Finally have some time to write!

I just want to express how excited I am to finally be able to write on here. It has been so long that I actually have to read the last few posts so that I know what I need to talk about. I'll start with the notes that I made for myself a couple of posts ago.

I was finally able to get out and pick up some postcards from the Altstadt and I sent out the first round of them while I was in Vienna. I tried to send one to everyone that I could, but chances are that if you didn't get one I didn't have your address. I have plenty more postcards though, and I'm looking to send some more in the near future. If you feel like leaving your address, please send it to me in an email and please do not leave it in a comment. You can never be sure who might stumble upon this page.

Let's see, note #2 that I left myself was about presentations that all of us had to do while we were in Vienna. Each student here got to choose a landmark (wow, I haven't been able to remember that word in weeks. I have only been able to call them "sightseeing attractions") and we had to give a short presentation during our tour of the city. I had Stephansdom, which is a rather large, Gothic-style cathedral in the center of Vienna. I received an abundant amount of compliments when I was finished, and I even got a 98% on the presentation. I was just glad that I was able to memorize enough information to speak for 5 minutes without using my notes once, and that I only forgot to mention one or two pieces of information that I had planned to.

The weekend trips I will talk about a little bit later in this post.

We had a party for the 40th anniversary of the program two Tuesdays ago. It ended up being a ton of fun. There were past participants ranging from last year to 30 or so years ago, and past program directors also came into town for the occasion. We all met at a rather nice restaurant on the busiest street in Salzburg and had a delicious dinner along with short speeches given by our program director, past program directors, and the provost of OU, Kathy Krendl. I kind of felt bad for KK, because she didn't speak any German and the entire program, aside from her speech, was held in German. I was excited because I was able to follow along with everything that was being said and I even understood 99% of the jokes that were made during the speeches. It's incredibly fun to start to develop a sense of humor in another language.

The afternoon after the 40th anniversary party the entire group of us went to the Salzuburg zoo, which is located right next to Schloss Hellbrunn (the castle with all of the fountains and gardens). I don't have much to say about that, other than it was a beautiful day and it was a nice way to pass a few hours. However, the Cleveland zoo is much bigger and has more to see than this zoo, so I wasn't overly impressed by much here. We had to give short presentations about an animal, but those weren't graded at all. They were just a way to justify having OU pay for a trip to the zoo.

The day after the zoo we took our Trip to Vienna. It was quite the long weekend, but I don't have too much time to write about the whole thing here. I will try to cover as much as I can in as few words possible. The trip to Vienna wasn't too bad of a bus ride. I think that it lasted between 5 and 6 hours with rest stops and such. We stopped off at Mauthausen on the way, which was a concentration camp in WWII. The camp itself was a work camp, and not an execution camp. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of people died there. It was eerie to be there, but we were also able to learn quite a bit from our tour guide (who all of the girls had a huge crush on). After our stop at the camp we continued on to Vienna. The weekend was spent mostly of touring in large and small groups. Everyone gave their presentations when we were in the large group, and when we were in smaller groups we were allowed to do what we wanted. We saw so many landmarks there that it is hard to keep them all straight. It will probably be easier to just show everyone pictures and explain them when I am back in Ohio. When I was with smaller groups of people I visited the music museum, a history of soccer exhibition, the Donauinsel, and various other parks around the city. There really was an overly abundant amount to do in Vienna, and we did so much in a large group that we really just wanted to relax when we split into our smaller groups. The time that we spent in Vienna was pleasant and fun, but Sunday it had to come to an end. We hopped back on our bus to Salzburg and started back home. On the way we made two stops. One stop was at this beautiful monastery, and our second stop was at a tiny city that was nestled in the hills nearby the monastery (I forget the name of the city, but I can look it up later).

Last week was the shortest week of the quarter for us. They give you one long weekend during this trip so that everyone has a chance to travel. It really messes with your school schedule though, since the week really flew by. Monday and Tuesday were uneventful, but Wednesday was quite fun. We took a group trip in the evening to a salt mine in the city of Hallein. They have a rather large portion of the mine that you can take a tour of when you go. When you get there, they give you these white suits to wear (they make everyone there look a little bit like oompa-loompas) so that your clothes don't get destroyed in the mine. Once everyone is dressed and ready to go you ride a miniature train deep into the mines and start your tour. The tour guide not only gives you information, but she also uses projectors at various points to play movies that were corny, but funny. They followed the story of the Archbishop who ordered the mines to be dug. Even though the movies were corny, they were interesting because they were dubbed in English, but then still had German subtitles. It was fun to see how you would express certain ideas in German while being able to hear the English (since usually you hear the German, but don't think about it too much and wind up just reading the English subtitles). The mines are quite large, and you even cross over the border into Germany at one point during the trip. To move between the different levels of the mine there are these huge wooden chutes that you get to slide down, and one room even requires you ride in a boat across a chamber that has about 2-3 meters of standing water. The entire trip was both interesting and fun. The only bad part was that the other group that we were with inside the mines were some of the rudest people that I have ever encountered, but that's all that I would really like to say about them at the moment.

So this brings us all of the way up to my trip to Italy that I took this weekend with Anna and Learose. I'm slowly running out of time still, but I do want to say that I had an awesome, yet relaxing, time while we were there. We were able to see quite a large chunk of the city including churches, cafes, an aquarium, a synagogue, a few parks, a castle, a tropical bird exhibit, a rock beach, and much much more. I'm almost out of time, so I'm just going to give a quick rundown of everything that we did.

Thursday:
We searched for out hostel when we got there for about 2 hours, only to find that it was about a 2 minute walk from the train station. While we were searching, we were able to explore one of the main streets along the coast and were able to pick out some places to go see later on in the day. We visited the aquarium, and then explored the heart of the city during the evening/night. We were able to find a restaurant with amazing food and decent prices, and later we also spent a few hours in an outdoor cafe/bar drinking wine and relaxing.

Friday:
We got up and tried to find bus passes, which turned out to be an adventure in itself. We finally had success though, and we took the bus out to Castello Miramere (I hope that I spelled that correctly). We ended up spending almost the entire day at the castle and its surrounding park. We had a great time just trying to explore all of the different paths in the park to try to see what we could find. We ended up finding a tropical bird exhibit in the park, which turned out to be pretty fun. The castle itself was amazing to be able to walk through, and I saw some of the most intricate woodwork that I have ever seen in my life there. All of the walls, ceilings, tables, chairs, etc. were ornately decorated with woodwork. After our visit to the castle, we wound up being quite exhausted. We headed back to the hostel, took a nap, and then went out again for dinner and wine in the evening.

Saturday:
We originally wanted to take a trip to Slovenia, but we had a hell of a time trying to find out where to buy bus tickets or even trying to find the bus schedule. Instead, we went to the "beach." Most of the coast in Trieste is rock, but they have this really nice brick walkway that runs along the coast, and eventually there is a small beach-like area that you can get to. Most of the people there were on the walkway though, so the three of us changed into our swimsuits and hung out on the walkway for awhile, while we worked on our wonderful tans. After the "beach," we went back into the city and tried to see everything that we possibly could. Unfortunately, we could only see churches from the outside because 5 o'clock mass was taking place, and for some reason a lot of the other buildings were getting ready to close. We still had a blast trying to explore though, and we were able to see everything that we wanted to. At night (you guessed it) we went out for dinner and wine. Before we went out to a cafe/bar we sat on the pier and had a couple of bottles of wine while we watched the sunset. It was a little on the cloudy side, but you could still kind of see some color peeking out of the sky. We made it back to our hostel safe and sound and went to sleep. We got up the next morning, checked out, took the train home, and now I'm here.

This week is going to continue to be crazy. I have a presentation to give tomorrow and a project due Thursday. Both are going to take some time to finish, but I think that after I get these two things done the rest of this quarter will be amazingly smooth and free of all worries. I do have to leave for class in a few minutes though, and I am still here in my pajamas and I haven't eaten. So, I think that I am going to wrap this up for now. Hopefully, I will be able to come up with more fun things to write about soon! Thanks for reading all of this, and sorry that it was so long. This post really could have been at least triple this length if I would have let it though. Talk to you all again soon.

Ciao!


***There are new photos on my site and on the OU site too***