Two Thanksgivings=Lots of Fun

Sorry the photos are a little random. A pic of our first Thanksgiving feast and the actual car Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in.

The end is near. Only three days until my mom gets here! I'm really excited. I've had so much fun this semester!

Our real American Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful. The students, teachers, and our host families were all invited. The atmosphere was jovial and heartwarming. Everyone was smiling, talking, and laughing. Melinda and I sat at a table with Frau Creneville, Cara, and her host, Frau Schauer. It was interesting to see other host families that my friends had lived with. Frau Creneville, Frau Schauer, and Tante Hanna (Julia’s host, who is a duchess) were all good friends and talked a lot about us to each other throughout the dinner.
Dinner itself was delicious and as close to a real Thanksgiving dinner as I could have asked for. We had the works—turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (which all the host families were pleasantly surprised. Frau Schauer had never had them before), peas, mashed potatoes, and stuffing (which was more like knödel than stuffing). But the crowning dish was the pumpkin pie. I’m not sure if I’ve ever tasted any pumpkin pie so delicious (excepting my mom’s pie, of course). It was great. I couldn’t resist having a second slice.
So, yes, I had a good Thanksgiving. The company I kept on Thursday and Friday was the closest to family I could’ve asked for.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a great day full of great food. My Thanksgiving was a little unconventional, but so good. We had German class in the morning and then had a tour at the Military Museum. While the tour was really long, I enjoyed the end of the tour, where we were shown the car that Franz-Ferdinand was assassinated in and the uniform he died in. His assassination prompted the beginning of World War 1. We also saw Captain Von Trapp’s navy uniform.
After the tour, I headed over to the Holmes’ apartment to help with our Thanksgiving lunch. We had pumpkin chocolate chunk cookies, semmel sandwiches, and delicious lemon-ice fruit salad. Making it was definitely half the fun. We are all in there—me, Kelly, Cara, Melissa, Melinda, Carolyn, Rebecca, and Margie— listening to music, laughing and joking, and making a few messes. I was mixing the cookie dough, Kelly cutting the vegatables, Carolyn chopping up some massive chocolate bars and every now and then slipping Kelly and me a chunk of chocolate. I loved helping in the kitchen. I’m so excited to have a kitchen to use when I get home.
After lunch we hung out at the Holmes’ for most of the afternoon. It was so happy. I love being together with our group. But we all had to leave to get ready for our last opera together, Verdi’s Masked Ball.
The opera was wonderful. I didn’t see any of it because my seat was terrible, but I enjoyed simply listening to the music. I am a Verdi fan. I sat by a very nice lady visiting from Steiermark. We conversed in German a little. I was very proud of myself.
Afterwards, I headed to Café Merkur, our group’s favorite café, with Cara, Melissa, and Melinda. I had a bowl of yummy bowl of pumpkin soup. We had a blast. I’m really sad that I won’t see them everyday next semester or have all my classes with them.

Uwe Kroger!

I saw Uwe Kroger in the flesh!! On Wednesday I went to Rudolf: Mayerling Affair with my friend Kelly. And he was there!! And he was amazing!

Its weird walking down the streets of Vienna and reflecting on how differently I felt three months ago when I walked through the streets for the first time. Everything is so different.

Today in church we had our primary program. It rocked my socks off! It was so adorable. And I understood just about everything. The kids were really cute. Some highlights were:

The bishop's son gave an improv presentation. His story basically went--So, I came back from school one day and--this microphone is really loud--it's too loud! (and then he plugged his ears and kept speaking) And I waited on the side of the street but no one was there. So I prayed and then waited and waited and waited. No one came. So I prayed again. And waited and waited and waited. And then I decided to cross the street and prayed. And then I waited and waited--and then everything worked out.

The primary was singing about Jesus' baptism and two boys in the front had two pictures on sticks of Jesus and John the Baptist and they showed Jesus being baptized by John--and then headbutted by John. And then one of the primary leaders took the pictures away.

At the end of singing 'The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock,' the entire primary threw sponges into the audience. It was totally unexpected, but so great.

There is an American family in the ward with two little boys. The kids don't really speak German very well. The youngest got up to the stand with his mom and older brother and was trying to introduce his dad. He said "Mine Fader is . . . heiss . . . Matthew." It was really cute.

On Saturday, we went to the Marionette Theater at Schonbrunn to see the kids version of Zauberflote with our german professor, Frau Weissgerber. The audience consisted of 5-10 yr olds with their parents and 15 college students. The play was fun and the german was easy to understand. It was fun to hear the kids participate. It was amazing how much some of them knew about opera. A little kid behind me was humming along the whole time. Whenever Papageno or Papagena came on stage, some kid would yell, "Papageno!" or "sie is da!" (she's there!).

Our host, Frau Crenneville, was sick last week with the flu. So here's the card that I made for her.

Last friday I went to the Albertina with Jesse and Melissa. Passing through the gift shop, we saw fake tattoos of Toulouse Loutrec's artwork. We decided to try our luck to get some extra credit from Professor Kroll by buying the tattoos and wearing them to class on Monday.

While we didn't get any extra credit, the face on Professor Kroll's was woth the 60 cents I payed.

Hello Old Friend

Yesterday I saw my old friend the sun for about eight hours. It was wonderful. I hadn't seen the sun for nearly two weeks. Here are some pictures from yesterday: