watching through a window

I watched clouds form today. I know you must be thinking, "wow, she has a lot of time on her hands if she can do that." But it was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Probably the only other thing that I found so amazing recently was watching a spider spin it’s web. That was art right there. But back to the clouds, I failed to mention that today was the first rainy day I’ve experienced in Austria. It’s been incredibly hot here until today with my second day at 100º F. As I was walking to the train station I saw what looked like smoke rising from the forest near by. But i think it was steam. And now here’s my bit of theory and anyone who knows better can correct me. I think that all this steam was rising up because the trees work kind of as an insulation system for the ground they cover. So the earth in the forest was still very warm when it started raining. Therefore, when the cold rain hit the warm earth it just turned back into it’s gaseous form and rose up from the forest like steam rising from a pot soup. It slowly got higher and joined with other strands of steam and formed massive amounts of clouds because there are massive amounts of forest around here. It was beautiful watching them form while I was riding the train and listening to iron & wine. It was kind of surreal, in fact. Being on the train by myself in such a beautiful place, thinking, this is where I live. Iron & Wine was the icing on the cake. actually, Iron & Wine has kind of become my theme music for my stay so far. It’s so soothing and quieting.

that part of the entry is actually a little old, as of midday on saturday, but i still wanted to post it. the lettner's, the family i'll be au pair-ing (nannying) for only have dial up in their house and it's hooked up to their one, old pc. so, when i actually move there it might take me a couple of days to get to an internet cafe and post stuff. the picture above is of untersberg, the most recognizable mountain in salzburg. it's much taller than that but all those clouds that were being made kind of took over about half the mountain.

oh, by the way, false alarm with the water in the shower being backwards here than in the US. it's just the krifter's shower being weird.

on saturday, after i got to the lettner's, we went for a hike in the woods behind their house. there are a lot of old marble quaries back there and the kids like to go exploring back there. it was so cool to watch the kids play and watch thomas and birgit, the mom and dad, interact. thomas would explore with the kids some, showing them interesting things to look at and birgit would watch from a safe distance. and then, when the kids were content playing and romping around thomas would go sit by birgit and they would have quiet conversations. she would sometimes do a very cute, schoolgirlish laugh at something thomas said. you could just see the love eminating around them. i asked them later how long they've been married and they told me they've been married 9 years. and they're just as in love as ever. it's incredibly refreshing seeing that. as a babysitter i get to see how a lot of families work and, from what i've been able to see so far, this is one of the most functional families i've ever encountered. the dad is very involved with the kids but not at the expense of the mother. and the mother is not over protective or clingy with her children. and the boys will just be boys. there is so much love in the family and i'm so glad for the kids that they have such great parents to watch and learn what love looks like.

okay, enough with the mushy stuff. :) i have a key to lock my room so that the kids don't get into all my stuff while i'm gone. the great thing about this key is that it looks like the key from cinderella! i'm not lying! and for all you boys who didn't watch cinderella because it was a girl movie, it looks like a key that would open a treasure chest. you can even look through the key hole in my door! it's so cool.
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i also got to go to church on sunday. but the funny thing was that church was at night. apparently it always is except for one suday a month. it was really strange sleeping in on sunday morning and knowing that i wasn't skipping anything. as far as i could tell church was good. i really can't make much of an opinion on a first time visit along with not knowing the language very well. i think i will like it. i'll keep you posted.

one more thing and then i must start cooking, i had my first gueniss yesterday. yep. i think i was a little too gung-ho on trying a dark beer. the initial taste was good. it had one. but the aftertaste was almost unbearable. it was so bitter. but i think i might be able to like it after i've had some other stuff that isn't quite so strong. but i'm not going to go out of my way to try that one again. maybe at the end of the year. i might have worked up to it at that point.

i'm making a dish called "spanish tortilla" for the krifter's tonight. my mom got the recipe for this omlette but not type dish when we lived in spain. it's really good. it has potatoes and onions and eggs in it. so now i have to go make it.

new things

so, some new things i have discovered today are:
1. the hot and cold water in the shower are backwards from the US
2. there is not tax on anything you buy from a store (clothes or food or toilletries)
3. it is most common to have sort of a "tea time" around 3 or 4 in the afternoon
4. pork is the most common form of meat here
5. thrift stores are very hard to come by so you have to find stuff on sale if you want to buy it cheap
6. i speak german not with an american accent but a french accent!
7. (not really new but cool) i can drink here and it is okay.
8. you can make up your own cell phone number!

so today was shopping, a very exciting day. sylvia, my friend who i'm staying with right now, wanted to show me how things are different here then in the US. we went to the mall in salzburg and had lots of fun. sylvia took me to H&M for some clothes, just a skirt and a shirt or two, and then to a drug store for some toiletries i forgot to bring with me. an interesting thing about this mall was that it had all the clothing and shoe stores but there was also a fresh vegetable market in the atrium as well as little fresh bread stands. and also there were little meat shops to buy any kind of meat you need. that was a little strange. oh, i found this very amusing, people were allowed to smoke inside the mall but when you wanted to throw something away you had to put it in either a trash can for paper, cans, or everything else. i just think it is funny that they want to keep the land so clean but they don't care about our lungs. the last thing that i found slightly odd was that there was a grocery store/supermarket, like a super target/wal-mart, in the mall. i guess it makes sense to have everything together but it was still funny to me.

after sylvia and i were done shopping we met hubert, her husband, for lunch at this supermarket. he had some cuopons for wienerschnizel from this supermarket which also had a small cafeteria, like whole foods/central market. and in case you don't know, wienerschnizel is made out of pork. now, this is very funny to all of you who remember how i feel about pork. and for those of you who don't know, i'm not a huge fan of pork. if i have to eat meat i prefer it to be, in this order, fish, chicken, turkey, beef, snake, shark, horse, dog, pork. (btw, i have never eaten snake, shark, horse, or dog. i'm just trying to make a point.) i just don't like how fatty it is and it has this sort of weird taste to me. but i think this is God's way of telling me that what i have considered nasty God has made it good. (very similar, ironically, to Acts 10:9-16). all this to say that i will be eating a lot of pork while i am here because pork is like chicken or beef in the US. chicken is not too expensive but beef is more for special occasions. oh well.

for the three days that i've been here i've been trying to learn and practice all the german i can. so, while we were eating lunch i asked my friends how they think i am doing and if i have a strong accent. they told me i am doing very well for only three days and i don't have much of an accent at all. they said that the small accent i have is a french accent! they told me to not be too surprised if someone were to ask me if i came from paris or some place in france! i couldn't believe it. i have the same problem with my spanish, when it comes out at all. it comes out with a french accent and french grammar. i guess that's what comes of having studied french for 5 years, even though i still don't feel very confident in it. :)

i just have to mention this because it's so different from the mindset i grew up with. after lunch we made a shopping list of things that we needed for dinner. the last thing was beer. a side note, this family that i'm staying with are the directors of wycliffe austria (a mission agency). let me just say that it would be highly unlikely to find beer or any sort of alcohol in a christian's house, much less a missionaries house, in america. so for me to go and buy beer with the directors of wycliffe austria and participate in the decision making process of the type of beer was weird for me. i kept on asking questions about what the different kinds of beer are like, because i don't really know about that stuff, and they would say, "should we get it? yes, we should get it so you can try it." i'll keep you posted with the kind i like best. :)

we also looked into a cell phone for me because it is very cheap to have one here. apparently you can make your own cell phone number. for instance, my birthday is 26.09.86 and that can be my cell phone number, with i think a few more numbers. i guess, they don't have area codes here because it's such a small country. so i will soon have a cell phone but i'm not going to put up my number because it's crazy expensive for me if you call me on my cell phone. i'll see if i can put up the house number where i'll be living but you all have to remember that i am 7 hours ahead of you. so when it is 5 pm there it is midnight here.

after shopping we went by sylvia's mother's house for "kafe" (coffee). she has a nice little house, which is actually quite large since only two people live there. sylvia's mother and grandmother live there together. they each have their own floor, which in europe right now is a very large living space for 1 person. sylvia's mother brought out some cake and pasteries she had made from scratch, which i could hardly believe they were so good. we stayed there for maybe 1 or 2 hours and then came home because we were all very tired from a full day.

i took a much needed nap when we got home. it felt so great. then i finally unpacked myself. i had everything strewn about the room until then and it looked quite terrible. what comes next is probably one of the funniest things so far. now, you must know that sylvia and hubert spent 6 months in the US last year where they were introduced to many good foods, like salsa and guacamole and bbq and all that. so for dinner we had burritos. they asked me if i could help cook this since i have a better idea of how it is done. i cooked the meat (ground beef!), which i only had to brown and put the fajita seasoning on, and i made guacamole. it was very simple for me but apparently sylvia had tried to make guacamole before and said she couldn't get it right. it was a good small feast. hubert really likes jalapeños, which i find incredibly amusing, and guacamole. they were very excited to have "good" mexican food again.

and that was today. i need to get some rest tonight because i am going exploring in the woods with the lettner's, my au pair (nanny) family. i also have to leave fairly early in the morning for me (9:50ish), especially considering i have jetlag, because i am taking the train to their house which will take about an hour. but i get to ride the train! YAY!!!! i'm really excited about that.

AUSTRIA!!!

so, some thoughts about austria so far:
1. it's incredibly beautiful
2. everyone is very nice
3. most people speak some english, which is good and bad
4. people take their time here to enjoy things
5. i can't believe i'm actually here
6. my german needs a lot of work :). but i think i'm learning quickly, i hope.
7. i'm incredibly dehydrated from spending 10 hrs on a plane
8. i think all these wonderful trees and fresh air is causing massive allergies to spring up. :)
9. vegetarianism is officially impossible
10. i'm living in crazy town (literally)
11. all the houses and streets are much smaller here.
next we'll recount my trip here. so first i got on the plane. that was a big step. :) no no. well i did get on the plane but that was very uneventful. the plane ride was 9hrs and 10 minutes. we watched 2 movies, take the lead and failure to launch. i actually slept through most of both of them so i can't tell you how they were. i maybe slept for 4 hours. oh, and i only maybe got 4 hours of sleep the night before because i wanted to tire myself out for my trip, which didn't work until i got to frankfurt, unfortunately.
next i arrived in frankfurt and had to pretend like i knew what i was doing. and i had to pretend that i understood german, that was fun. i had to go through passport control, which was a little scary, since i don't have any sort of visa. but everything was fine. they stamped my passport and i continued on my way. i got a little lost and had to ask for directions and all i was able to do was smile and nod and hope i had understood his gestures well. but i got there. even if i had gotten really lost i wouldn't have missed my plane because there were 2 hours between my flights. it was here that i got incredibly tired but i knew that i couldn't sleep because it would only make the jetlag worse. so i didn't. i listened to music. the plane ride between frankfurt and munich was mercifully short. the only exciting thing that happened during all of this was that when we landed in munich we didn't pull up to a terminal. they brought out those stairs that let you on to the tarmac and then you take a shuttle to the terminal. well, as i was going down the stairs i got tripped up on my boots/suitcase and...i fell down the stairs a little. that HURT!!! but ironically i only really fell on my left side. so my left elbow has a nice little gash and a wonderful bruise as does my left butt cheek. it's a little strange. :)
the lettner, the family i'm nannying for, picked me up from the airport. they are so nice and the kids are really funny. they are so excited that i'm here. in fact, birgit, the mother, was telling me that the youngest one, jakob who is 5, was counting down the days until i arrived. so we packed up my stuff and took off on our 2 hr car ride home. i felt really bad because i didn't know what to say. and even if i did, i didn't know how to say it in german so the kids could understand. thomas and birgit speak some english so we were able to communicate that way. the kids kept on talking to me and i just had to say "oh, ja?" (oh, yeah?)
half way home we stopped to have lunch near a lake, which i forgot the name of. but it was soooo pretty. we got the menus and i had to ask what everything was, since i don't really remember food from my german class. that's always the part of language learning that i think is stupid, except in my case when you actually might need it. :) so...my first official european meal was basically 4 hot dogs with rye bread and mustard. good thing i had recently started eating meat again. :) we stayed there for maybe 2 or 3 hours, letting the kids play and just enjoying our time. then, when i thought we were going to leave they asked for dessert and coffee and we stayed there longer. and then, when i thought we were going againg, we went to the lake and waded in for a while. it was great! instead of rushing home and just sitting around the lettner's decided to make a day of picking me up, which was also good because it kept me from falling asleep too early.
we finally got home and they showed me the house. the kids were climbing all over everything they were so excited. it is 4 stories up but it's incredibly small. it's kind of like a townhouse/duplex, except there are like 5 houses all together. and there's not much horizontal room. it's all verticle. so...i'm living on the 4th floor all by myself with my own tiny bathroom. that's saying a lot since the rest of the family shares one bathroom in the middle of the house. then it was time to move my luggage up stairs. i felt so bad for them because they took my luggage up the stairs, which was just barely under the weight limit for the baggage, which is 50 lbs. so they carried my 50 lb bags up 4 flights of stairs. i felt terrible! they asked me, "how did you do this before?" and i told them that in texas everything is so flat you don't have to take anything up any stairs, much less 4 flights. birgit suggested that i could take a shower if i wanted, which i did because it's incredibly hot here right now and they don't have AC because it never gets hot here. for those of you who went to california this summer with me, the heat here is nothing compared to the heat out there. now it isn't as hot as arizona but it did get up to 100 today.anyway, that's when i discovered the beauty of cold showers. and the water here gets nice and cold. oh buddy.
let's see, my friends, the krifter's, came to pick me up next. after that shower i had laid down for a few minutes, to help my hair get curly, and what do you expect, i fell asleep. next thing i know i hear voices i know calling my name. i was so completely disoriented! one of the weird things about the house i'm staying in is that you can hear what's happening throughout the entire house. like i can hear what's happening on the 1st floor all the way up in my room on the 4th floor. i think it's the stair way. so anyway, i heard a bit before they actually got in my room so i was able to get up and greet them very sleepily. they were bustling around getting all my stuff together for my time with them, which will be a month, and i just couldn't really get a hold of myself during all of this because it was all moving so fast! i said good-bye to the kids, who didn't understand why i was leaving so soon, and we put all my stuff in their car and we were off. the krifter's live about 50 minutes away from the lettner's by car. it took me most of the car ride to get myself together and get out of the daze i was in. during that time i discovered that the small town the krifter's live in, Irrsdorf, means crazy town. and they live by crazy lake, which is gorgeous, by the way. they have a house very much like the one i'll be living in except that it has 2 floors and the floors are a little bit bigger horizontally. their kids, josua and tabea were also very excited to see me and they couldn't stop talking to me, in german of course. their parents, hubert and sylvia, had to keep on telling the kids to stop pestering me and that i was very tired. sylvia then made pasta, with a pesto sauce from scratch! it was sooo amazing! i didn't know such amazingness could be made in a normal home. it was finally about 10 by the time i actually made it to bed. i was surprised that i was able to stay up that late for not having slept more than about 8 hrs in 2 days.
well, that was day one. i think i'll do day two tomorrow because it is already 1:30 am here and sylvia is taking me shopping tomorrow morning to show me how things are done here in austria. :)

the inagural post!

well, this is the start of my blog that i will, hopefully, maintain during my time in austria. i'm not there yet but i figured i'd go ahead and set it up so that it would be one less thing to think about once i get there. well, welcome to my blog and i promise to try and make it as interesting as possible