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.