I sit here at the end of my second full week in Vienna, needing to catch up on blog post for the last two whirlwind weeks! I decided to take a day-by-day journal style approach to these catch-up posts, but will attempt more thematic posts in the future focused on cultural and linguistic reflection.
9 January
As I mentioned in my last post, my program held an orientation in Mariazell over the weekend. Since everyone arrived on Thursday together and I arrived later, it took time to meet people and orient myself with others in the group. I hung around the Austrian RA and another girl I met on the bus out to Mariazell, but met a couple friendly girls in my apartment, Allie and Megan. The IES Staff plunged immediately into information about the program, encouraging us to get involved with internships and other opportunities in the cities. We enjoyed a "traditional" Austrian evening afterwards, where a group from the Steiermark (an Austrian province) put on a performance of traditional Austrian singing and dancing. Hearing them talk was my first introduction to the dialects of Austrian German...I could hardly understand what they said!
10 January
I woke up the next morning starting to feel slightly more adjusted to the time change. Interviews for housing situations, German class placement, and teaching internships took up most of the morning. In the afternoon, we took a wonderful adventure to the town of Mariazell and saw a pilgrimage basilica there. The basilica contained a nearly 900 year old wooden statue, now covered in gold and other ornaments. We stood next to the small chapel containing the statue, discussing the legend behind the church and the role of the Catholic church in Austria. The quietness and beauty of the church inspired my awe, especially upon realizing that people from all different nations have found peace and unity here for nearly four times as long as my home country existed! After the Cathedral, I ventured around the town Ben and Megan and tried out some of the local "medicinal" Schnapps. Back at Mariazell, we experienced a thorough lesson in Austrian waltzing!
11 January
We left Mariazell in the morning and faced major snows on the way down, which made our arrival later than expected. Back in Vienna, I navigated back to the IES Center with a student assistant and other students who left luggage there in addition to myself. I experienced my first "opportunity" to pay for public restrooms and to ride the U-Bahn without buying a ticket accidentally (U-Bahn = Vienna's public transportion which runs on an honor system)! Eliza, the student assistant, called a taxi for me and then I headed out to my apartment. I chose to do independent housing for study abroad, because I found a connection to a Viennese family through a professor at IU. They live upstairs and I live downstairs with two Austrian students. I met my roommates and some of their friends at the apartment, along with my roommate's sister and her boyfriend, who live down the hall. I enjoyed getting to speak German with so many people, but realized my current language level makes it difficult for me to process everything going on in a group.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen