty in each Euro, but prices are also ridiculously low. I think the Polish economy just hasn't caught up to the rest of the world yet, that's the impression I got from Mr. Pipp. Those pastries were 2 zloty each, which is about 50 Euro cents and about 60 ish American cents. That's absurdly cheap, and the pastries were both huge and delicious.
After that we got on the buses and loaded up to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of one of the largest concentration/death camps of the Holocaust. I didn't take any pictures there obviously, and I don't really know how to describe it in words save that I think it's important for everyone old enough, if they have the chance, to visit it.
Following our Auschwitz-Birkenau tour we got in the buses once again and headed to Krakow, Poland, where we checked into the hotel where we would be for the next two nights. We were served dinner and then after that I didn't feel very good, so I retired to my room for a bit to shower and recoup mentally. After being around people in such close quarters for so long and then visiting the concentration camp, I just needed to take a brief break.
The next morning we got up and were taken on a walking tour of Krakow. We actually got to see the university where St. John Paul II studied, and walked around on the waterfronts where he spent time. We had a tour also of Wawel Hill, and went inside the basilica up there, where we had mass on Sunday. The Wawel basilica is enormous, has relics of St. John Paul II in it, and a huge amount of tombs where they laid royalty to rest. There is also a crypt containing the bones of Frederyk Chopin, the pianist, and a copy of the miraculous Divine Mercy painting commissioned by St. Faustina.
Wawel Cathedral
Krakow is the 'city of the dragon' due to an old legend about the town. Once upon a time there was a shoemaker who had a true love, and in this city where they lived there was also a dragon who demanded sacrifices every year. One day the shoemaker's love was chosen to be sacrificed. The shoemaker wanted none of this, so he set off to do what no one else had been able to do - slay the dragon.
First he stuffed a flock of sheep full of sulphur so that when the dragon ate them, it got extremely thirsty, and went to quench its thirst. On drinking from the river, the water combined with the sulphur (?) and it died.
So legend goes. But right outside the basilica there are some massive bones hung from the wall right next to the main door, which are said to be the dragon's bones. Studies have been more recently done and show that they're bones from mammoths, which is still really cool.
I think Krakow is definitely my favorite city that we've visited so far. In addition to having extremely cheap prices for things, making it the perfect place to get gifts for people, it has both a combination of old architecture and buildings and sites, and also newer shops, malls, and it seems extremely busy and active both day and night. I loved it - it was full of activity, people to watch, views to see, and symmetrical buildings to admire. (I have discovered I definitely have this thing for symmetry.)
Wawel Main Marketplace (cathedral in the background)
We walked around it and got to see some of the beautiful churches, including a Franciscan church which contained a full scale replica of the Shroud of Turin. After that we went to the Main Market, which is an enormous square which is basically the heart of the city. The marketplace had tons and tons of booths selling bunches of touristy items, pierogies, and actually a lot of the items they were selling were of very beautiful craftsmanship, like the handmade pipes, carved boxes, and a lot of the carvings they had. I'm not sure if Poland is well-known for its carvings, but it sure had a lot of them.
In the marketplace there was also a lot of street entertainment, including one man who was lying on his back juggling a soccer ball from foot to head to nose to knees; accordion players who were serenading us with Vivaldi plus occasionally an opera singer; a stage that was almost always filled with Polish people dressed in traditional Polish clothing singing traditional songs; and on Sunday we saw a few guys who were doing some awesome break dancing. I took a video, so when I have better internet I'll upload it here.
The Polish marketplace was also filled with a bunch of pigeons, and I think pigeons are kind of sad because if people drop bread for them, they can't hold it down to tear away pieces, they just peck at it and toss the bread everywhere until they can just get a little bit. So I went over and put my foot down on a large piece, and soon enough I had pigeons standing on my shoes, crowding around my feet - it was really ticklish and funny.
Also, this guy:
Clare and I started off wandering with a few people, but everyone broke off into even smaller groups, and so it ended up being the two of us wandering around buying presents and sticking our noses into various shops and booths. It was actually a lot of fun for me, I loved it.
That afternoon we went to the Divine Mercy Shrine, which I will tell you right now looks like they tried to make a bishop's hat of some sort? But it looks like a spaceship with a tower, and it just seemed weirdly too modern. That shrine was separate from the actual church containing St. Faustina's relic and the original Divine Mercy Painting, though, thank goodness. We went into the church itself and it was just a very holy place. I really liked it - I think of the religious places we've seen so far, I've connected the most with the Divine Mercy version of Jesus.
We prayed the Divine Chaplet, then were taken for a talk with a religious sister there at the shrine. She was incredibly sweet and gentle and funny and she told us that on October 5th, the feast day of St. Faustina, we should go check out www.faustyna.pl (I forgot why though). She sang us a song and I don't remember much of what the talk was about, but I do remember thinking that when she talked about Jesus as her spouse, I kept thinking, "Boy, Jesus is a lucky guy..."
After that Clare decided to do a holy hour, I think she needed it to settle her mind a little bit. I wasn't sure where the adoration chapel was but I went exploring on my own anyways, I looked through the shops there and didn't see much, I went for a walk around the shrine and its grounds on my own, did a little praying, and climbed to the top of the tower to see the view of surrounding Krakow from the viewpoint, which was absolutely gorgeous and worth the stairs.
Following mass at the Divine Mercy Shrine we got driven back to Krakow, where we were expected to find our own dinner. Clare and I were sort of wishing we could find people to go with, but we didn't, so we set off looking for the marketplace to grab some pierogies, ... in the wrong direction.
We walked for about ten minutes going the wrong way and looking for the streets we needed on our map. Eventually we concluded that because we had seen absolutely zero of the streets we wanted, we needed to turn around. I had asked a lady for help, but she wasn't very interested in helping us and so I was kind of discouraged after that. We passed a couple of university age Polish kids who stared at us and seemed very amused. Krakow is very much a university town; I felt comfortable around the kids but also kind of gawky.
We eventually ran in to some other Franciscan people who gave us kind of vague directions to get to the marketplace. Ensue us wandering around until we hit the marketplace, and we got some really good kebabs and pierogies - I wasn't sure about the kebabs as much, though. They're cooked meat on a stick, but they separate the meat with something that looks like just a layer of fat,and the meat is really fatty itself.
It's really hard to eat healthy here. Some of it is my fault because of the Milka - the chocolate is so good! - but it seems like there's a lot of bread, pasta, rice, or spaetzel (some kind of egg-noodle mix?) here, and the combinations just seem kind of hopelessly unhealthy. Also I've been still sick for the last week or so, being in Czestochowa in the rain made my cough come back a little, so I'm in recovery again and because of traveling, cleaning, and school (or general goofing off/socializing) I haven't had a lot of chance to exercise. So that's one thing I miss about the Franciscan campus - the gym. I'll be super excited to come back and drop whatever extra pounds I might have put on (not really sure if the walking everywhere has been canceling it out, I can't tell much).
Anyway after dinner we went back and caught some Z's, and the next morning we had free time again in Krakow.
On our way to the main square, Ariana (red polka dot scarf) wanted to get a picture with this street performer. He invited us all in for a picture, and then the street performer signaled that he wanted the girls on either side of him to kiss his cheek. This was the reaction - Mr. Pipp's is the best (in the back), green jacket.
We wandered, bought some more stuff, and I got kielbasa for breakfast. My absolute favorite thing about the food in Poland is the meat - I don't like meat much, but the sausages were great.
Sunday in the Square
We had a lot of time, so we just did some general aimless walking, and eventually we ran into a group of those break dancers, which cheered us up directly before we headed back to the buses to Wadowice, St. John Paul II's birthplace.
Krakow Square
We didn't have much time in Wadowice, so we went into the church there (apparently it's the site where John Paul II decided to join the priesthood?). I didn't like the decor much, the basilica in the Krakow main square was much more beautiful. In the Krakow basilica there was a huge amount of lavish decoration, but it was tastefully done with a good color scheme and with symmetry, with the eye being led upwards and to the main altar. In the Wadowice basilica it just seemed extremely aimless, the decoration was random and spontaneous, and I felt like the only thing that made the church cool was that there was a relic of Padre Pio there and a relic also of John Paull II, both of which I got to pray at.
View from Wadowice Basilica of the main square
Clare and I tried out some pope cake - I guess JPII really loved the cake and asked it to be made whenever he came, so now it's produced in all the little cafes there. I didn't like it so much, I feel like cake needs to be more substantial than a flaky top and some cream puffy stuff. I also got some little pastry thingies with my extra change, just because you can't convert change back to Euro after you leave Poland.
A very artsy photo of destroyed food
There was this really old lady in the doorway of the basilica there who looked to be close to 90 who was praying the Rosary both when I got there and closer to when I got the pastries, and I was just so sad for her. She seemed so nice, and when I saw people giving her a few zloty (the equivalent of less than a dollar) she was so thankful. I gave her a few zloty also, and then when I got the pastries I went back there because it had been an hour and a half and she was still sitting there, and I gave her one of them. She looked so startled and pleased, I was really glad that I got to at least connect with her a little bit.
Finally we got back on the buses after Wadowice and headed back on the long bus drive to Gaming. I was so glad to get back. It was fun adventuring, but I kept thinking, man, I have midterms next week, and I need to do reading and I was just really tired of being on the move all the time. On the bus ride I did quite a bit of reading, was forced to watch Frozen, and when we stopped to eat dinner Clare and I both got to talk a little more with Allison Thilges, a girl who knew Maria last year. She's really nice.
Saw this in a gas station in the Czech Republic. Who knows what's happening here...
We arrived at Gaming at three in the morning and the last day or so has been spent cleaning, reorganizing the room, studying, and catching up. And as soon as I put pictures into this blog post that's what I'll be off to do - study hard and start researching to write my papers. I'm starting to feel really overloaded with the semester...
Also they have started turning off the internet at 10 PM every night, both in the main dorm building and also in the building where they said they'd leave it on until 1 AM so that people could skype.
I'm really aggravated with this. They said it's for the sake of us developing temperance, but you can't really force a virtue on people by just denying the privilege to exercise it on their own. Not only that, but I can't research for my Charlemagne paper or for my metaphysics homework, which specifically says use online sources. I also can't Skype. The authorities were saying that students could easily figure out a time, but by the time it's 10 PM our time, it's only 1 PM back at home, and people are usually either at school or work or I haven't gotten everything done that I needed to, so really what they did was screw over everyone from the West Coast. So thanks a lot, Gaming campus.
Bonus perks - on returning to main campus, while I was gone, they added Wifi to the dorms and made it so that you don't have to use quarters in the laundry anymore, you can just use your debit card. So I'm trying to keep my chin up and not get really, really, really angry with the staff for their little "we'll make this campus a social place! ... past 10 pm!" jaunt.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
September 25, 2014 - Boring
Unfortunately nothing of particular note has happened in my life of late. Hence, no blog post for a good three days. It has been pretty rainy and I still haven't gotten to work out because I still have a tiny bit of a sniffle and my cough is still there in my chest a bit, so I'm trying to make a full recovery before I do anything silly and make it worse.
So I've been doing homework, going to class, reading metaphysics, or goofing off mostly. We got our midterm study guides for one of our classes and I have paper topics for three of them.
I'm kind of worried about the metaphysics paper. The topic for that is, "Discuss metaphysics". I wish there would have been at least a little more specificity.
The only other updates I have are pretty trivial. I discovered that I really didn't pack a lot of clothes, and the washer or dryer keeps eating my socks, so I'm going to have to buy more eventually. I have no clue how I managed to pack 50 pounds of luggage and have half as many clothes as Clare. It must be some miracle of her packing skills.
Second, they started turning the wifi off at ten PM every night - even in the Mensa - which I can't decide whether it is a fluke or not, because they're supposed to leave it on so we can skype past 8 PM to 1 AM. Are they just being sadistic or is the router broken? I missed a Skype session thanks to their 'go socialize!' principle.
Third, the university is taking a trip to Poland this weekend. We're visiting a Basilica, an unveiling of a shrine, the birthplace of Pope Saint John Paul II, and Auschwitz and Birkenau. We'll be moving quite a bit and I hear it's going to be a bit of a fast paced trip. Also the bus leaves tonight at 8 PM and gets there at 6 AM. .... I'm not excited about that one. Being trapped in a small moving space with a fake bathroom for twelve hours just seems awful.
I guess it's worth it? I'm not sure how long the trip back is, though, because we'll be bussing around various areas of Poland over the weekend.
I find out if I really lost my phone or not tonight.
Clare and I went and watched the staff ultimate frisbee team play against a student team last night for intramurals. The staff lost 8-15, but I was cheering for the Staff.
So I've been doing homework, going to class, reading metaphysics, or goofing off mostly. We got our midterm study guides for one of our classes and I have paper topics for three of them.
I'm kind of worried about the metaphysics paper. The topic for that is, "Discuss metaphysics". I wish there would have been at least a little more specificity.
The only other updates I have are pretty trivial. I discovered that I really didn't pack a lot of clothes, and the washer or dryer keeps eating my socks, so I'm going to have to buy more eventually. I have no clue how I managed to pack 50 pounds of luggage and have half as many clothes as Clare. It must be some miracle of her packing skills.
Second, they started turning the wifi off at ten PM every night - even in the Mensa - which I can't decide whether it is a fluke or not, because they're supposed to leave it on so we can skype past 8 PM to 1 AM. Are they just being sadistic or is the router broken? I missed a Skype session thanks to their 'go socialize!' principle.
Third, the university is taking a trip to Poland this weekend. We're visiting a Basilica, an unveiling of a shrine, the birthplace of Pope Saint John Paul II, and Auschwitz and Birkenau. We'll be moving quite a bit and I hear it's going to be a bit of a fast paced trip. Also the bus leaves tonight at 8 PM and gets there at 6 AM. .... I'm not excited about that one. Being trapped in a small moving space with a fake bathroom for twelve hours just seems awful.
I guess it's worth it? I'm not sure how long the trip back is, though, because we'll be bussing around various areas of Poland over the weekend.
I find out if I really lost my phone or not tonight.
Clare and I went and watched the staff ultimate frisbee team play against a student team last night for intramurals. The staff lost 8-15, but I was cheering for the Staff.
Monday, September 22, 2014
September 22, 2014 - Hallstatt, Austria
I'm still sick, surprise, surprise. If I'm not doing a lot better by tomorrow, I think I might head down to the doctor's office to see if they can tell me what's up.
Fun stuff though, this weekend after being too sick to go on the Mariazell hike, we ended up taking a train the next day to Hallstatt, which is a little town situated on the edge of a lake, pushed up against this large mountain. There's a way to drive around the lake to get to wherever you want to go by land, but it's such a large lake with such a large detour that they run a ferry with the train schedule so you can get to Bad Goisern, Obertraun, or Hallstatt, which are all located on the edge of the lake.
Right before we took off for the bus stop to get us to Scheibbs, the first train station, I went into the computer lab to print off a map of how to get to our hostel from Hallstatt, only to discover that we had made a critical error and the hostel was located in Bad Goisern, which was all the way at the north point of the lake, while Hallstatt is on the south-western point.
We had assumed that it was like a seven minute walk to get to our hostel from Hallstatt...turns out that it's actually seven miles. So right as we got on the bus to start our journey, it already looked like there was at least one fiasco waiting to happen.
Hallstatt was just as beautiful as the pictures - it's a quaint little touristy town with a city center that is impossible to miss, just because the place is so small. It's mostly just a tourist town though; a lot of hostels, pizzerias, stores, restaurants, and I'm sort of guessing that even a lot of people who work there commute to get there. There were some residential areas up higher that were fenced off, so I think some people live here, but it's got to be very expensive and also annoying, because taking a ferry and then a train to get to anywhere remotely more civilized would be aggravating.
I didn't even really see a proper grocery store - there was a Spar here, but not enough food in it to make it life-worthy.
Anyway, we wandered around some and met up with Jonah and Bradley briefly. When I was in the computer lab the twins were in there and they gave me Bradley's phone number, but it turns out we didn't need to use it - we saw them just sitting in the city center with a beer, so we went over and said hi.
After that we did some exploring, saw a church that was Lutheran, and then up higher, a church that was Catholic. I just sort of felt like that church was... creepy. The windows were nice, and when the sun comes in everything is pretty, but there were two large decorations behind the altar that looked like golden tri-folds with creepy statues on them. I wasn't sure what the statues were, either - they were all women that looked exactly the same, with huge foreheads, tiny staring eyes, and weird nubby chins.
Everything was also way decorated in gold, and for some reason the combination of gold and nubby-chinned women made me really uncomfortable. Sorry God, but I'm just not okay with that.
After exploring we grabbed dinner at a little restaurant and split a noodle dish that was basically glorified mac 'n' cheese - Clare really wanted to try it though.
After that started the real adventure. We met up with Jonah, Bradley, Catherine and Bridget (two other girls that the boys had run into and then ended up travelling with), who said they were staying a youth hostel in Hallstatt.
It turns out that buses to Bad Goisern stop running at 6. It was 6:15 when we decided to try to get to our hostel. Also, the ferries had stopped running because the trains had stopped running. A nice guy at the Spar seemed to think we were a little bit of dunces, but he was very helpful and started calling a taxi for us, before we decided to ask him if we could use his phone to call our hostel to see if we could cancel our booking for no charge (I was trying to use my phone, but I hadn't gotten the hang of punching in an Austrian number, and if we could use his phone, why use mine?).
Magically, we did get a hold of the hostel, which said we could cancel for no charge if we could do it online. I don't have my phone - I lost it on the bus from Mariazell because I had to move really quickly to accommodate this girl who was really sick, and then I forgot it - so we pulled out Clare's phone (Peggy), and headed off in search of Wifi.
We ended up in a hotel next to the city square and stood in line for quite a bit, and asked the man at the reception desk if we could use the hotel's locked wifi. He was very understanding (I was sort of afraid he wouldn't let us cancel our other hostel unless we ended up booking at this rather expensive hotel), and gave us a voucher to get into the system.
The online site said it would cost us 50 euro to cancel the booking, but when I called the hostel again, the guy on the other end was all, "No no no!! No charge, no problem, just cancel it, no problem, don't worry!" Don't worry and No Problem seem to be favorite phrases used by people trying to help clueless tourists.
So I assume from what he could convey was that the online site (which is general, not hostel-specific) was the one making us think that it would cost, so we cancelled that booking and went and found the other Franciscan group, who then took us up to the Hallstatt hostel, which magically had room.
Things about Hallstatt: after 6:00 the place is dead. Tourists leave, people go back to their individual dwelling places, there isn't any activity. The streetlights come on, and it was raining, so it was actually really beautiful. I think I liked it better that way.
The Franciscan group ended up wandering down to a bar and we all got desserts except for me, I ended up getting liver-dumpling soup, just to be adventurous and to help my sad sore throat. Turns out... I don't think Austrians know what the word dumpling mean; there was just broth and then a large liver meatball sitting in the middle of the soup, I think with some other stuff ground up in it.
Surprise - I really liked it! I guess I don't mind the taste of liver at all.
We had a quiet night in our hostel, and then the next morning we got breakfast at the hostel for free (it was just two semmels - those are the little rolls which are the staple of diets here), and then headed off for mass in the creepy Catholic church.
Turns out we ended up at a confirmation/first communion mass.... it took two hours and the homily was super long, and I understood about zero of it except when he said "Ewigkeit" or "Himmel", which respectively mean "Eternity" and "Heaven".
After that I went up to visit Hallstatt's ossuary. Back before cremation was in style, the citizens of Hallstatt had nowhere to bury their people, because their city is so little. So they'd bury people for fifteen years, dry out their bones, and then stick them in a charnel house to rest in peace. They stopped the tradition after people started getting cremated and there wasn't a real need, but they left the bones there and now you can pay a buck to get in and look at a bunch of dead people.
So following that we grabbed lunch at a little restaurant, then popped onto the train to get back to Gaming. We spent most of our train ride with Bradley and Jonah, because Catherine and Bridget both left earlier that morning. Bradley and Jonah really really really really wanted to play Egyptian Rat Race, except Bradley is an incredibly sore loser and hates when the game isn't going his way, and both of them slap the deck right after they put a card down, and I just don't have the treachery necessary to do that, I guess.
Clare actually held her own with Bradley near the end - Jonah and I just took a break and stared out the window. Jonah's pretty good about dealing with Bradley's inability to not win a game, but I was just sort of tired of it after a bit, and I'm not good at the game anyways.
Coming back was really relaxing, and I had a fun time Skyping and then I got some reading done for today's classes. It's nice to travel, but I'm also looking forward to a week of things being a little more calm before the Poland excursion this week.
Can't believe it's been almost one month since I took off from the United States.
Here's some pictures from our trip!
Fun stuff though, this weekend after being too sick to go on the Mariazell hike, we ended up taking a train the next day to Hallstatt, which is a little town situated on the edge of a lake, pushed up against this large mountain. There's a way to drive around the lake to get to wherever you want to go by land, but it's such a large lake with such a large detour that they run a ferry with the train schedule so you can get to Bad Goisern, Obertraun, or Hallstatt, which are all located on the edge of the lake.
Right before we took off for the bus stop to get us to Scheibbs, the first train station, I went into the computer lab to print off a map of how to get to our hostel from Hallstatt, only to discover that we had made a critical error and the hostel was located in Bad Goisern, which was all the way at the north point of the lake, while Hallstatt is on the south-western point.
We had assumed that it was like a seven minute walk to get to our hostel from Hallstatt...turns out that it's actually seven miles. So right as we got on the bus to start our journey, it already looked like there was at least one fiasco waiting to happen.
Hallstatt was just as beautiful as the pictures - it's a quaint little touristy town with a city center that is impossible to miss, just because the place is so small. It's mostly just a tourist town though; a lot of hostels, pizzerias, stores, restaurants, and I'm sort of guessing that even a lot of people who work there commute to get there. There were some residential areas up higher that were fenced off, so I think some people live here, but it's got to be very expensive and also annoying, because taking a ferry and then a train to get to anywhere remotely more civilized would be aggravating.
I didn't even really see a proper grocery store - there was a Spar here, but not enough food in it to make it life-worthy.
Anyway, we wandered around some and met up with Jonah and Bradley briefly. When I was in the computer lab the twins were in there and they gave me Bradley's phone number, but it turns out we didn't need to use it - we saw them just sitting in the city center with a beer, so we went over and said hi.
After that we did some exploring, saw a church that was Lutheran, and then up higher, a church that was Catholic. I just sort of felt like that church was... creepy. The windows were nice, and when the sun comes in everything is pretty, but there were two large decorations behind the altar that looked like golden tri-folds with creepy statues on them. I wasn't sure what the statues were, either - they were all women that looked exactly the same, with huge foreheads, tiny staring eyes, and weird nubby chins.
Everything was also way decorated in gold, and for some reason the combination of gold and nubby-chinned women made me really uncomfortable. Sorry God, but I'm just not okay with that.
After exploring we grabbed dinner at a little restaurant and split a noodle dish that was basically glorified mac 'n' cheese - Clare really wanted to try it though.
After that started the real adventure. We met up with Jonah, Bradley, Catherine and Bridget (two other girls that the boys had run into and then ended up travelling with), who said they were staying a youth hostel in Hallstatt.
It turns out that buses to Bad Goisern stop running at 6. It was 6:15 when we decided to try to get to our hostel. Also, the ferries had stopped running because the trains had stopped running. A nice guy at the Spar seemed to think we were a little bit of dunces, but he was very helpful and started calling a taxi for us, before we decided to ask him if we could use his phone to call our hostel to see if we could cancel our booking for no charge (I was trying to use my phone, but I hadn't gotten the hang of punching in an Austrian number, and if we could use his phone, why use mine?).
Magically, we did get a hold of the hostel, which said we could cancel for no charge if we could do it online. I don't have my phone - I lost it on the bus from Mariazell because I had to move really quickly to accommodate this girl who was really sick, and then I forgot it - so we pulled out Clare's phone (Peggy), and headed off in search of Wifi.
We ended up in a hotel next to the city square and stood in line for quite a bit, and asked the man at the reception desk if we could use the hotel's locked wifi. He was very understanding (I was sort of afraid he wouldn't let us cancel our other hostel unless we ended up booking at this rather expensive hotel), and gave us a voucher to get into the system.
The online site said it would cost us 50 euro to cancel the booking, but when I called the hostel again, the guy on the other end was all, "No no no!! No charge, no problem, just cancel it, no problem, don't worry!" Don't worry and No Problem seem to be favorite phrases used by people trying to help clueless tourists.
So I assume from what he could convey was that the online site (which is general, not hostel-specific) was the one making us think that it would cost, so we cancelled that booking and went and found the other Franciscan group, who then took us up to the Hallstatt hostel, which magically had room.
Things about Hallstatt: after 6:00 the place is dead. Tourists leave, people go back to their individual dwelling places, there isn't any activity. The streetlights come on, and it was raining, so it was actually really beautiful. I think I liked it better that way.
The Franciscan group ended up wandering down to a bar and we all got desserts except for me, I ended up getting liver-dumpling soup, just to be adventurous and to help my sad sore throat. Turns out... I don't think Austrians know what the word dumpling mean; there was just broth and then a large liver meatball sitting in the middle of the soup, I think with some other stuff ground up in it.
Surprise - I really liked it! I guess I don't mind the taste of liver at all.
We had a quiet night in our hostel, and then the next morning we got breakfast at the hostel for free (it was just two semmels - those are the little rolls which are the staple of diets here), and then headed off for mass in the creepy Catholic church.
Turns out we ended up at a confirmation/first communion mass.... it took two hours and the homily was super long, and I understood about zero of it except when he said "Ewigkeit" or "Himmel", which respectively mean "Eternity" and "Heaven".
After that I went up to visit Hallstatt's ossuary. Back before cremation was in style, the citizens of Hallstatt had nowhere to bury their people, because their city is so little. So they'd bury people for fifteen years, dry out their bones, and then stick them in a charnel house to rest in peace. They stopped the tradition after people started getting cremated and there wasn't a real need, but they left the bones there and now you can pay a buck to get in and look at a bunch of dead people.
So following that we grabbed lunch at a little restaurant, then popped onto the train to get back to Gaming. We spent most of our train ride with Bradley and Jonah, because Catherine and Bridget both left earlier that morning. Bradley and Jonah really really really really wanted to play Egyptian Rat Race, except Bradley is an incredibly sore loser and hates when the game isn't going his way, and both of them slap the deck right after they put a card down, and I just don't have the treachery necessary to do that, I guess.
Clare actually held her own with Bradley near the end - Jonah and I just took a break and stared out the window. Jonah's pretty good about dealing with Bradley's inability to not win a game, but I was just sort of tired of it after a bit, and I'm not good at the game anyways.
Coming back was really relaxing, and I had a fun time Skyping and then I got some reading done for today's classes. It's nice to travel, but I'm also looking forward to a week of things being a little more calm before the Poland excursion this week.
Can't believe it's been almost one month since I took off from the United States.
Here's some pictures from our trip!
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| View from the lake facing away from Hallstatt |
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| Clare on the ferry |
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| Hallstatt city square |
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| They sell lots of dirndls around here, but they're all crazy expensive. |
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| This would be Gwendolyn. Clare and I hadn't planned on us not being able to get to our hostel until after we'd explored, so we put everything in my backpack.... .... which made that backpack really big. Which means it was basically child sized. Clare has a thing for giving things old fashioned names |
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| It won't let me upload the large version of this, so I lowered the quality of it a bit so you could see the panoramic view from over the city square. |
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| The charnel house. I felt kind of weird taking a picture of this... |
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| The view from the end of our hostel hallway |
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| What nice girls! |
Friday, September 19, 2014
September 19, 2014 - Mariazell
I would have put pictures up, but I have lost my phone! Hopefully not permanently, since it's sitting on the Kerschner bus which is directly linked to the Gaming campus. Tomorrow I'll go down to the RD office and see if anyone found it and turned it in. If not, I might have to wait until Poland for the buses to come back so I can check the top level of the double decker - that's right, we've got a double decker bus - for my phone.
It was kind of an odd loss for me, because I have attachment to it because I'm so used to texting on it when I'm at home, but over here the only thing I use it to do is send snaps and take pictures, so really I'm not missing it much at all right now, just the idea of it.
I was too sick to make the hike to Mariazell today. That was a huge bummer, because apparently it was 17-20 miles of sheer awesomeness along with some cliffs to jump off into a river, caves to adventure, and a gorgeous nature park to walk through.
I was really hoping to make it, but when I got up in the morning I had a sore throat, was coughing up phlegm, and running gunk through the nose like a shower. So I decided to spend the morning drinking soup (I am so freaking tired of soup right now), reading books (I finished a third sci-fi novel this morning), playing games, and letting my brain vegetate while drinking huge amounts of water so hopefully I could get better.
By the time 1:00 rolled around I was feeling slightly less catatonic and my nose and throat had stopped giving me so much trouble, so I piled into a van with about 12 other people and we made the 45 minute drive to Mariazell.
We only had about an hour and a half to wander around the city before Mass, in which time Clare bought some nice souvenirs and we made a short trek up to the shrine at the top of the city where there's a fountain with (holy?) water. We're assuming it was holy water, because it was coming out of the altar space, and there were bottles being sold to collect it, and this native lady led us up there taking us to the spot. I personally sort of think it might have been a tourist trap of some sort, but I did get a little container of the water to bring home for holy water collection enthusiasts. (I also put some in my water bottle for drinking because it was totally drinkable water, the lady said so).
Mass was in the Mariazell Basilica whose style I really didn't like much. It seemed too scattered. Big architecture like that is supposed to lead your eye to the altar and to the tabernacle, and up to heaven, but the decorations seemed to frequent and random to generate any direction at all. It was like looking at a cake that someone had decided to put a lot of frosting on, and then as a side thought, added sprinkles and frosting flowers and then chunked windows into the sides of it. (The church had a decent amount of windows.)
We saw the famous miraculous Statue of Mariazell, but I hadn't heard enough of why it was miraculous to really know its story. After that we made the bus ride back to Gaming.
Apparently some of the students took the hike pretty hard. Sudie passed out in the middle of mass and had to be carried down to the bus and later went to the hospital because I guess according to Nathan she also passed out directly before the end of the hike and had to be carried some of the way.
On my bus there was a girl with a migraine (I think maybe from stress, overexhaustion and dehydration) and she had to be moved up to the front of the bus, taking Clare's and my seats. I moved for the girl who was helping her. She proceeded to cry of stress and then threw up a couple of times.
I guess I'm overall glad I didn't go on the hike, because I don't think I would have made it. But I also am really sad because I think it would have been gorgeous.
Tonight I was going to go make some more soup for my throat, and I wandered into the second floor tea kitchen where they were throwing a party of some sorts. It was just getting started and Anna invited me to stay but I felt really awkward with just three of them and I just wanted soup and I had thoughts that maybe I'd go find a quiet spot and write, so I declined and then went to the downstairs tea kitchen.
Turns out people were down there too, Asaph and Nathan included. They both talked to me and were really nice, but a bunch of the popular group were flooding in and taking seats and Asaph said they were going to watch a movie. I was really intimidated, especially because I didn't have makeup on and my face feels crusty from having had a cold and blowing my nose a lot, and I couldn't tell how bad my breath was because I haven't been able to taste for the last couple of days, and my hair was unbrushed and wet from the shower. I hadn't expected to run into so many people, especially not the "in crowd".
Asaph and Nathan both talked to me though, and Asaph invited me to watch the movie. Flustered, I declined awkwardly, made my soup, hung around and made small talk with Nathan (everyone else ignored me), and I ate my soup and made an ungraceful silent exit from the tea kitchen.
I went and found my dark corner and after that felt kind of bad. Like I probably should have stayed and socialized. They did invite me. I started in on a huge guilt trip. I had rejected the invitation out of sheer panic and I lost my chance.
Lucky for me, Nathan came wandering along the hallway (weird chance, especially because it was a dark empty hallway) and asked me if I'd seen Chris Davet. I said no, and then asked him what movie they had decided to watch. He told me, then said I should come if I wanted to, and told me where they were watching it (I'm not sure why he included that detail, since he'd just seen me there ten minutes ago).
Anyway, it was really nice, and so I awkwardly seized my second chance, threw all my stuff back in my backpack, and tiptoed into a room full of about 15 or so people getting ready to watch a movie.
We watched our movie and I felt kind of bad because I kept having to dry cough and it didn't sound particularly good, I'm getting healthier but I just felt really bad and like I shouldn't be there intruding on them. The only people who ever talk to me in that kind of situation are the guys unless I talk to the girls first. It's kind of annoying and I can sense that the girls don't really want me there. They just talk to the guys and flirt and have tickle fights and hang all over them.
I don't mind much that the guys want me there, even if I sort of think they just want to have pity on me the loner and invite me to their things and then I am harmlessly in the corner, because the guys are really nice and that's sweet of them to think of me. However, when the girls are busy talking to them and holding all their attention, I end up just sort of sitting there awkwardly, invited by the cool dudes and ignored by the social power of the cool girls.
When I'm fully healthy and my voice sounds normal and I don't dry cough every thirty seconds then maybe I'll be a little bolder about stuff. As it was, after the movie, they started talking about maybe playing a game, but then they really didn't, and just sort of had antics while ignoring me, so I skedaddled quietly.
Overall .... I'm not sure what to think of today.
Starting to look forward to Hallstatt tomorrow but I'm sort of afraid of catching the wrong train or missing a train or getting lost in Hallstatt, so I'll conquer that tomorrow.
It was kind of an odd loss for me, because I have attachment to it because I'm so used to texting on it when I'm at home, but over here the only thing I use it to do is send snaps and take pictures, so really I'm not missing it much at all right now, just the idea of it.
I was too sick to make the hike to Mariazell today. That was a huge bummer, because apparently it was 17-20 miles of sheer awesomeness along with some cliffs to jump off into a river, caves to adventure, and a gorgeous nature park to walk through.
I was really hoping to make it, but when I got up in the morning I had a sore throat, was coughing up phlegm, and running gunk through the nose like a shower. So I decided to spend the morning drinking soup (I am so freaking tired of soup right now), reading books (I finished a third sci-fi novel this morning), playing games, and letting my brain vegetate while drinking huge amounts of water so hopefully I could get better.
By the time 1:00 rolled around I was feeling slightly less catatonic and my nose and throat had stopped giving me so much trouble, so I piled into a van with about 12 other people and we made the 45 minute drive to Mariazell.
We only had about an hour and a half to wander around the city before Mass, in which time Clare bought some nice souvenirs and we made a short trek up to the shrine at the top of the city where there's a fountain with (holy?) water. We're assuming it was holy water, because it was coming out of the altar space, and there were bottles being sold to collect it, and this native lady led us up there taking us to the spot. I personally sort of think it might have been a tourist trap of some sort, but I did get a little container of the water to bring home for holy water collection enthusiasts. (I also put some in my water bottle for drinking because it was totally drinkable water, the lady said so).
Mass was in the Mariazell Basilica whose style I really didn't like much. It seemed too scattered. Big architecture like that is supposed to lead your eye to the altar and to the tabernacle, and up to heaven, but the decorations seemed to frequent and random to generate any direction at all. It was like looking at a cake that someone had decided to put a lot of frosting on, and then as a side thought, added sprinkles and frosting flowers and then chunked windows into the sides of it. (The church had a decent amount of windows.)
We saw the famous miraculous Statue of Mariazell, but I hadn't heard enough of why it was miraculous to really know its story. After that we made the bus ride back to Gaming.
Apparently some of the students took the hike pretty hard. Sudie passed out in the middle of mass and had to be carried down to the bus and later went to the hospital because I guess according to Nathan she also passed out directly before the end of the hike and had to be carried some of the way.
On my bus there was a girl with a migraine (I think maybe from stress, overexhaustion and dehydration) and she had to be moved up to the front of the bus, taking Clare's and my seats. I moved for the girl who was helping her. She proceeded to cry of stress and then threw up a couple of times.
I guess I'm overall glad I didn't go on the hike, because I don't think I would have made it. But I also am really sad because I think it would have been gorgeous.
Tonight I was going to go make some more soup for my throat, and I wandered into the second floor tea kitchen where they were throwing a party of some sorts. It was just getting started and Anna invited me to stay but I felt really awkward with just three of them and I just wanted soup and I had thoughts that maybe I'd go find a quiet spot and write, so I declined and then went to the downstairs tea kitchen.
Turns out people were down there too, Asaph and Nathan included. They both talked to me and were really nice, but a bunch of the popular group were flooding in and taking seats and Asaph said they were going to watch a movie. I was really intimidated, especially because I didn't have makeup on and my face feels crusty from having had a cold and blowing my nose a lot, and I couldn't tell how bad my breath was because I haven't been able to taste for the last couple of days, and my hair was unbrushed and wet from the shower. I hadn't expected to run into so many people, especially not the "in crowd".
Asaph and Nathan both talked to me though, and Asaph invited me to watch the movie. Flustered, I declined awkwardly, made my soup, hung around and made small talk with Nathan (everyone else ignored me), and I ate my soup and made an ungraceful silent exit from the tea kitchen.
I went and found my dark corner and after that felt kind of bad. Like I probably should have stayed and socialized. They did invite me. I started in on a huge guilt trip. I had rejected the invitation out of sheer panic and I lost my chance.
Lucky for me, Nathan came wandering along the hallway (weird chance, especially because it was a dark empty hallway) and asked me if I'd seen Chris Davet. I said no, and then asked him what movie they had decided to watch. He told me, then said I should come if I wanted to, and told me where they were watching it (I'm not sure why he included that detail, since he'd just seen me there ten minutes ago).
Anyway, it was really nice, and so I awkwardly seized my second chance, threw all my stuff back in my backpack, and tiptoed into a room full of about 15 or so people getting ready to watch a movie.
We watched our movie and I felt kind of bad because I kept having to dry cough and it didn't sound particularly good, I'm getting healthier but I just felt really bad and like I shouldn't be there intruding on them. The only people who ever talk to me in that kind of situation are the guys unless I talk to the girls first. It's kind of annoying and I can sense that the girls don't really want me there. They just talk to the guys and flirt and have tickle fights and hang all over them.
I don't mind much that the guys want me there, even if I sort of think they just want to have pity on me the loner and invite me to their things and then I am harmlessly in the corner, because the guys are really nice and that's sweet of them to think of me. However, when the girls are busy talking to them and holding all their attention, I end up just sort of sitting there awkwardly, invited by the cool dudes and ignored by the social power of the cool girls.
When I'm fully healthy and my voice sounds normal and I don't dry cough every thirty seconds then maybe I'll be a little bolder about stuff. As it was, after the movie, they started talking about maybe playing a game, but then they really didn't, and just sort of had antics while ignoring me, so I skedaddled quietly.
Overall .... I'm not sure what to think of today.
Starting to look forward to Hallstatt tomorrow but I'm sort of afraid of catching the wrong train or missing a train or getting lost in Hallstatt, so I'll conquer that tomorrow.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
September 18, 2014 - Ugh
Clare made a blog post so I feel obligated to also make a blog post. However, nothing really has happened in my life except that I've been sick, going to classes regardless, and eating huge amounts of noodle soup in an attempt to feel better.
I like how the campus has Ibuprofen - they're not allowed to give us any medicines or over the counter drugs, but they are allowed to have them sitting around on shelves and then point out those shelves with the medicine and casually look aside as we grab a couple.
I have been doing a lot of reading as I lie around. Instead of getting up early to read, I just skip breakfast and sleep like a slug, go and sniffle through class and gross out everybody (but the 100 percent attendance policy must live on!), and then go back to my room and vegetate and read books.
In fact, I have read two and a half books today, neither of them pertaining to school. (I did do some school reading, but mostly I read sci-fi.)
It was relaxing to read material not relating to school and to also not have to think so hard as to write stuff myself. Also, I still haven't really succumbed to the monotony of playing videogames to kill time, since when I'm healthy I usually have something more exciting to do like hiking or socializing. However, I am not inclined to do either of those things, so my days suddenly got a lot freer.
I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, I'll be feeling amazing so I can go on this seven hour hike with the university.
I might just go anyways and suffer the consequences, because the hike sounds totally worth it and I'm sick of sitting around doing nothing and feeling all my hard earned muscles turn into mush.
I like how the campus has Ibuprofen - they're not allowed to give us any medicines or over the counter drugs, but they are allowed to have them sitting around on shelves and then point out those shelves with the medicine and casually look aside as we grab a couple.
I have been doing a lot of reading as I lie around. Instead of getting up early to read, I just skip breakfast and sleep like a slug, go and sniffle through class and gross out everybody (but the 100 percent attendance policy must live on!), and then go back to my room and vegetate and read books.
In fact, I have read two and a half books today, neither of them pertaining to school. (I did do some school reading, but mostly I read sci-fi.)
It was relaxing to read material not relating to school and to also not have to think so hard as to write stuff myself. Also, I still haven't really succumbed to the monotony of playing videogames to kill time, since when I'm healthy I usually have something more exciting to do like hiking or socializing. However, I am not inclined to do either of those things, so my days suddenly got a lot freer.
I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, I'll be feeling amazing so I can go on this seven hour hike with the university.
I might just go anyways and suffer the consequences, because the hike sounds totally worth it and I'm sick of sitting around doing nothing and feeling all my hard earned muscles turn into mush.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
September 16, 2014 - I'm Sick
I figured it was coming, after having gone hiking in the rain for four days straight, and living in the dorms again with a bunch of other people in cold weather. Guys, I have some kind of weird multitype illness... a sore throat, a runny nose, a headache, I'm super tired, and I had a fever earlier today until I took some Ibuprofen.
Yesterday was just a plain old sick day - I wasn't feeling quite so bad, but I didn't go to the gym, and then I sort of staggered through classes. Clare and I went to dinner at the Keller, using a sort of meal exchange thing, and got the Kartause burger.
Ironic, Austrians make better burgers and fries than any Americans' that I've tasted yet. I still feel like the Austrian Mensa people are making fun of our food, though. Today we had hot dogs stuffed with cheese, wrapped and fried in bacon, and fried potato wedges. I'm not sure whether that's just how they eat, or they're trying to accommodate us, but it's kind of gross at times.
Today I was even more zombie-ish than usual and didn't even mind that I had no notable social interactions at all. Clare and I went into one of the tea kitchens, Clare was a doll and made me soup, and I ate some yogurt I got at the Spar. (My debit card is here and working now!)
Tonight we did something scary - we booked tickets for a train to Hallstatt, Austria, and a hostel. I'm frankly not sure how any of it will work out, so hopefully we can muddle through it once we get off the train in Hallstatt.
Hallstatt is the place Mrs. Hull was telling me to visit, and please send a postcard from - it's a little Catholic town on a lake, pretty much pinned up against the mountains. You have to take a ferry to get to it from the train station, and it's so small that it digs up its dead every 30 years or so and puts them in an ossuary (a bone collection) which you can view for a small fee.
Clare's been really social and inviting people, so maybe we can get someone to come with us who has more of a clue what they're doing than we do!
Yesterday was just a plain old sick day - I wasn't feeling quite so bad, but I didn't go to the gym, and then I sort of staggered through classes. Clare and I went to dinner at the Keller, using a sort of meal exchange thing, and got the Kartause burger.
Ironic, Austrians make better burgers and fries than any Americans' that I've tasted yet. I still feel like the Austrian Mensa people are making fun of our food, though. Today we had hot dogs stuffed with cheese, wrapped and fried in bacon, and fried potato wedges. I'm not sure whether that's just how they eat, or they're trying to accommodate us, but it's kind of gross at times.
Today I was even more zombie-ish than usual and didn't even mind that I had no notable social interactions at all. Clare and I went into one of the tea kitchens, Clare was a doll and made me soup, and I ate some yogurt I got at the Spar. (My debit card is here and working now!)
Tonight we did something scary - we booked tickets for a train to Hallstatt, Austria, and a hostel. I'm frankly not sure how any of it will work out, so hopefully we can muddle through it once we get off the train in Hallstatt.
Hallstatt is the place Mrs. Hull was telling me to visit, and please send a postcard from - it's a little Catholic town on a lake, pretty much pinned up against the mountains. You have to take a ferry to get to it from the train station, and it's so small that it digs up its dead every 30 years or so and puts them in an ossuary (a bone collection) which you can view for a small fee.
Clare's been really social and inviting people, so maybe we can get someone to come with us who has more of a clue what they're doing than we do!
Sunday, September 14, 2014
September 14, 2014 - Russian Hut
After Mass today - which was, thankfully, a normal Roman style mass - I went and did some serious studying for History. That class is going to be really difficult, just because, well, Dr. Hass might be pretty picky on names and dates, but we're overviewing history itself at the speed of light, so it feels like I'll miss everything important that will be on the actual exam itself.
We also have to write a paper related to medieval history and our travels, which might be tough because I haven't traveled anywhere or made any plans. (It can't relate to our university sponsored trips.)
Anyway, I was doing some reading (and re-reading!) for that class when Nathan or Christian (who even knows) came down and dumped himself face down in the couch right next to me and started taking a heavy duty nap.
I was surprised and amused, but who knew that was going to be the start of an adventurous afternoon? I kept studying, but about a half an hour later either Christian or Nathan (the one who wasn't sleeping) came down to grab his twin, and proceeded to tell him that they were going on a hike with Father Matt up to the Russian hut that's located somewhere on the top of one of the mountains around here.
He then invited a couple of the other girls he knew, and I, being adventurous, said, "Oh, is everyone invited?" and he kind of thought about it and went "Yeah, sure, why not!"
So I geared up and checked with another girl to make sure it was alright that I came, and it turns out that this hike was more widely known than I thought it was. Quite a few people were getting ready to go, including Jessica and Christine (I always think of them like a pair because they're always together), Elizabeth, Emily, Sudie, Cole, and Alona, Irina, and Monika, who are LCI students, Nathan, Christian, Leslie, and I am pretty sure there are a couple other girls whose names I don't know or forgot.
Anyway, we started up, and it was intense. It turns out that there's a trail that leads to one of the roads I walked up on my own the other day, so I was pretty excited to see that I'd already explored that area before everyone else. But Father Matt walks fast, and he showed us another trail that took us straight up the side of the mountain off the road.
Father Matt said it takes about 45 minutes to get there. Maybe if you're walking as fast as him.... we lost Sudie near the beginning because it was muddy and slick and very, very steep. The rest of the group sort of broke up due to speed - I sort of floated between the people in the front and the people in the back (the LCI students), because I tend to go faster than the average, but not nearly as fast as the speedy people.
The twins kind of rounded up the herd - Nathan caught up with a couple of us that were sort of in the middle, while Christian hung back and encouraged the LCI students on, who were struggling. He even found a stick and broke off all the branches so that Monika could use it to walk with (she was the slowest).
The hike was really intense and I was breathing pretty hard, but I wasn't as tired as I thought I was; it was mostly because my right leg was cramping up. By the time we got up to the top and a large ridge that sloped sharply down on either side, I was feeling pretty good, and racing ahead of Cole and the twins.
At some point Cole, Nathan and Christian, Irina, Alona, Monika and I got separated from the main group (I think that we took an easier way to get up to the hut, frankly), and we all stopped at the top to take pictures.
I have no idea why a Russian would want to build a shack so high up. It would be incredibly difficult to get to each day, and it was really tiny. Still, the view was breathtaking!
On the way back down it was even slipperier than I remembered coming up, and when I got all showered up I headed straight for the Mensa and scarfed down a huge dinner - I'm feeling pretty full, sleepy, and exhausted, but it was definitely worth it. After this blog post it'll be time to get studying for tomorrow's philosophy quiz. I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. I also might take some time tonight to write, since I've been just hiking all weekend.
It was really nice to have some hiking companions. I reintroduced myself to Cole, chatted with the twins some, laughed with Irina about the word "bouquet" (she kept saying "bookit"), and traded some smiles with Alona, whose English is kind of awful and she doesn't understand most of what is being said.
The twins said they'd take me up to the caves sometime, so now hopefully I'll get to look forward to having some pals to go up on an even more strenuous adventure! They said they ended up crawling up on their stomachs and clinging to the weeds to get themselves up. I'm stoked.
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| The view of Gaming from our spot, standing on the front porch of the shack |
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| Monika, Irina, me, Alona |
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| Alona, Christian, Nathan - seriously, can you see the "deeper cleft in Nathan's chin"? I can't. |
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| On the way back, both of them decided to collect flowers to put on a shrine for Mary. We all collaborated in finding nice wildflowers to make an arrangement. I asked for a picture, and then they both got distracted at the same time... |
Saturday, September 13, 2014
September 13, 2014 - Wandering Around Gaming
In light of the fact that I'm stuck in Gaming for this weekend with a large portion of my school reading done, I've had to find other ways to amuse myself.
Yesterday was pretty relaxing - I slept in for quite a long time, about nine hours, and woke up feeling extremely refreshed. Following that I went to mass, lunch, and then felt restless, so I decided I'd go for another hike.
This time I was accompanied by Christine Canavan and Jessica Schuster, who are both Sacred Music majors and are both in Honors. I was planning on going exploring somewhere else, but they said they hadn't been to the waterfall yet, so I took them up there. Both of them were homeschooled for quite a while, and seem more on the reclusive side a little like Clare and myself. I think they were both planning on going to get kabobs tonight and I was invited, but I've settled down downstairs now and I told them to go knock on our door to find me, so... that might not fly.
Talking with them was pretty nice, and they're nice girls. I don't think I really click with them, but regardless it was fun to have company.
Coming back to the Kartause, I was informed by Clare that the Bibliotek was open again - which meant that the gorgeous grand piano was available for me to play. I immediately rushed from dinner over to the Bibliotek to get my hands on it. I love playing that piano. It makes me sort of really want to save up money so that one day I can afford a Yamaha grand piano. In that big room, the acoustics are heavenly.
I took a video, so I'll try to see if I can upload it after dinner.
Clare and I actually stayed in there for about two hours. I was kind of surprised about that, mostly that Clare would want to stick around for two hours while I tinked around on the keys playing bits of songs I don't remember all the way through. Either way, it was incredibly relaxing.
After coming back, I grabbed a shower and went downstairs to join the card game that Clare had organized, with Jenny, Christine, Jessica, John, Kakha. We played BS, Egyptian Rat Race, and then Kakha taught us a Georgian card game called Ponti.
Following that, the RA on duty this weekend came and invited us all to watch a movie in the Audi-Max (the name for the larger classroom). They had moved couches into the room and I helped Christian set up the speakers. I guess all those times hooking my laptop up with HDMI to the TV has given me at least one useful skill.
Today I slept in again and then ended up going to my first Byzantine mass. I really don't like it much. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I knew the tunes of everything that was sung, because the entire mass is sung, but it was also a little long and just frustrating because I wanted to sing along, but I couldn't follow with what was going on, even with the booklet they gave us, because their accents were so strong I couldn't figure out what was being sung.
Following mass and lunch, I decided to take a hike up Book Mountain on my own. I was hoping to go with some people, but Clare was off with Kristin Boutross, who is visiting from the ITI (another school in Austria) and both Christine and Jessica were studying, and besides, the hike up to the waterfall exhausted them, so I was figuring that making the trek up the highest mountain in the area to the steel cross wasn't going to be on their list of things to do.
Plus, I think most of the hiker types around here have already been up there, as well as to the caves. In the end I took a couple of wrong turns, but I followed my instincts and my general sense of direction, and I made it to what apparently is a pilgrimage spot for a lot of Franciscan students.
I can see why. It didn't seem like a particularly long or strenuous hike to me, but I was also running part of the way up, and when I got there I was looking out over all of Gaming and I could easily see the Kartause in the distance. Looking at everything with the bare eye is so much more impressive than pictures, but I did take a couple.
Up there I said some pretty serious prayers. Being closer to the sky just makes it feel so much more ... spiritual? Maybe I'm being ridiculous for saying that it's easier to pray in certain places. Anyway, I came back down and now I figure I probably ought to do some schoolwork tonight. I have a quiz in philosophy on Monday, and some of us found one of the old history tests from last semester, and man, they are incredibly nitpicky about the things you have to know. I'm not even sure where to start memorizing.
So yeah, that looks like tonight.
I have felt weirdly off today so maybe I'll do some journaling too and go to bed early. This weekend feels ridiculously long and I think I'll be glad for my debit card to get here, and for the other students to come back. Like, it's nice having less students here because I've gotten more comfortable with all of the people that stuck around, but it just feels like I'm not going anywhere really. I want to go travel.
"Dropping school to focus on adventures."
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| Gaming, Austria |
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| The building with the cross on the right is the Gaming parish. |
Thursday, September 11, 2014
September 11, 2014 - Some Unidentified Mountain
Well folks, it looks like my 4 key is just about shot. It took me three or four tries to get that date to type. Good to know my laptop is going slowly... one bit at a time.
Today has been a bit of a roller coaster. Tuesdays and Thursdays are getting to be not my very favorite days mostly because of Medieval History. I had really high hopes for the class, because I really enjoyed Matt Potter's history classes. Mr Potter went deeply into the causes of the important parts of history and spent time discussing them at length, doing various readings on them, having discussion, etc.
Doctor Hass leaps into history at three hundred years of medieval wars per minute. He doesn't stop to pause or reflect on anything in particular, just spits a ton of hard facts at us and I'm pretty sure he expects us to memorize all of them. When we try to ask questions, a lot of the time he'll answer curtly and abruptly, like he thinks our question was idiotic, or he just doesn't have the time to answer it. Also, he gets sidetracked in history talking about things he thinks are particularly interesting, but don't have anything to do with the material we'll eventually be quizzed on.
So I really hate Tuesdays and Thursdays. And remember I talked about how on Tuesday, Professor Cassidy got all defencive about whatever it was he was saying that I asked a question about? I may not have asked the question in the best way or something, but he kind of flipped on me a little. I went to class dreading sitting through yet another lecture on love and marriage.
Don't get me wrong, I find Fulton Sheen's Three to Get Married book absolutely beautiful and spot-on. A lot of the things he says are things I guess I sort of know or understand or see intrinsically, but he words them so dang well. I enjoy understanding more fully some of the things that are involved in marriage. It's mostly the legalistic stuff about licit marriages, etc., etc., that tend to get me a little frustrated with the way they're worded.
Anyway, out of the blue, in the middle of class, Professor Cassidy flat out stopped the class to point me out and apologize to me in front of everyone for being harsh. Honestly, I almost teared up right in front of everybody, just because it was so unexpected. I mean, I had known that he was very passionate about his subject so I can understand why he would get defensive about his topic, but the fact that he took the time to say he was sorry really meant a lot. I was more inclined to pay attention to what he was saying after that.
So that part of my day went pretty well.
Right around that time after class I came back to my room to do a little reading and I felt really antsy. When Clare left to go to Ministry for Moms, I started feeling really down and lonely. I mean, everyone was leaving to go to other places all around Europe, and I'm still waiting for my debit card.
Clare still wants to stick around for the LCI Conference on Saint John Paul II, and to see her friend Kristin Boutross, who goes to a Catholic Institute in Austria that one of our professors teach at. I guess the students from that institute are coming on Saturday.
I think that if my card had showed up, I would have immediately bought a discount card for the railway and then gotten a train ticket to Hallstadt, which is a tiny Catholic city about an hour away from Salzburg which Mrs. Hull told me to go visit. I just really have been feeling the urge to get off campus, and away from people. I just needed some time to get away, and I was just incredibly sad that I was going to be here and everyone else was out adventuring and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my weekend.
So I put on my backpack, grabbed a bottle of water, and took off into the rain.
I actually found a new trail - I'm not sure which one I was on, since the trails aren't marked super well and they're all in German. They are all marked with numbers that are supposed to mean the minutes it takes to get somewhere, but what does that mean? Does that mean a six foot tall athletic hiker, or a five foot two person with disproportionately short legs? Or is that a car (some of the roads are gravel roads wide enough for a car) or a human being walking on two feet? I have no clue.
I just started walking up. It was really starting to rain, but honestly I didn't care much. It was so beautiful that I really didn't mind, and I was listening to music.
The whole way up I ended up playing music that was just very calm and reflective, and some of it had really pretty lyrics. I felt like I was sort of praying the whole way up - like I was walking towards God. It felt like a prayer in itself, even though I wasn't directly praying. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it felt like the higher I got, the further away from the world I was, like I was walking out of my body and up into something higher.
I got up pretty high - I reached a place where the road forked in three, and for some reason I started getting worried about bears when I was in deep foliage, so I retraced my steps a couple of times and found a more gravel path. However, the gravel path didn't show any sign of going any further up - it looked like it was leading further into the mountains away from Gaming, rather than to the top. At one point I caught a view of the city down below (I'll post a picture later) and I realized how high I'd climbed.
When I had to come down, I got really sad - I just felt like I was walking away from God and I didn't understand why I had to return to real life and reality and people politics and classes and the struggles of figuring out my future life - I just really wanted to stay on top of the mountain for the rest of my life and contemplate the misty sky and the treetops.
So that felt sort of like a little pilgrimage but coming back was really upsetting for some reason - not sure why. I was feeling really upset with people in general, just because everyone was gone and I didn't have a group to chill with.
However, when I got back to the Kartause, one of the twins (who knows which one it was) stopped me to talk for a bit and told me that he and his brother were also staying back in Gaming just because they hadn't figured where they wanted to go and they had a lot of schoolwork, and they just thought after two weeks of travelling they'd take a weekend break, and honestly that made me feel a lot better. I think mostly it was just because they're super popular so I figured they would have gotten together with some people and taken off into the blue.
Later this evening after dinner and some studying, Clare and I went to another LCI social - they're every Thursday night and they're really fun. Kakha is getting more talkative - I guess he asked Clare if she was coming, and Maria invited us, too.
At the social they were trying to play Uno but there were too many people, and then Irina and Veronica started a game that I guess they call "Crocodile" that is essentially just charades.
Playing Charades with a bunch of people - it was honestly really fun. I mean, I sort of feel like a dork because I'm more comfortable acting on stage with a script and when the audience is completely blocked out by stage lights, so I'm a bit awkward and weird when I have to act out something like "Swan" in front of a bunch of people. Frankly, I think I looked a bit like an idiot.
Regardless, it was really fun, and it was just nice to chill with a bunch of people. Socials in Austria are a lot better than socials on main campus. Trust me. It's a lot more relaxed, and I think it's honestly been really a good thing that Clare and I decided to have an exchange student as a roommate, and that I eventually asked Monika if I could eat with her friends at breakfast, and now we chill with them a lot.
So like I said, the day has had its ups and downs.
I'm just sort of freaked out - if I do have to go back to Franciscan main campus, will I get to keep all the friends I make here, or will it be a little bit like the mountaintop experience where I come back and it's all not like it was on top of the mountain again?
Today has been a bit of a roller coaster. Tuesdays and Thursdays are getting to be not my very favorite days mostly because of Medieval History. I had really high hopes for the class, because I really enjoyed Matt Potter's history classes. Mr Potter went deeply into the causes of the important parts of history and spent time discussing them at length, doing various readings on them, having discussion, etc.
Doctor Hass leaps into history at three hundred years of medieval wars per minute. He doesn't stop to pause or reflect on anything in particular, just spits a ton of hard facts at us and I'm pretty sure he expects us to memorize all of them. When we try to ask questions, a lot of the time he'll answer curtly and abruptly, like he thinks our question was idiotic, or he just doesn't have the time to answer it. Also, he gets sidetracked in history talking about things he thinks are particularly interesting, but don't have anything to do with the material we'll eventually be quizzed on.
So I really hate Tuesdays and Thursdays. And remember I talked about how on Tuesday, Professor Cassidy got all defencive about whatever it was he was saying that I asked a question about? I may not have asked the question in the best way or something, but he kind of flipped on me a little. I went to class dreading sitting through yet another lecture on love and marriage.
Don't get me wrong, I find Fulton Sheen's Three to Get Married book absolutely beautiful and spot-on. A lot of the things he says are things I guess I sort of know or understand or see intrinsically, but he words them so dang well. I enjoy understanding more fully some of the things that are involved in marriage. It's mostly the legalistic stuff about licit marriages, etc., etc., that tend to get me a little frustrated with the way they're worded.
Anyway, out of the blue, in the middle of class, Professor Cassidy flat out stopped the class to point me out and apologize to me in front of everyone for being harsh. Honestly, I almost teared up right in front of everybody, just because it was so unexpected. I mean, I had known that he was very passionate about his subject so I can understand why he would get defensive about his topic, but the fact that he took the time to say he was sorry really meant a lot. I was more inclined to pay attention to what he was saying after that.
So that part of my day went pretty well.
Right around that time after class I came back to my room to do a little reading and I felt really antsy. When Clare left to go to Ministry for Moms, I started feeling really down and lonely. I mean, everyone was leaving to go to other places all around Europe, and I'm still waiting for my debit card.
Clare still wants to stick around for the LCI Conference on Saint John Paul II, and to see her friend Kristin Boutross, who goes to a Catholic Institute in Austria that one of our professors teach at. I guess the students from that institute are coming on Saturday.
I think that if my card had showed up, I would have immediately bought a discount card for the railway and then gotten a train ticket to Hallstadt, which is a tiny Catholic city about an hour away from Salzburg which Mrs. Hull told me to go visit. I just really have been feeling the urge to get off campus, and away from people. I just needed some time to get away, and I was just incredibly sad that I was going to be here and everyone else was out adventuring and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my weekend.
So I put on my backpack, grabbed a bottle of water, and took off into the rain.
I actually found a new trail - I'm not sure which one I was on, since the trails aren't marked super well and they're all in German. They are all marked with numbers that are supposed to mean the minutes it takes to get somewhere, but what does that mean? Does that mean a six foot tall athletic hiker, or a five foot two person with disproportionately short legs? Or is that a car (some of the roads are gravel roads wide enough for a car) or a human being walking on two feet? I have no clue.
I just started walking up. It was really starting to rain, but honestly I didn't care much. It was so beautiful that I really didn't mind, and I was listening to music.
The whole way up I ended up playing music that was just very calm and reflective, and some of it had really pretty lyrics. I felt like I was sort of praying the whole way up - like I was walking towards God. It felt like a prayer in itself, even though I wasn't directly praying. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it felt like the higher I got, the further away from the world I was, like I was walking out of my body and up into something higher.
I got up pretty high - I reached a place where the road forked in three, and for some reason I started getting worried about bears when I was in deep foliage, so I retraced my steps a couple of times and found a more gravel path. However, the gravel path didn't show any sign of going any further up - it looked like it was leading further into the mountains away from Gaming, rather than to the top. At one point I caught a view of the city down below (I'll post a picture later) and I realized how high I'd climbed.
When I had to come down, I got really sad - I just felt like I was walking away from God and I didn't understand why I had to return to real life and reality and people politics and classes and the struggles of figuring out my future life - I just really wanted to stay on top of the mountain for the rest of my life and contemplate the misty sky and the treetops.
So that felt sort of like a little pilgrimage but coming back was really upsetting for some reason - not sure why. I was feeling really upset with people in general, just because everyone was gone and I didn't have a group to chill with.
However, when I got back to the Kartause, one of the twins (who knows which one it was) stopped me to talk for a bit and told me that he and his brother were also staying back in Gaming just because they hadn't figured where they wanted to go and they had a lot of schoolwork, and they just thought after two weeks of travelling they'd take a weekend break, and honestly that made me feel a lot better. I think mostly it was just because they're super popular so I figured they would have gotten together with some people and taken off into the blue.
Later this evening after dinner and some studying, Clare and I went to another LCI social - they're every Thursday night and they're really fun. Kakha is getting more talkative - I guess he asked Clare if she was coming, and Maria invited us, too.
At the social they were trying to play Uno but there were too many people, and then Irina and Veronica started a game that I guess they call "Crocodile" that is essentially just charades.
Playing Charades with a bunch of people - it was honestly really fun. I mean, I sort of feel like a dork because I'm more comfortable acting on stage with a script and when the audience is completely blocked out by stage lights, so I'm a bit awkward and weird when I have to act out something like "Swan" in front of a bunch of people. Frankly, I think I looked a bit like an idiot.
Regardless, it was really fun, and it was just nice to chill with a bunch of people. Socials in Austria are a lot better than socials on main campus. Trust me. It's a lot more relaxed, and I think it's honestly been really a good thing that Clare and I decided to have an exchange student as a roommate, and that I eventually asked Monika if I could eat with her friends at breakfast, and now we chill with them a lot.
So like I said, the day has had its ups and downs.
I'm just sort of freaked out - if I do have to go back to Franciscan main campus, will I get to keep all the friends I make here, or will it be a little bit like the mountaintop experience where I come back and it's all not like it was on top of the mountain again?
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
September 9, 2014 - Still in Gaming
Today's been kind of a down day. Nothing really happened except for that I went to class, and disagreed with Professor Cassidy on how he explained marriage - he takes way too long on a single point and just beats it to death with a huge stick, and doesn't bother trying to make things clearer for those who ask questions.
Basically what he does is if you ask him a question that seems to contradict what he's saying, even if you just want clarification, he hits his forehead with his hand and basically seems to be saying, How could you be so stupid! The answer is this! But "This" doesn't make anything clearer than it was originally. I spent most of class being pretty frustrated. I have learned how to fluently listen to what he's saying and formulate arguments against it or questions for it in my head while playing Solitaire, and if I do that, I restrain myself from standing up and yelling all my objections at him.
After the class, after he'd basically told me my question was idiotic, one of the twins told me that he was confused too and it made me feel a little better, but I was still kind of offended.
I went to Mass and it was really nice. After Mass I ended up going down to the Spar with Clare while she bought some milk, and then I wandered back up and while she took a nap, I went to confession.
Confession with Father Luke was really nice - and I'm glad I know his name, now. He was very thoughtful and took more time with my confession and giving me advice and direction than any priest I've ever talked to in a confessional before, and I left feeling very calm, peaceful, and grateful for the sacrament. I even teared up a little for no particular reason. So I'd have to say that was the highlight of my day.
After Confession I did all my reading for tomorrow's classes but didn't even start to get around to answering the discussion questions. (I'm taking a break right now and it's already 10 PM, so if I'm even slightly prepared tomorrow, I'll be surprised).
I went to dinner, then I tried to get some money from my debit card - Gesa was supposed to activate it for me to withdraw some cash today, but as I was walking down to the bank I got sidetracked by Joe, who likes to talk a ton about himself and how sporty and buff and strong he is, and then by the time I ran down there, I put in my correct PIN, but it told me there was an error, and rejected my card.
So I tried a couple other PINs, and when they were rejected I ran back to the Kartause for Wifi to text dad, and then ran back to the bank to try and get the card to work with another PIN. By this time I think that the time period had expired.
I stood outside the bank catching Wifi from a restaurant next door for about twenty minutes texting Dad and trying to figure it out. By that time it was starting to get darker, and while Gaming is a fairly safe, small town, there were a couple people staring at me and a couple came out as if they wanted to ask me if everything was OK, because I was really upset after running back and forth a couple of times and getting no results and trying to meet a deadline, so I sat down on the edge of a step.
After a bit, a couple of guys drove up and parked, and they bought some food at the grocery store next door, but then they ended up loitering around where I was, eating their food and staring at me, and they walked back and forth past me a couple of times. Eventually one of them pulled his phone out and called someone, and since I had no idea what they were saying since it was in German, I decided that since my card had failed yet again, it was time to get out of there before the cops showed up or something.
To top it off, tonight I was supposed to play a chess game with David, but he got himself locked out of his room and he's been off taking care of that or something, so that's a no-go for the evening. I'm not quite sure where he went actually.
So I'm just sitting here answering some discussion questions for class tomorrow... I'm pretty tired, I might turn in early. Today's been a disappointing day.
The only upside is that the RA who did our room check today told me that I did a good job cleaning out the shower and the metal in the bathroom, which is something they're really picky about.
They'd better appreciate it. I scrubbed that dang bathroom harder than I've ever scrubbed a bathroom before.
Basically what he does is if you ask him a question that seems to contradict what he's saying, even if you just want clarification, he hits his forehead with his hand and basically seems to be saying, How could you be so stupid! The answer is this! But "This" doesn't make anything clearer than it was originally. I spent most of class being pretty frustrated. I have learned how to fluently listen to what he's saying and formulate arguments against it or questions for it in my head while playing Solitaire, and if I do that, I restrain myself from standing up and yelling all my objections at him.
After the class, after he'd basically told me my question was idiotic, one of the twins told me that he was confused too and it made me feel a little better, but I was still kind of offended.
I went to Mass and it was really nice. After Mass I ended up going down to the Spar with Clare while she bought some milk, and then I wandered back up and while she took a nap, I went to confession.
Confession with Father Luke was really nice - and I'm glad I know his name, now. He was very thoughtful and took more time with my confession and giving me advice and direction than any priest I've ever talked to in a confessional before, and I left feeling very calm, peaceful, and grateful for the sacrament. I even teared up a little for no particular reason. So I'd have to say that was the highlight of my day.
After Confession I did all my reading for tomorrow's classes but didn't even start to get around to answering the discussion questions. (I'm taking a break right now and it's already 10 PM, so if I'm even slightly prepared tomorrow, I'll be surprised).
I went to dinner, then I tried to get some money from my debit card - Gesa was supposed to activate it for me to withdraw some cash today, but as I was walking down to the bank I got sidetracked by Joe, who likes to talk a ton about himself and how sporty and buff and strong he is, and then by the time I ran down there, I put in my correct PIN, but it told me there was an error, and rejected my card.
So I tried a couple other PINs, and when they were rejected I ran back to the Kartause for Wifi to text dad, and then ran back to the bank to try and get the card to work with another PIN. By this time I think that the time period had expired.
I stood outside the bank catching Wifi from a restaurant next door for about twenty minutes texting Dad and trying to figure it out. By that time it was starting to get darker, and while Gaming is a fairly safe, small town, there were a couple people staring at me and a couple came out as if they wanted to ask me if everything was OK, because I was really upset after running back and forth a couple of times and getting no results and trying to meet a deadline, so I sat down on the edge of a step.
After a bit, a couple of guys drove up and parked, and they bought some food at the grocery store next door, but then they ended up loitering around where I was, eating their food and staring at me, and they walked back and forth past me a couple of times. Eventually one of them pulled his phone out and called someone, and since I had no idea what they were saying since it was in German, I decided that since my card had failed yet again, it was time to get out of there before the cops showed up or something.
To top it off, tonight I was supposed to play a chess game with David, but he got himself locked out of his room and he's been off taking care of that or something, so that's a no-go for the evening. I'm not quite sure where he went actually.
So I'm just sitting here answering some discussion questions for class tomorrow... I'm pretty tired, I might turn in early. Today's been a disappointing day.
The only upside is that the RA who did our room check today told me that I did a good job cleaning out the shower and the metal in the bathroom, which is something they're really picky about.
They'd better appreciate it. I scrubbed that dang bathroom harder than I've ever scrubbed a bathroom before.
Monday, September 8, 2014
September 8, 2014 - Philosophy on Tap
Last night Clare and I went on a walk with Ariana Kim, a girl who lives just down the hall from us. It was interesting how she latched onto our group somehow - I'm not even sure, but I think Clare met her first and I know her secondhand through Maria Silva, so she just grabbed onto us at one point and we decided we were all going to go exploring in the big field behind the Kartause.
It took some trying, but we found the access road which we think leads up to some houses behind the Kartause and overlooks the city as well. The sun was just setting and it was gorgeous. I didn't get any pictures with people because Clare decided her phone is superior and I'm usually really awkward about asking people to take pictures, so you just get the fantastic scenery.
The Kartause grounds are actually pretty big. They also encompass the small houses on the right side of the picture. It only recently struck me that Kartause is German for "Charterhouse" - I hadn't realized that before.
Our walk was really interesting - Ariana's more outgoing than I thought she was, and whenever we'd take a picture, she'd say, "We're such babes!" or "Oh yeah, girls!" Man, every time I saw her around campus I thought she was seriously way serious and wouldn't ever dare say things like that. Guess we were wrong.
Today was an interesting day - it was a Monday, so I ended up going to breakfast with my pants inside out somehow. I hit up the gym and then went for a run, then came back and spent a nice quiet holy half-hour in the chapel adjoining the Kartause church.
The chapel is freaking gorgeous, and very small - it has a large stained glass window that sends yellow and red light in and turns everything a sort of gold; it's a little bit like the last scene in most Disney movies, very oil pastel style. It's very beautiful and has a vaulted roof so any sounds you make in there are hugely amplified. As a result, everyone is very quiet.
Being in there was a good way to start my day. I think I'll go back Wednesday morning after I finish up with the gym and just try to make that a habit.
My debit card is still on the fritz so I have been holding onto my last 45 euro tooth and nail. I'm not sure how we're going to end up planning our weekend. It seems like everyone has already gotten groups together and are off to various destinations by method of telepathy - Clare and I never heard anyone assembling trips. So it looks like we might end up on our own for this first weekend, but I have no debit card to pay for a Vorteilskart (discount card) or for a hostel or for train tickets.
We are thinking about trying to find a hostel in Germany close to Bechtesgaden, where there is a large national park with gorgeous mountain and lake scenes. However, we couldn't find any hostels in the area, so Maria (Kostyalova) suggested that we try getting one in Berlin and then travelling out there on one day just to see the park. I'm so bad at planning things and we have so much school that I feel like if anything happens, it'll be very seat-of-the-pants.
So far I have received one invitation though. David wants to show me the churches in Budapest where he actually lives, so he asked me if I'd come with him in October when he goes up there a second time (apparently it's all full up for this weekend when he's going with some other people). I think that'll be fun, and I'm really relieved that I'll have solid plans and just focus on accomplishing that instead of worrying about other things.
Today was interesting - all of a sudden I felt like I actually had friends out of the blue, and it was so unexpected that I just don't know what to do with them. I talked to this one random guy who waved at me yesterday, and in the laundry room he thanked me for doing a bunch of the guys' laundry. I like to wash my clothes and towels pretty regularly so I've been going down there, and if I need to use a washing machine or a dryer whose cycle is done,I have to pull out the laundry of whoever just used it.
I feel bad about leaving clothes wet if they were in the washer, so I put them in the dryer. And I feel bad if I take clothes out of the dryer and just dump them in a heap, so I've ended up folding more men's shirts and pants and pinching boxers by two fingers than I really wanted to be doing this semester. This guy saw me doing it and told me that the dudes appreciate whoever's been processing and folding their laundry for them. So that was cool.
In Metaphysics today I sat next to the twins, and they were really friendly - they laughed at a couple jokes I made to myself under my breath way more than the jokes warranted, and they offered me a drink of their grape energy drink. (I'm glad I refused, because Christian got super hyper during class and started twitching weirdly and he told his brother he didn't feel so good. I told them it wasn't a good idea....)
After that, Maria invited me to go to dinner with her, and Clare and I sat down at a table and people just started sitting down with us. They weren't necessarily talking to us all the time, but it just felt so... normal. It scared me. After that we invited people to play cards, but we ended up getting our linens exchanged so there wasn't any time. I think I'm so freaked out by how normal it was and how social I've been lately that I've started wondering if everyone secretly hates me and it's just a big joke to make me feel good for a little while.
Tonight everyone ended up going to a Philosophy on Tap session with the professors. Tonight's topic of choice was "Can you photograph the sacred?" It was really a fascinating discussion and I guess I don't feel like I had any real strong doubt on my opinion in the beginning, nor were my original thoughts on the subject really changed due to the presentation, but it was really interesting to explore the reasons behind why I thought what I thought, and to hear some other perspectives on it. The presentation went so long that we didn't really have time for a large questions and answers sessions, though.
The presentation was really fun - there were a lot of people packed into a small basement dining room in the Keller. I didn't get a drink, mainly just because I would have had to pay for it. Everyone paid pretty deep attention to the talk, which I thought was impressive.
After the presentation I went and talked to Professor McNamara a little more on it - they never seem to mind if you have questions after the fact, if you didn't get them answered earlier. He seemed to think my insights were good. I really like Pf. McNamara - he's got this fascinating Irish accent, wears the nicest clothes, square hipster glasses, and seems quiet and a little bit shy and absent-minded, like you would expect a philosopher to be. He walks around like he's a bit unaware of his physical surroundings but can see keenly into people and likes what he sees, and then he sees beyond people into the immaterial realms he likes to talk about.
It took some trying, but we found the access road which we think leads up to some houses behind the Kartause and overlooks the city as well. The sun was just setting and it was gorgeous. I didn't get any pictures with people because Clare decided her phone is superior and I'm usually really awkward about asking people to take pictures, so you just get the fantastic scenery.
The Kartause grounds are actually pretty big. They also encompass the small houses on the right side of the picture. It only recently struck me that Kartause is German for "Charterhouse" - I hadn't realized that before.
Our walk was really interesting - Ariana's more outgoing than I thought she was, and whenever we'd take a picture, she'd say, "We're such babes!" or "Oh yeah, girls!" Man, every time I saw her around campus I thought she was seriously way serious and wouldn't ever dare say things like that. Guess we were wrong.
Today was an interesting day - it was a Monday, so I ended up going to breakfast with my pants inside out somehow. I hit up the gym and then went for a run, then came back and spent a nice quiet holy half-hour in the chapel adjoining the Kartause church.
The chapel is freaking gorgeous, and very small - it has a large stained glass window that sends yellow and red light in and turns everything a sort of gold; it's a little bit like the last scene in most Disney movies, very oil pastel style. It's very beautiful and has a vaulted roof so any sounds you make in there are hugely amplified. As a result, everyone is very quiet.
Being in there was a good way to start my day. I think I'll go back Wednesday morning after I finish up with the gym and just try to make that a habit.
My debit card is still on the fritz so I have been holding onto my last 45 euro tooth and nail. I'm not sure how we're going to end up planning our weekend. It seems like everyone has already gotten groups together and are off to various destinations by method of telepathy - Clare and I never heard anyone assembling trips. So it looks like we might end up on our own for this first weekend, but I have no debit card to pay for a Vorteilskart (discount card) or for a hostel or for train tickets.
We are thinking about trying to find a hostel in Germany close to Bechtesgaden, where there is a large national park with gorgeous mountain and lake scenes. However, we couldn't find any hostels in the area, so Maria (Kostyalova) suggested that we try getting one in Berlin and then travelling out there on one day just to see the park. I'm so bad at planning things and we have so much school that I feel like if anything happens, it'll be very seat-of-the-pants.
So far I have received one invitation though. David wants to show me the churches in Budapest where he actually lives, so he asked me if I'd come with him in October when he goes up there a second time (apparently it's all full up for this weekend when he's going with some other people). I think that'll be fun, and I'm really relieved that I'll have solid plans and just focus on accomplishing that instead of worrying about other things.
Today was interesting - all of a sudden I felt like I actually had friends out of the blue, and it was so unexpected that I just don't know what to do with them. I talked to this one random guy who waved at me yesterday, and in the laundry room he thanked me for doing a bunch of the guys' laundry. I like to wash my clothes and towels pretty regularly so I've been going down there, and if I need to use a washing machine or a dryer whose cycle is done,I have to pull out the laundry of whoever just used it.
I feel bad about leaving clothes wet if they were in the washer, so I put them in the dryer. And I feel bad if I take clothes out of the dryer and just dump them in a heap, so I've ended up folding more men's shirts and pants and pinching boxers by two fingers than I really wanted to be doing this semester. This guy saw me doing it and told me that the dudes appreciate whoever's been processing and folding their laundry for them. So that was cool.
In Metaphysics today I sat next to the twins, and they were really friendly - they laughed at a couple jokes I made to myself under my breath way more than the jokes warranted, and they offered me a drink of their grape energy drink. (I'm glad I refused, because Christian got super hyper during class and started twitching weirdly and he told his brother he didn't feel so good. I told them it wasn't a good idea....)
After that, Maria invited me to go to dinner with her, and Clare and I sat down at a table and people just started sitting down with us. They weren't necessarily talking to us all the time, but it just felt so... normal. It scared me. After that we invited people to play cards, but we ended up getting our linens exchanged so there wasn't any time. I think I'm so freaked out by how normal it was and how social I've been lately that I've started wondering if everyone secretly hates me and it's just a big joke to make me feel good for a little while.
Tonight everyone ended up going to a Philosophy on Tap session with the professors. Tonight's topic of choice was "Can you photograph the sacred?" It was really a fascinating discussion and I guess I don't feel like I had any real strong doubt on my opinion in the beginning, nor were my original thoughts on the subject really changed due to the presentation, but it was really interesting to explore the reasons behind why I thought what I thought, and to hear some other perspectives on it. The presentation went so long that we didn't really have time for a large questions and answers sessions, though.
The presentation was really fun - there were a lot of people packed into a small basement dining room in the Keller. I didn't get a drink, mainly just because I would have had to pay for it. Everyone paid pretty deep attention to the talk, which I thought was impressive.
After the presentation I went and talked to Professor McNamara a little more on it - they never seem to mind if you have questions after the fact, if you didn't get them answered earlier. He seemed to think my insights were good. I really like Pf. McNamara - he's got this fascinating Irish accent, wears the nicest clothes, square hipster glasses, and seems quiet and a little bit shy and absent-minded, like you would expect a philosopher to be. He walks around like he's a bit unaware of his physical surroundings but can see keenly into people and likes what he sees, and then he sees beyond people into the immaterial realms he likes to talk about.
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