Settling in

I live in Austria.  Weird.

I've been here for 2 weeks now, familiarized myself a little with Hollabrunn and gotten myself into a routine.

I don't really know what I should tell you all.  I mean, I'm living pretty normally.  I don't go to class with a hovercraft, I don't spend my weekend skydiving...besides the fact that I'm an American living in Austria, it's not too far out of the ordinary.

My German class is alright.  I was hoping that I'd meet people who I'd be able to call friends for the year, but most of them are only here for the month of classes--they came to Austria just to improve their German.  I'm also the only native English speaker, which is a first for me.  My class consists of 2 Russians, 2 Hungarians, a Lithuanian, a Turk, a Chinese man, a Czech girl, a Ukrainian and me.  When any of us go out to lunch after class, we speak (read: struggle through) German together (unless the Hungarians are there, as Hungarian still comes more easily to me than German).

I met up with a few other foreigners on the Donauinsel (Danube Island) last weekend, which was in a way a relief.  I hadn't heard a native speaker in person since I said goodbye to Josh at the airport almost a month ago!  We swam in the Danube and had cold drinks further down from the swimming area.  It was ridiculously hot that day, so both activities were welcomed by me.

AND...I saw Harry Potter yesterday!  It came out in Europe a day earlier than in North America, so I jumped on that opportunity.  Unfortunately, I had to watch it in German, as it was already dubbed, but since I can understand WAY more German than I'm comfortable speaking, it wasn't a problem at all for me--I was pretty proud of myself, actually!

In other news, I booked my ticket to Germany today!  I've got some vacation time in August, so I thought I'd go up and visit some old friends near Hannover.  I did a short exchange the summer between junior and senior years in high school, so I've known these guys for a long time.  I visited them again when I lived in Hungary, but haven't seen them since then, so it's been almost 5 years!  I can't believe it's been that long.

Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post.  I haven't taken many in the last couple weeks.  I'll get on that soon!

Grace and peace,
Hilary