August 28, 2014 - "B Day"

Today was our B Day of classes, meaning that it was our Tuesday and Thursday class schedule.  That meant History of the Medieval World, and Theology of Christian Marriage.  History of the Medieval World was interesting, but it turns out that I don't have the right books for it - we're supposed to have a sourcebook and then a textbook, but it looks like the books they gave me in the book room are two sourcebooks, both different editions.  That's not particularly helpful.... I'll have to talk to Doctor Hass later.

The lecture today, we talked a little about the formation of the empire once it had gotten really large and under the rule of Diocletian.  A lot of it sounded weirdly familiar to me, so some of that history reading and that Omnibus class Mom had me do must have gotten through my thick head at one point or another.

I think that class will be interesting enough.  My problem is that I'm feeling really swamped with all the papers we're going to have to be writing - probably because I don't have enough knowledge of the course material to think of a topic or any arguments for any of them, but I also am starting to freak about getting the work done already.  I need to stop being such an overachiever because it's going to drive me crazy.

After that we had Theology of Christian Marriage.  Let's be real, I was absolutely correct - there are roughly 9 or 10 guys in the class and 50 girls scattered throughout.  To make it worse, Professor Cassidy sounds like Stoick from How to Train Your Dragon, but far harder to understand, talking five times as fast.  (He has a heavy Scottish accent.)  So I'm pretty sure we covered a lot about Marriage, but I can't be sure because I didn't understand everything he said.

I'm not sure how he plans to make an entire class out of that material.  We already covered a bunch about marriage just today, like about how it's a sacred covenant made before God with human witnesses, a union between man and woman who promise fidelity to each other in an environment where they give themselves to each other in the flesh, with the promise of a safe environment to create and raise children.  How are we supposed to cover 15 more weeks with that?

My entertainment is that I somehow ended up sitting behind three of the most good looking popular guys on campus, so I guess if I get bored I can just stare at the backs of their necks and enjoy the view and I'd still be focusing on the course material.

Later that evening Clare and I walked down to the Spar and I bought some chocolate bars for my family when I come home, if they'll let me take them through Customs.  They have this special chocolate called Milka bars that they sell in the grocery stores.  I also got a bottle of nice looking wine which I selected for A) The fact that it was only 4 euros, B) it's not white wine, and C) it has a pretty red label.  Also plastic cups for the wine, which is really classy.  Oh yeah.  I still haven't even touched the lemon lime beer I bought to try later, so don't worry about me getting alcoholic real fast.  I took three days to finish my very first shot, because I just got myself to the point where I was happy and warm, and then I quit.

Liqueur tastes kind of like it has nail polish remover in it, by the way.  The kind I had was chocolate creme, and it was basically a chocolate bar with rubbing alcohol.  I think I'd enjoy liqueur more if it tasted fruitier.  Asaph told me I ought to go to the Keller downstairs sometime and see if they had anything.

For both of my philosophy classes I have mandatory attendance required for at least one of the Philosophy on Tap sessions that the professors hold, where they bring everyone down to the Keller and get everyone beers and then we talk about philosophy in relation to more modern topics, like Facebook and the human evolution, etc., etc.  So I have to remember to get to those.  I think it sounds really interesting actually.

Later in the afternoon I went to the weightroom again for a few minutes and was pleasantly surprised to see nobody there. I also did my laundry during that time.  Then Clare and I intended to go for a run, so we went exploring out in Gaming, but we had only jogged a short way before we found a bridge that went off to the left off the street, so we decided to go up that path.

Turns out it was some sort of 4-wheeler path or something, and it was filled up with rainwater from yesterday, so it was really muddy and sloggish and we got really dirty, but it was super fun.  It was more of a hike than anything.  When the path ended, Clare ended up sitting down to do some sketching while I stretched and listened to music and wandered around above her in the bracken off the trail.  After that I came back without her (she wasn't done drawing yet), and watched some girls go creek jumping.

There's a spot across the street from the Kartause that has a path where students go jump off into this creek which has a deep deep spot.  It looked like a lot of fun but I didn't really know the girls, so I hung back and watched them and sort of awkward-interacted with them, the way you do with people who don't really want to know your name but don't mind you being there.  I also helped pull some of them out because they got stuck down there in the creek, so I got a little muddier hauling them up.  That cliff is pretty steep.

I sort of want to go creek jumping but don't know who would go with me, I don't really have the means to gather together a group of people who want to go get soaking wet, and I'm not sure Clare would appreciate it?  We will see when she reads this post and tells me off for not asking her first.  ;)  She's reading Plato right now... I ought to be doing some sort of reading like for History but I don't have the right books, and I'm not sure I want to read all about marriage at the moment.  Maybe I'll follow suit and do some drawing.

After that I went to dinner and Clare and I sat down with Asaph.  A bunch of his friends showed up and sat around us and were really accepting and just goofed off.  There's one girl named Anna Boehk who's crazy extroverted, Dominic Gentile who she makes fun of a lot and (according to her) is a lady-killer, which I don't doubt.  Then there was Melissa who was quieter but apparently got a real kick out of my facial expressions, and also Katie who just laughed a lot and seemed really entertained and loved by the entire group.

So I've been doing some thinking lately about staying at Franciscan - I don't know, it just seems like I've made some friends here and I've actually had a really good time feeling on my own in Austria with a bunch of people that don't mind quite as much if you ask to join them at a table, and it's just a smaller atmosphere.  I've really liked getting to know people better, and I have sort of had in my mind the thought that maybe I could keep some of my friends if I went back to Main Campus, even if I hate a lot of the ways people do things there, and it really bugs me.

Asaph and I ended up talking about it right at the dinner table (Clare and Melissa were still there), for a really long time. He said he thought that people had acted wrongly at Franciscan and that I hadn't gotten a very good experience there, but that he thinks that better things could happen, and that it's important to understand that everyone is flawed and that it's good that I recognize that they are flawed in a particular way, but to still love them.

He also said that if I think that I have had a good foundation and am secure in my own identity, then it wouldn't be bad if I were to go to a state university and be an 'example' to others, and that you can learn to love everyone no matter where you were.

But I think he really wants me to think about staying, and I don't know, it sort of felt like he was talking down to me even if I know he didn't mean it that way, and it feels like there is almost literally no one who wants me to leave Franciscan and I'm wondering why nobody ever wants anything that makes me happy, they all want me to do what they want me to do. It really pisses me off actually, I don't know.

In any case I thought Asaph was really nice, and he's a truly caring person who thinks about other people and he was just super sweet about it regardless of if it was a little accidentally condescending, so I teared up.  Not sure if it's because I'm mad that everyone wants me to stay at fricking Franciscan, or because he was nice.  Either way, food for thought.

Right now I'm blogging, I think I'll do some drawing later, listening to music, drinking some lemon lime beer stuff.  I think i'll go downstairs later and see if the piano is free.

August 26, 2014 - Gaming, Austria

Today we got an official tour around Gaming for the last day before our classes start.  It was actually really cool - I'm looking forward to getting some free time and some clean clothes so I can go exploring in the hills and mountains around here.

Gaming reminds me a little bit of how I would imagine New Hampshire - everything is quaint looking buildings, mostly with red roofs, and a huge amount of foliage, a lot of pine trees mixed with deciduous trees.  Our window actually looks out at a wall of trees and a couple of weird plants with some berries on them, and behind that wall of trees you can sort of see one of the mountains.

We got led on the tour by Mr. David Pipp, who so far is one of my favorite people here.  He's actually incredibly funny and relatable, jumps up on top of things, tells stories about his children and previous students who got into bunches of mishaps, and is very understanding.  He took me down today privately to the administrative office to enquire about my suitcase after I came to him asking if I could get a phone to call the airport.  He had to sympathize with me when I told him about how living four days straight with essentially the same clothing is really uncomfortable.

Mr. Pipp took us walking out to see the row of houses just across the street from the Kartause where the majority of the professors and their families live, all in a row down the street.  The kids seem to run about the little town at will - I saw some of Mr. Pipp's kids on bikes near Gertrude's (the store where they sell school supplies), and out on the sidewalk in front of the houses some of Dr. Carreno's children were outside, Dani and Lina, and they waved at us and said hello.

The children are adorable.  We had an opportunity to sign up for Ministry for Moms today, which is something they offer on main campus as well. I never signed up on main campus when I found out about it last semester due to the heavy workload I had, and also because the homes of the professors were so far away from campus and I had no way to get there.  However, I decided to put my name down on the sign up sheet to offer my services as a piano or guitar teacher for any of the kids for one time period per week, and I also wrote that I was available to do some cleaning and bonding with the kids.  I think it will be a great opportunity to meet some of the kids and the families of the professors and really make some lasting friendships.

The kids of the professors are all really intimidating - most of them speak two or three languages because one or more of their parents is pretty much guaranteed to speak more than just English.  For instance, the Carreno children speak English, Hungarian, and French, and they only really speak English because of the Franciscan students who come and hang out with them.

So, be happy, Mom and Dad, I'm actually signing up for something extracurricular that makes me get to know people! ... like I said, eight year olds are lots friendlier than 20 year olds.

Speaking of which, I ate breakfast this morning with Monika, Clare's and my Bosnian roommate, Iryna and Veronika from Belarus (which apparently is located near Russia), and David from Hungary.  I ended up going with all the exchange students because I asked Monika if I could go to breakfast with her, and we actually had a lot of fun talking and hanging out.  They tried to teach me some of their languages and laughed a lot and they actually didn't tell me whether or not my pronunciation was good. Which, since they didn't correct me a lot, could mean that either I'm excellent at picking it up, or really bad.

I guess I probably shouldn't worry about it so much, since I'm not concerned about correcting their pronunciations - I really like their accents, they're so cute.  It was really fun and my face hurt from smiling at the end.

David's language Hungarian was probably the hardest to pronounce, with Bosnian or whatever Monika speaks, being the second hardest.  Russian's the easiest to get.

Apparently in Belarus there's this tradition in families where, when you sit down to eat, they say, "Have a nice meal!" in Russian.  They taught me to say it, it's something like "pree-YAHT-nah-vah ah-pee-TEE-tah".  Spelled in Russian it looks like this: Приятного аппетита!

Through the rest of the day I've been able to talk to a couple of people - I met a senior classics major named Kevin, talked a little with Jamie, and met on and off with the exchange students I met this morning.  This was kind of my lucky morning, considering the exchange students only eat in the Mensa once a week or so.  I really liked them a lot.

A lot of the other students have formed little groups where they sit together and don't talk to anyone outside of the group, which sort of bugs me.  Oh well.  I'm sure along the way things like that are bound to happen, but I'm feeling a little bit more optimistic about my chances for making friends.

I haven't really wanted to mingle with anyone else today anyway - my suitcase still hasn't come, which has meant I've been rewearing clothes.  It's amazing how fast you can go from showered and feeling clean to feeling disgusting after putting on the same pair of jeans you've been wearing for the last four days.  It's made me pretty miserable and grumpy to be honest.  I hadn't realized how much I depend on smelling good and wearing clean clothes for my self confidence.  I've been avoiding people, standing alone, and just feeling really unhappy all day.

Finally I went down to the office to track my bag and it looks like it'll get here later tonight, hopefully.

We finished all our meetings for today and classes start tomorrow - we'll have more meetings I'm sure, but I'm looking forward to some more control over my own schedule.  Once we have classes, the rest of our free time will start being ours to go out into the town and walk around and exploring.  One of my goals this semester is to get up really early and go hiking up one of the mountains so I can see the sunrise. I've heard it's fantastic.  Since I've been waking up at 6 consistently every morning - which is about 9 PM Pacific Time - I might as well make it 4 and then go for a good tiring hike.

I really like Gaming - Mr. Pipp told us that everyone in the city has been expecting us and asking after the American students who are so friendly and polite.  Everyone we met on our tour waved at us and said Grüß Gott, which translates roughly to "God's blessings be with you".  We were told that most everyone would greet us as we just walk around the town.

What surprises me about Europe is that there's a ton of designer clothes stores.  Even in Gaming I've seen at least two high-end retail stores.  No wonder European people dress really classily.  The only options around here seem to be 1) Expensive and 2) Super classy.

Here's some pictures I took earlier today while on our trek around Gaming - I'm sure I'll get some better pictures later. My SD card converter is still in my suitcase, so you don't get to see any of my camera pictures yet.

The Spar is the grocery store where we can get our ordinary items.

The Gasthof is a food place? I think? 

Since all our meetings are over and I only signed up for the Ministry to Moms thing, I don't have anything else to do for the rest of the night until classes tomorrow! Maybe when I get my clothes I'll go exploring in Gaming if it isn't too dark, otherwise I'll just take a little while to breathe and recuperate.

August 24, 2014 - Brussels, Belgium

In about ten minutes I will have been awake and on the move for twenty-four hours.  I got up at 3:30 AM to head to the airport and depart for Denver, then for Chicago, then Vienna, Austria.

That was the plan anyway.  What ended up happening was the flight from Pasco to Denver ended up delayed, and so I had to haul my butt across the span of 40 gates in 5 minutes to get to my connection from Denver to Chicago.  That went over fine (aside from the fact that my backpacks suddenly seemed about 50 pounds heavier than they probably are).  However, we ended up landing in the beautiful city of Peoria rather than Chicago, due to the fact that Mother Nature had decided to blow a massive storm in over Chicago and cause ground delays airport-wide.

About an hour later we got into Chicago and I went immediately to customer service because I had looked at the display board and it hadn’t said anything about a Vienna flight, so I just assumed that it had departed already. Ahead of me was a couple speaking in German; they asked where Austrian Airlines were of the associate at the desk, and took off for Terminal 5 looking for the flight.  I was really tempted to follow them, but by then there was a huge line behind me and I was near the front of it, so I decided not to chance it and just wait patiently in line.

Turns out I really should have considered following them like the lost little puppy I feel like I am.  I think the plane got delayed the same amount of time I was delayed for, because when I got to the counter, the associate told me that the flight was just in the runway and now I was going to be rescheduled to Brussels.

Okay, so maybe my geography isn’t so great, but I definitely had to pull out my phone and do a google search for what country Brussels was in.  (Belgium, by the way.)

Off I went on a flight to Brussels, where I was seated next to a Chinese man from Peoria and a Iranian-Swedish photographer from the south bit (he said the name, but I can’t remember it to save my life).  We had a rather pleasant, odd, but slightly disjointed conversation about physics, the space-time continuum, the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, photography and Canon lenses (which he swears to), communications versus science, he showed me a bunch of gorgeous photos of Sweden and told me to come visit this semester, and then we took off and it ended up being a pretty silent flight.

I thought it was funny the Chinese man ended up watching some kind of Chinese love drama and then Need for Speed, which is a testosterone-jacked-up movie about cars and how fast they go.  I just read my book and slept alternately.

I am way too polite for my own good I think.  About midnight I really had to go to the bathroom, and I was in the window seat.  I waited about half an hour before tapping my companions hesitantly, and neither of them woke up after about five minutes of tapping.  I got nervous and called the flight attendant to ask for advice.  She seemed rather aggravated and ended up hitting the men on the shoulder pretty hard and they woke up and let me out.  I felt kind of bad, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Speed up about three hours and we are over Dover.  I looked out the window to see if I could see the famous White Cliffs of Dover, but I didn’t spot them.  Instead I got to watch us cross the channel between England and Belgium, which had a ton of tiny little white clouds and was very beautiful.  Looking down on both countries, you could see the difference between them and the US.

Where the US cities are very planned out in squares, everything in Belgium and England looks more like little starry patches – the center of the patch of buildings spreads out in all directions and then trails off in pointy clumps and becomes fields and agricultural sections, or big puffy trees.

When our plane sunk lower it was easier to see the buildings, and they look different from ours too.  While we have lots of separate houses, I got to see my first English flats, and a lot of stacked residential areas whose buildings tended to look pretty different.

And then I showed up in Belgium and got told that I would have to wait another good four hours until I get to fly the final two hours to Austria.  I’m really tired and I want to sleep, but I also don’t want to leave my stuff sitting out with a ton of people around me.

I had to cash in 20 euros to get some water and some change for the pay phone.  A water bottle over here cost $4.75, or roughly 3 euros, which I think is kind of ridiculous.  I also had to pay two euros for the one minute phone call, because the first machine was broken and just ate my coin without working.

People here are very patient, speak English slowly, smile at me very sympathetically, and point me in the right direction with very specific instructions, like I’m a small child.  I think I look very tired and lost and I don’t mind it at all.  Specific is good when all the signs look sort of like “Ook éében das hoek negenbehrer” etc., etc.  I kid you not, I saw a word with a double “é”.  If É is supposed to be an accent, why would you have to accent the same letter twice in a row?

For example, whatever language “Ultgang” is – it makes me think more of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than “Exit”.  I know I am decent at languages and comprehending general meanings without having learned the language at all, but even my talents are failing me at this point.

I had forgotten how well European people dress.  I feel really outclassed by a bunch of them.  You can kind of tell which ones are European before they even start talking, for the most part.  Who would want to wear such fancy clothes for an 8 hour flight, that’s what I want to know?  And why do all of them look polished and put together and I look like I got swiped through a grease machine? It’s incredibly unfair.

In the hour and a half I’ve been sitting here, I haven’t heard a single native English speaker.  However, most of the European guys that have talked to me, started off their conversations in English, so I guess I look pretty American.

The European guys were really nice.  They wanted to know why I was lugging around such a big backpack while I’m so small.  I am wondering the exact same thing.  The longer the day goes, the heavier it gets, I swear someone’s putting rocks in it. 

I saw some phone charging stations but I can’t find my converter (it must be in my suitcase) and the charging stations also make you pedal to generate power, and I am too tired and sweaty and intimidated by the goodlooking Europeans to want to submit myself to that.

Here’s to hoping nothing goes wrong from here on out...