New Home, New School, New Sights

     Well our first 2 weeks in Vienna are almost gone. We have already seen some amazing sights and have LOVED almost every minuet of being here. When we first arrived here in Vienna we spent the first 6 hours in the airport waiting for the flights of the other students to arrive. That was a long 6 hours of waiting in the airport after traveling for 14 hours to get to the airport. We then took a bus to the Austrian American Institute where we are attending our classes. Went though a few items of orientation and then waited for our host families to arrive. Our host Frau Alfons was the first to arrive so we left with her and got a taxi back to her home. She has a car but european cars are so small our luggage wouldn't have fit in her car. We made it back to her home and found out that we are living in the home with her. We were originally told that we will have an apartment to ourselves and this was just the lady that owned it. We have discovered that a language barrier can cause a lot of misunderstandings. So we are living here with her in more of an apartment style bedroom because of the attached small kitchen. We have a stove and an oven (we had to ask her to fix the oven) and a mini fridge. The bathroom is across the hall (and is FREEZING!!.... but hey better than a hole in the ground outside) and we go upstairs for the shower. The first few days were a slight bummer because we thought we had our own place but we have become comfortable here and are no longer grumpy about the unexpected change. She provides breakfast every morning which consists of 4 pieces of bread (usually different types each day) and 2 pieces of fruit. She leaves it in a basket outside our door. She provides our butter and jam and we get 1 L of juice and 1 L of milk a week. We also got a jar of nutella and I was super happy about that, I love nutella! She was surprised that we made our beds and told me I was such a good house wife. She is used to single students living with her and she always came in a made their beds and tidied up and did their dishes. I told her she doesn't need to do that for us. Frau Alfons also provides 1 dinner a week and so we go have that meal up stairs with her. The first meal was pretty good until I found a long hair stuck to one of the dumplings. I was trying to get it off so I could finish my meal but it wouldn't come off so I left 2 dumplings on my plate. Hopefully that will be a one time find. :)

      So far we have done a lot of walking around looking a different buildings and trying to find our way around. I am fairly comfortable with the train system now and can get from home to school and back. It takes us about 40 minuets to get to our school and we take 1 bus and 2 different subways to get there. We are taking a german class, a fine arts class where we study european art, and a Music Civilization class where we are studying different composers and different musical eras and music. Jarom is still attempting to find a large ensemble group here to play with so he can get the credits he needs for that. 

     We have done a little more than just walking around since we have been here and one place we have gone to was the Folks Opera. We went and saw the Magic Flute by Motzart performed at the opera on Motzarts birthday. It was fun to experience my first opera. The opera house was so beautiful with chandlers and red velvet seats. We how ever didn't get to experience the red velvet seats. We bought standing room tickets for 2 euros a piece so we stood for a 3 hour opera. It got hard to stand the whole time so we sat down for a small portion of it. Next time we go we will probably pay the 6 euro a piece for the seats in the far back just so we can sit. We also have gone to a violin makers shop and the lady explained the process of how to make a violin. It was very interesting and she had some beautiful instruments. You have to have wood that is at least 7 years old and it takes around 200 hours to make one and the price tag on the finished instrument is around 12,000 euros! We have been to the St. Stevens Cathedral several times and it is an amazing sight. We have also been to other beautiful catholic churches in the area. We have been the Wien Museum which was cool and my favorite museum so far is the (can't remember the name) museum where we got to see small portions of whats left of the Roman ruins. It was so interesting to see that people from 2000 years ago lived right where we were standing. Learning about history is so much more interesting when i'm walking right where the people we are learning about lived. We also went to the Motzart house and walked around the home where Motzart lived and composed many pieces of music and operas ect. It was amazing just knowing that he lived there and I was there walking in his home a reading history about him. 

     All in all the first 2 weeks being in Europe have been so amazing and we love it here. We will post again soon! 

                                                  -Andrea