I am back!!

I am home now!!! I got back to California on Wednesday evening, August 25th, and then on Thursday afternoon, after unpacking, washing all of my clothes, and repacking, we packed the car and drove back to Provo, Utah. So I was at home for a total of 20 hours!!! But all of my clothes were finally clean, and dry from a dryer machine!
We arrived in Provo at 3:30 a.m. ... it took us a while to get on the road, but because we had five drivers in the car, we were able to keep switching. I was able to drive the last hour and a half probably because my body thought it was 1 p.m. (Europe time) instead of the middle of the night. When we arrived at Aunt Melissa's, the one time they locked all of their doors, and were asleep is when we arrive in the middle of the night. Oh well, we just called and called until Aunt Melissa woke up and let us in. I quickly crawled in bed with Ellen, who had been in Utah for a month. It was so exciting to finally see Ellen!!! We left Downey quickly so that we could be with Ellen, and our entire family was reunited again!!!

I moved into my apartment on Thursday, but stayed with my family until they left on Friday afternoon to drive home and make it to a wedding on Saturday morning. So now i live in the FLSR (Foreign Language Student Residency) which is on-campusing housing for students who want to live in an apartment where the rules include only speaking the language of the 'house' you belong to. I live in the German house, so in my apartment I normally only speak German! It is really a great experience!! I have four roommates taht are awesome! And they all help me with my German skills that are still lacking. There are 9 different languages total in our complex. German, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, and Portuguese. I really enjoy living here not only because I still get to speak German all the time, but because the people here are super nice and they all have had many world experiences!
Viel Spass!!

Reise (trip)

I am now in Dorfgastein, Austria, a little tiny dorf (town) with a little over a thousand people. It is in the middle of the Alps! It is so beautiful! Yesterday we went hiking in beautiful mountains! It was such a magnificent view below! Definitely should be on your list of things to do in your lifetime! It started pouring rain as we were on our way down, we were basically in the middle of the clouds, and right next to a thunder storm. It was a bit scary, but we made it down safely, and soaking wet!
We left Vienna on Tuesday early morning, and made our way to Hallstatt, but before that, we went to Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Wow! Powerful. That is all I gotta say. All those things I have learned in my history classes, just became so much more real.
We then made our way to Hallstatt, a little town in the center of the Alps, at least it felt like it. Huge mountains on all sides of us, with a lake in the middle. While we were there, we went into the largest Salt Mine in Europe! It was really neat to be in the middle of a mountain! A few of us rented a boat, and hung out in the middle of the lake for an hour. It was so relaxing! About ten of us jumped into the freezing lake at 10pm, a true polar bear slunge, in the middle of the Alps!! IT was really, really cold, but an opportunity I couldn’t pass up!
After Hallstatt, we stopped in Salzburg for two days. It was fun to see lots of the places where The Sound of Music was filmed! We have been singing lots of the songs form the musical this past week!
On our way here to Dorfgastein, we went into an Ice Cave, where it was 0 degrees celcius, but really awesome to see so much ice!! Again, it was cool to be in the middle of a mountain ( no pun intended ☺).
We will be here in Dorfgastein until Friday morning, where we will go bak to Vienna for a day, and then most of the group flies home on Satuday, the same day that Russell flies in!!! I am so excited that he is coming!!!!!!! I can’t believe how fast this summer has flown by!

20 years old

My birthday was on Sunday, our last Sunday as a BYU group in Vienna. It was a really great day! I was in Primary instead of relief society because a lady asked Anne and I if we could help her sing Families can be together forever, and I love to see the temple (auf deutsch of course) for the kids. There are only about six kids in the entire Primary. It was really cute listening to the lesson about the temple, and to see how much those kids already know about the gospel. I am so grateful for Primary and that we have been learning the gospel since we were very young! It was really great to be at church worshiping the lord on my birthday. Fast and testimony meeting was also really amazing! It is so wonderful to feel the spirit even in another language. I had the opportunity to bear my testimony again in German.

After church, Anne and I went back to the bishop’s and had lunch with the family, Poppyseed, and Berry Knödel. It was realy yummy! Oh, and before we went to church, the family all sang happy birthday to me. It was a wonderful day! Later that night, I went back over to Heather’s house to make dinner together, and also to make the box cake that my mom had sent me. However, the oven was not working, so we made up the batter, and then cooked it like pancakes, well sort of. As we finished making dinner, I was all of a sudden blindfolded, and for the next thirty minutes, blindly lead by Kari, Heather, Megan, and Leah to four different u-bahn stations, I had no idea where we were going, and finally I was unblindfolded at Schönbrunn Palace!! We had a picnic in front of the palace! It was magical! I had a great birthday!!! It was really wonderful, and I feel so blessed to be surrounded by wonderful people. Thank you for all of your birthday wishes!

AUGUST 1, 2009

Wow it is twenty minutes before august 2, 2009 in Vienna, Austria. WOW! So I have twenty minutes left as a teenager ☺ it is really crazy how time flies, I thought that I would just stay young forever, but I am actually excited to turn another year older, because with that, I am another year wiser too ☺ I have been thinking about the last year of my life, and I really have had a lot of life changing experiences this past year…

Last week of school and moving:

We finally moved to the Bishops house. He has two kids, Jonathan is 6 and Matthias is 1. He and his wife were really nice! I never really spoke to them before we moved into their house. It is really far from the center of the city (which is where I used to live). It is at the end of an u-bahn (metro) station, and then we had to take a bus for a few more stops, but it was a really cute house. They have a front yard, and on Sunday Anne and I laid on lawn chairs as we relaxed and read. It was really nice to get away from the city for a few days. Instead of five minutes to the center of the city, it took about a half an hour.
Last day of German classes – So we finished our German classes on July 30th. We had our finals and said goodbye to our German teachers Patrick and Peter. Peter has been our teacher the entire summer, and I have really enjoyed having him teach our class. He was really dedicated to helping us learn the language, especially the grammar, and he was really funny too. Our other teacher, Patrick was really great because he had us write a few essays about topics such as public transportation, and an experience in our lives that had a significant impact. I really fel like my German has improved a ton since I have been here in Austria, and I am so glad that I will be living in the German house when I get back!

Art museums – We went into several art museums with our art class, and again it was way better than sitting in a classroom looking at slideshows all day. We would meet at Professor Isaak’s apartrment and she would show us slides of what we were going to see in the museums the next day. It was really amazing!! We saw lots of works by Gustav Klimt including the famous “The Kiss”. WE also saw works by Kokoschka, Schiele, Claude Monet, Albrecht Dürer, Holbein, Breugel, Caravaggio, Rubens, Velazquez, Rembrant, Vermeer, David, Friedrich, Renoir, and the very famous Raphael. I really enjoyed time looking at paintings instead of just whizzing through museums like I would normally do because I previously didn’t really know anything about art. It was really great learning more about the details of a piece of art. For one of our assignments, we had to sit in front of a piece of art for at least 15 minutes and pick a character and write our thoughts as though we were that character in the painting. That assignment really changed the way I look at a piece of artwork. I also began to appreciate that, wow! How did these painters put so much detail into their works? Talent!!
Art project and poem: For another one of our assignments, we had to pick one of the three secessionist artists (Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele) and create an art piece after their style. I chose to take one of Schiele’s pieces and recreate it. I had lots of fun using water colors and colored pencils to paint. We also had to write lyrics that one of two composers (Arnold Schönberg, and Gustav Mahler) would write music to. Mahler did a series of depressing “Kindertotenlieder” and several of us wrote poems in this style. For our last day of art class, Wednesday, July 29th, we had a ‘Salon’ where we all shared our pieces of artwork. It was a fun way to end our class.

After classes were over on Thursday, I went to a surprise birthday party for Victoria, one of the YSAs in my ward. It was really nice to just sit outside, eat really yummy German food, and shat for a few hours (all in German, it was wonderful!!) The people here in Austria are really sweet! It has been such a great experience getting to know the people who live here. I definitely have a new perspective, now that I know people who live all over the world! I have also met many people from the middle east who have come here to get away from the corruption that is going on in their home countries.

Thursday night I tried to find my new home, the bishop’s, in the dark, and I hadn no idea what the address was, or where I needed to get off the bus. It was almost midnight, and the last bus. I only knew that the house was by the cemetery, I said lots of prayers and met lots of angels. Luckly my roommate was home and was able to give me the address and describe some of the buildings near by. I just have to say that Heavenly Father really was watching over me the entire time. Although I was really panicked, He helped me find the house really quickly, and no harm came over me! I do believe in MIRACLES!!

Crazy cuz it is the last weekend in Vienna, I feel panicked hopefully I have seen all that I want to, I need to enjoy the time that I have had, and the opportunity that I have had to be here.
Speaking German helps me think in German, and it makes my English worse
I have been using German grammer when I have been speaking English… ☺
I love it though!
The next two weeks we are going on adventures
Salzburg, Halsstadt, Dorfgastein

Fun!!

swimming in the donau… we’ve gone swimming lots of times… P.S. I jumped off a bridge in to the river on August 1st!! Kylen and Phil jumped first, then I said to myself, hey this would be a fun last thing to do as a 19 year old! So, they said that they were going to jump again because it was so much fun, and I ran up there with them. As we were about to climb over the bridge, Danny, who was taking pictures said that he had to do it too, so all four of us jumped together. Of course I screamed, and lost control of my body, so I didn’t go straight in. Instead, I landed on my behind, and wow that hurt real bad! But, it was still fun! A great last thing to do as a 19 year old. I found a few bruises on my thigh a few days later, and they are still visible, and I am still a bit sore on my back side, but, I am so glad that I faced that fear. It was really funny because I didn’t allow myself to feel fearful, like I normally allow myself. It was kind of a neat experience because I kind was able to control my level of fear. That might sound pretty weird, but it was a great experience for me. This year I am really going to try to work on overcoming some of my great fears that I have.
There was a crazy storm on the way to mckay’s house …flooding in the streets. Broken window in our apartment because of the strong winds
Saturday, July 25th… Alex’s hochzeit party (wedding reception). She got married in Holland on Wednesday then came back for a reception on Saturday at the ward house. We had to me moved out of our apartment by the 31st of July. It has been crazy pretty much the last few weeks as the apartment has been getting cleared out. Anne and I were worried because we didn’t know where we would be moving to, and it was during finals and such…
Sunday feeling at home in this ward, I really love my ward. The people are so kind, and really my favorite part is hearing the gospel in German!
Making pizza with heather, leah, kari, megan on Sundays we started having dinner together!

Trust in the Lord

I just received an amazing email from my little brother Jacob. He doesn’t seem to be so little any more. He is definitely growing up, and that excites me, yet that also means that he is no longer the little rascal he once was. I know that there are many great memories ahead, and that excites me! My sister Ellen is also growing up. It seems that as I came here to Vienna in the summer of 2009, everyone back in the states are really growing up. That is a bittersweet moment, because when I get back, I will be a little older too! This is the biggest step I have made in my life thus far, and wow, there is no turning back to childhood anymore. When I get back to the states, I will no longer officially be a teenager, which means new responsibilities, and new opportunities to grow.

A few thoughts on the past few weekends. Grandpa was in the hospital during Grandma Ellen’s 80th birthday. The next weekend, the father of Sharon Ready, (a good friend from my stake back home) suddenly past away. He was the rock of their family, and there are still a few young children at home with a mother who is ill. The emotions of the death of a loved one came flowing back. Death is a struggle to work through, but I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the knowledge of eternal families. One of my roommates from BYU last year went into the hospital because of hypothermia. The next weekend, Russell went on an adventure to walk from the Provo Temple to the Salt Lake Temple. On the way, he got dehydrated and had heat stroke, and ended up in the hospital after a few seizures. This past week, I found out that my three-week-old cousin Clarissa is struggling for life. After a few surgeries, she is doing better, but is on 24-hour watch in the hospital. We still don’t know how long she will make it. I also found out that one of my best friends will be married at the end of this year.

What a roller-coaster life! Life is so fragile, and I am so grateful for the knowledge that “all flesh is in His Hands.” So many times in the past month has the Lord given me a test. It is by no means been an easy ride, especially being across the world from all of my family when this is all going on. However, He never said that it would be easy. He never said, ‘Hillary, when you get to Austria, the language will just suddenly be in your head. Time is going to stop on the other side of the world, and everything will work out perfectly!” He has said however, “Trust in the Lord with all thy might, and lean not unto thine own understanding.” The Lord has really been teaching me that I need to truly put my trust in Him. He does know all things. He does have a plan for each of us. He does know which experiences we need to have in order to strengthen us individually. Life is not meant to be easy. Life is a test. It is a gift from God to be tested. “And if men come into me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27)

More adventures!!

Thursday, July 16
Schloss Belvedere
So on Thursday in our art history class, we went to the belvedere museum, which has famous paintings by Gustav Klimt. He is a modernist, and several of his works are really famous. His most famous, The Kiss, was in this museum, and it was amazing to see the original! I remember my high school freshman English teacher had a poster of it in her room, and I remember her talking about it one day in class. It blew my mind that I was actually there with original pieces of art! I have now been in several art museums, and I really enjoy looking at the different styles, and the talent of these artists just amazes me. I often wonder what is going on inside an artists head as he is painting a work. I now feel very cultured in the art world. ☺

Friday July, 17
Medieval Day in Vienna!
It was not an official holiday, but it was Kari’s birthday and she wanted to walk around Vienna traditional renaissance style, so she and Heather wore their Dirndls that they bought here in Vienna, and I wore puffy sleeves with a dress that I have, and we walked around the city! We ate yummy traditional Austrian food, and we even got asked twice if people could take a picture with Heather and Kari. I hope this doesn’t ruin your fantasy, but Austrians don’t usually wear Dirndls every day. It was a blast, and Kari really enjoyed her fairy tale birthday! We ended it off watching Kate and Leopold, I personally thought it was cheesy, but it was the perfect film to go with the events of the day! (Hugh Jackman is Leopold, a duke in the 19th century that comes through a time machine and turns up in New York in the 21st century… kind how we felt all day) I had a blast watching people pull out their cameras and quickly take pictures of us trying to not let us notice them. We had lots of laughs!!

Saturday, July 18
Graz, Austria
Friday night at about 23:30 pm, Heather and I decided that we wanted to use a day on our Eurail passes and take a 2 ½ hour train ride south to the city of Graz. I had no idea what was there, but Heather said that it had a lot of cool medieval buildings, and things to see, so we jumped on a train at Wien Südbahnhof this morning at 9am and arrived in Gray about 12pm. The only problem was that it was pouring, and that is an understatement!!!! It was like we were at a water park and the huge bucket above the kid slide was pouring over the city of Graz. So, unprepared as we were, we each bought an umbrella, and ran to a Strassenbahn. We had no agenda whatsoever, so we would jump out and walk for a little bit, getting soaked in the process, then we would jump back on the bahn and ride some more. We found a cool-looking walkway that led to an elevator that takes you up to the top of the palace that has been in existence since the 12th century (I think). It had a great view of the city, but I am sure it would have been really great if it weren’t for all the rain. We were soaked, and ready to go home, so we jumped back on the train at 2:30pm and came back to Vienna! We found out that it had been raining here all day too. Too bad we didn’t check the weather before we left. Oh well, it was still a fun adventure!!

MOVING DAY!!!

Saturday was an adventurous day!! My host ‘mom’ will be getting married in a week and a half, and she is moving to the Netherlands, so she has been packing up nine years worth of stuff pretty much the entire time I have been here, and Saturday was MOVING DAY! Her fiancé drove the moving truck form Holland here, and all day Saturday with tons of help from people in our BYU group, and from the missionaries, and we carried tons of boxes down two flights of stairs for 5 hours. By the end of that time, the moving truck was pretty much stuffed to the max; however, there was still tons of stuff throughout the house. So poor Alex hardly has slept in the past week, even after the moving truck left early Sunday morning, and she has spent every moment trying to get the house cleaned up and cleared out. She did it!!! Her flight to Holland left today at 6p.m. and she and her two kids, Marie-Louise (9) and Isaac (6) will be in Holland until she is married on July 22nd, and then she will come back to Vienna with her whole family, (husband and his one-year-old son, Alias, whose mom died over a year ago) and on July 25th there will be a reception here in Vienna. Then, she will go back to Holland and start her new life with three children, and her husband Eric!
So, the house is basically empty, except for our room, which now only has mattresses, a closet and a desk, and the kitchen stuff is still here. Danny and Shelly are also still here, so Anne and I are not completely alone. It will be a quiet next few weeks here, and that will be interesting, because this apartment has always been full of people, ever since I got here, friends have been coming and going. Alex’s sister will still be here until Saturday, and then she will fly to Holland for the wedding.

I ended up writing more than I expected to at first, but I am glad that I wrote all that because there is lots going on in the life of Hillary, and it is fun to write it all down and be able to reflect on the past week and see that I really have done a ton! I love being here in Vienna, and I know that I will be sad when the time comes that I have to leave this place. However, I also miss my family a ton so I am also really excited for that day when I get back on the airplane and fly back home to the USA! It is hard to describe this experience that I am having here. I love it, and most importantly, I have learned so many lessons that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my life! I have so much still to learn, but right now at this point, I am happy to be where I am, and to be learning new things every day!

P.S. This picture was taken quite a few weeks ago, but it is a good portion of our group so I wanted to post it. :)

Czech Republic

I was in the Czech Republic on Friday!!! Heather, McKay, and I took the first train at 6 a.m. Friday morning, which was about four and a half hours, and we basically just ran around the city for seven hours, and saw some cool looking buildings an dchurches, then Heather and I got back on the train at 6 p.m. and came back to Vienna! It was pretty crazy because the Czech language is COMPLETELY different than German, or English, or even Spanish! So we had an adventure trying to figure out what we were reading! It was pretty neat though, because the Czech Republic is next to two German speaking countries, there were also tons of things written in German, so I felt like my German was helpful!
We climbed a ton of stairs to get up to the Czech Palace, which I think is the largest palace in Europe, and when we got to the top, there was a gorgeous view of the city of Prague. It was beautiful!!! Sorry, but pictures will never do it justice, you should just go there to experience it!! It was fun running around the city for a few hours, and although I did not see the inside of a lot of places, I think we still saw a ton of really neat buildings!

I've been in Vienna for 2 months!!

So it had been a while since I have written some thoughts down on this blog. First here are some highlights in the life of Hillary this past week…
• We started our Art History class, with Professor Katie Isaac. Our architecture class is over with Prof. McFarland, and for the month of July a BYU professor and her family have flown out to teach us Art History. I have never taken an Art History class before so I am excited about it. So far, we have had three lectures in her apartment, with a slide show of art pieces and she talked about the history of them, then on Thursday we went to the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum, where the original paintings actually are!!! It was pretty neat to see the actual works, and I must say it is so much more awesome to have a class where we are looking at actual paintings, way better than sitting in a classroom everyday!!! I am going to miss this! Nothing can top this!
• One day in our art class, there was a really loud, intense thunderstorm!! The weather has been pretty nice, well it would be nice in the morning and then rain really hard for a little while, then it would clear up and be sunny again! It is really niche though, and I love the rain!
• I really enjoy getting on a random Strassenbahn (streetcar) and just riding and looking around the city. The other day I went almost to the end of track, and I saw part of the city I have not seen yet. It is just a fun time to see what is outside and surrounding the city.
• As far as the language goes, I LOVE the German language even more every day!!!! I feel like I have really taken a turn, and I speak it way more often and I am gaining confidence with the language. I am definitely not fluent, and it is still hard for me to pronounce my ‘r’ (in the back of my throat), but it has gotten much better! I am so grateful that I will be living in the German house when I get back because I think I would go crazy if I couldn’t speak it with someone everyday! I also have been reading some out of Das Buch Mormon, which is also another great way to increase my vocabulary.
• I also love my ward! This past Sunday, the 12th of July, I realized that we only have three more Sundays in our ward, then we will be traveling around for two weeks, and then the program will be over! Wow time is flying by so fast! The people in our ward are so kind, and it is so awesome to hear the gospel auf Deutsch! It is so beautiful! The missionaries are also really awesome! The sisters both gave talks in church on Sunday, and one has only been out for almost three months, and she just opens her mouth, and even though her German is not perfect, she just does an amazing job, and she is such an example to me. I need to just open my mouth an help those around me!!!!
• A couple cool little incidences… one day I was eating pizza by myself, and I was just leaning against a fence in the middle of the city, and a man came up to me and asked if there was a pizzaria near by, and my response just flowed form my mouth. It was of course all in German, and he could understand me, and I was so excited!!! And today, I had walked out of the U-bahn station, and a lady came up to me asking for directions, and although I couldn’t understand every word, I was able to help her all auf Deutsch!!! It is so exciting too to know that I have been here long enough in this city to know my way around! And about the first month I was here, when I would order something, it would be really broken German, and I was very hesitant, but it has since gotten so much better!! I am so grateful for that!!
• We also have really great German teachers this term! One of the teachers is the same as last term, and he is still great, but our second teacher is really great! He said the first day of class that we will learn in his class, and that we will have better German by the end of the five weeks that we will be with him. I was very impressed, and excited because he has a great plan for the course of our class, and he has been really helpful with different strategies of teaching to help us improve. We have already written two papers in German for his class. I know I will continue to learn in these next three weeks!!

It's a Small World After All...

Sunday July 5th
So earlier I said that it really is a small world, and every day it just keeps getting smaller!! Today, Sunday, I was at church sitting in Sunday school, and at the front of the room is a window, and all of a sudden there were people walking across, a big group of teenager age boys and girls in Sunday clothing, and they looked like they could be from America. So, one girl walked past, and I thought to myself, that looks like a girl that I know… So I slipped out of class and walked out the back door to find a group of about thirty high school-age students and I walked up to the girl that I thought I know and said her name “Jenica”. Sure enough it was her! She was my next door neighbor in the Elms this past year at BYU. I asked them why they were staying in Vienna, and she told me that she was a chaperone with her sister’s high school choir. They are from Mesa, Arizona and have been traveling around Austria for ten days performing and they are going home tomorrow morning. They were at our church building to sing a song in sacrament meeting. WOW!! The Lord is amazing!! How did he do that?
It gets even better because that night they had a performance in the Votiv’s Kirche, so a few friends and I went to watch it, and as we sat down, I saw another face that looked familiar, but this time she was in the audience. But I wasn’t completely sure, so I waited until after the performance, and sure enough, it was another girl that I know from BYU. Her name is Morgan, and it turns out that her sister is in the same choir, and she had just come with her mom to meet up with her sister, and she was leaving in the morning for London, so I got to see her right before she left. Morgan lived in the apartment that I lived in last summer in the Elms. She lived there in the spring, but I cam a few days early and met her, and so I met her through my roommates of my summer ward, who had been her roommates in the spring. (I hope this makes some sense, and if not, sorry, it was just a great experience for me!!)

The Fourth of July!!

Happy Independence Day!!

To celebrate today, our Professor took us to lunch at Schweizenhaus, a Czech restaurant in the middle of the Vienna Prater Amusement Park. The park reminded me of California Adventure, Knott’s Berry Farm, and a carnival all in one, except I felt a little more nervous about the security of the rides here in Vienna. We went on one ride, and it was fun! At one point during the ride, I closed my eyes, and just tried to take in the entire experience so far here in Vienna. It was amazing in those few seconds that I had my eyes closed. The language, the culture, the tears, the sounds, the whole experience flashed before my eyes as I felt the wind hitting my face. I am so grateful to be here in Vienna. I never imagined myself living here for three months, and I didn’t have any clue what it would be like, but I am so glad that I am here. It is really an broadening experience!
After the fun ride, Professor McFarland took us on a bicycle ride through the park. They turned out to actually be four-person buggies, and each person had pedals. It was an enjoyable ride, with beautiful green trees on each side of us.
So, the weather was hot enough to go swimming, so a group of us headed to the Donau River after the bike ride. I wore my swimsuit but had no intentions of actually jumping in the river, because I am not a big fan of seeing fish as I swim. However, one of the girls decided that she wanted to swim across the river to the other side and back, so she and two guys jumped in and started swimming. I thought to myself, ‘that’s cool, but there’s no way I would do that.’ But, then another girl said ‘I can do this!’ and then she jumped in and started swimming. At this point, there were still three other girls on the dock, two definitely wouldn’t do it, but I started to think, ‘hey I could totally do this’ so I jumped in and another girl jumped in with me. The water was so cold that I just started swimming really fast, to get my body heated up, and finally my body was used to it, but I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the water so I just kept swimming and swimming. About half way out, my body started getting tired, so I laid on my back and did a back stroke for a little while. Finally, I was across!!! I was so amazed that I made it all the way to the other side!! I had no idea that I could actually do that! One of the girls decided to swim back again to the other side, but the rest of us had no intentions of doing so, and randomly we saw a girl from our BYU group who was just walking along the river with a friend, (It truly is a small world!!!!!) so we used her phone to call the girls who were still on the dock and asked them to meet us at the bridge and bring our stuff. So we walked along one side of the river bare-foot and only in our swimsuits, and met up with the girls who carried our towels and shoes for us along the other side of the river. I was so excited that I actually swam across the river!! It was a fun Austrian Fourth of July celebration!!!

Two cool coincidences:
When we were in Florence, we saw the same man that we had sat across from on the Train form Rome to Florence the day before. He works for the Italian TV station and was filming something in the area that we were in. I went up to him and said hi and he immediately recognized us – that was pretty fun! ( the man on the right side of this picture is the man that we met!)

Second thing – about two weeks ago, I was on the U-bahn going home from somewhere, and these people got on the tram and sat down next to me and they were speaking English. I could tell that they were form America, and I really wanted to talk to them, just because it was like a piece of home. (When you are in a foreign country for a long time, everyone who is from the USA becomes an immediate friend – almost like how whenever we meet someone who is a member of the church, you can immediately talk to them.) Anyway, so finally, I opened my mouth and said something like, ‘are from the states?’ They were form Indiana, and we talked for the next ten minutes, until they got off. So, when we were in Florence, Kari, Heather, and I were looking for McKay, (we had been separated for a few hours) and randomly in the same square that we had seen the Italian TV man, I saw the same guys that I had seen on the U-bahn in Vienna!! Holy COW!! What a coincidence!! The world really is pretty small! That experience taught me to open my mouth, because you never know when you are going to meet those people again!!!

GERMANY and Neuschwanstein Castle

I must admit, I was really excited to go to Germany! Italy was great too, but I was excited to be back in a place where I somewhat knew the language! And, Kari and Heather know it way better than I do, and thus I just felt partially like I was going home (in Europe at least) and Kari had been to Munich a few summers ago (although only for a few hours, still good enough). We were in Munich for two and a half days, enough time to gat a taste for the culture, and to see a few cool places. We pulled into the train station around 7a.m. and tried to get into our hotel room, but couldn’t check in until 1p.m. Luckily, they let us leave our luggage in a storage room, so we didn’t have to lug it around during the day. After purchasing our transportation tickets, we hopped on a Strassenbahn in the direction of a Palace, and then jumped off and walked a bit of the way through the neighborhoods of Munich until we reached Schloss Nymphenburg. I really enjoyed walking through the neighborhoods, it was peaceful, and so green, and wet because it had been raining. Side note: it rained every day that we were gone!! Everywhere we went, there was rain, it just followed us, wherever we were, there was rain too! When we got back to Vienna, we learned that it had been raining here too, and also in Greece, where a couple other girls from our group went. I guess it was just the week of rain all over Europe!! And, guess what… it’s raining outside right now!
Anyway, so it was fun walking around the grounds of this palace, it was similar to Schönbrunn here in Vienna, with gardens, and green everywhere. We found a little church as we were wandering the grounds, and inside the church, it was grotto-esque, in other words it looked like the little mermaid – under the sea – it was a huge mosaic of tiny rocks and seashells that covered the walls. There was a statue of Mary too, and she was also covered in tiny rocks and seashells. It was a fun discovery!!
After wandering around the grounds of the palace, we took an S-bahn back to our hotel where we finally were able to check in and we all took a nap for about 2 hours because sleeping on a night train is kind of a challenge. After we were rejuvenated, we went back out to see more of the city. This time we went to the middle of the city, and saw the Rathaus (city hall) and some more churches, and lots of people shopping. We ate yummy Bratwurst for dinner, and an older man showed us some neat things about the Rathaus that we would never have seen, if he wouldn’t have showed us. We were kind of lost and we had out our map, and he approached us and asked if we needed help (auf deutsch of course). He pointed us in the right direction, and then walked with us and showed us a few neat things about a few of the buildings. After that, we went back to our hotel and had a great night sleep!

Disney Castle
Thursday, we went to the castle that was the model for the Disney princess castle: Neuschwanstein! It is in the middle of the southern border of Germany, in the Alps! It was so green-wow! It was really beautiful!! Neuschwanstein is actually the second castle built in the city called Schwangau, Leopold II built it across the way from his parents castle called, Hohenschwangau. We took a tour of both of the castles, and Neuschwanstein really does look like all the castles in the princess movies! It is interesting too because the castle was built in the 1860s, but Leopold died suddenly during the construction of it, so he actually only lived in it for about 6 months, and he never saw it completed. Once again, it rained while we were there, but we also had some sunshine, just enough to see the magnificent green mountains.

Last Day in Munich
Friday morning, we walked around Olympic park, where the Olympics were held in 1972 (I think). It was really cool to walk right up to the entrance to the stadium, where 37 years ago, people from all over the world were in Munich, and star athletes broke records, as they pushed themselves to their limits. While we were walking through the park, Heather spotted the newspaper headlines that Michael Jackson had died. WOW! It was pretty cool to be there in Munich, and to read from a German newspaper, the news that was going on halfway around the world, in the city of Los Angeles, where I am sure the news was on every TV station, and all over the radio. I definitely am detached from most of the world while I am here in Vienna!
To finish off our trip, we had to run to the Train station, and made it onto the train with about 3 minutes to spare!! We definitely utilized every spare second that we could of our week long vacation, and now tomorrow, Monday, it’s back to school! When we arrived in Vienna, I felt some relief, because I have been here long enough, that I pretty much know the transportation system, and I knew that there would be a bed for me where I could relax, and I don’t have to carry around luggage for another month and a half!! YAY! I am grateful I was able to have this week of time to run around, and to relax, I have seen so much history in the past week, it is incredible! This has definitely been an adventure, and I still have a month and a half left for more adventures!!

More of Italy - Florence and Venice

So Florence was a really neat small city. We went inside a few churches, and walked around and saw tons of great things. Our first day, we just basically explored the city. We went into a few churches, and took lots of pictures. We ate dinner at a cute Italian restaurant, we all ordered yummy pizza, and then McKay left for home Monday night. As we were walking to the train station with McKay after dinner right before he left, we ran into the missionaries!!!! We were so excited to talk with them, and it was really cool to see them! The church really is world-wide!!!
Tuesday morning, Kari, Heather, and I waited in line for about 45 minutes to get into the Uffizi Museum, one of the most famous museums in Italy. It is a pretty large museum, with paintings dating back probably almost a thousand years! We also saw a few pieces of artwork by Michelangelo and Leonardo di Vinci. It was pretty amazing!! Now, I am no artist, nor so I understand very much about paintings, but as I was walking through the museum, I was thinking about how this artwork is done. It is amazing talent! It is similar with pieces of literature, I have no idea how authors, or artists come up with what they do. I really admire anyone and every one who can gather their thoughts and put them on paper, it is definitely a wonder to me!
After we were done with the museum, we did some souvenir shopping, and then we rushed back to our hostel, picked up our suitcases and literally ran to the train station. We had about 10 minutes to catch our train to Venice.
Bad news: At the train station in Florence, there is a huge board that shows the times of when trains leave, and the times are posted usually about 10 minutes previously to departure time. Well, when we arrived at the train station, we had about 4 minutes before our train was going to leave, but we did not see our train number posted. PANIC! We guessed it was at a certain platform, but as we ran to the train and asked one of the workers if it was the right now, they said no, and of course we could not understand anymore than ‘no’. PANIC MORE! After running to another train, and asking some people who kept pointing us in no direction that was helpful, we looked at the clock and the time was past. So we had missed our train. At this moment, I didn’t panic. Instead, I thought, this happens all the time to people, it just makes the trip more exciting! And, it makes for a good story to laugh about later. As we walked back to the big board, all of sudden Venice was on the screen, it showed that it would be 10 minutes late! So we actually were not crazy, the train was just late!! For some odd reason, this was not posted until after the time the train was supposed to leave, maybe in Italy, they like to play tricks on us! Panic is supposed to be part of the adventure!
So we did in fact make it on our train, and we made it safely to Venice! Instead of having 5 hours there, we only had four, but that was still enough time to take lots of pictures, and eat some more gelato before we made it back to the train for an 11pm departure to Munich, Germany.

ITALY

ITALY
here are some highlights:
Train ride 14 hours to rome; beautiful as we went through the alps long challenge to sleep definitely an adventure
Got off said a prayer found hostel actually bed and breakfast nicer than we expected that was a relief, left on foot walked toward colosseum there it was ruins along the way really cool! We went inside with thousands of other tourists walked around almost the whole thing. Took pictures
Walked farther saw tons of roman ruins
Made it to center of town split Mckay and I got Italian Gelato –yummy!!
Saw pantheon – it’s a super old building!
Ran up and down little Italian streets in and out of churches
Ate Italian Pizza, more gelato, saw the Fountain that is really famous again with thousands of other tourist.
It was fun to hear so much English and we talked with a few groups and met people from all over the states. It was nice to get a little piece of home, knowing that they had been in the USA only a few days before going to Italy. It is pretty crazy thinking that I have been out of the US for now about a month and a half! It was fun to be in a different culture though. The Italian language barrier was a challenge sometimes, especially in Rome because not very many people speak English there. I spoke to some people in German saying “Nein, danke” or “entschuldigung” instead of “Gratzi” and ‘Escuzi’. In one shop I asked the cashier how to count to ten in Italian, and she said them twice, but by the time I walked out the door I already forgot ☺. It is similar in many ways to Spanish, but with a distinct Italian rhythm in the pronunciation of the words.
We went to dinner that first night and ate some authentic Italian pasta. YUM! It was pretty funny because as the waitress asked us what we would like to eat, Kari immediately responded in German, and then the lady started speaking German back! What are the chances that this lady would also know German!! That was an excitement! We had a great time trying to stand out from all the American tourists by speaking in German to each other as we traveled. Every time I heard other people speaking German, I got really excited and whispered to Kari, Heather, and McKay ‘They’re speaking German!!’ When we were in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican city, I approached two ladies who were speaking German and asked them (in German) where they were from. I don’t remember where they said they were from, but it was just fun to be able to use my German.
Sunday morning, we went into a small Museum with paintings that were hundreds of years old. It was nice to walk through and to see the different styles of art through the different centuries. After that, we tried to find the church building that was south of the city, but we did not give ourselves enough time to find it because we got lost, so we just turned back around and went to the Vatican city. I did not know this before, but the Vatican City is its own country and is actually the smallest country in the world. Again there were thousands of tourists. We went inside St. Peter’s Basilica – a massive church; one that beats out all the other churches that I have seen, and I have seen a lot of churches! No wonder, it’s where the pope is!
We tried to see the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo painted the ceiling, but we found out that it was closed on Sunday. ( we were going to go on Saturday, but someone told us that it would be open on Sunday… oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back again someday ☺)
We left Rome around 7 pm and made it to Florence around 9 pm. We decided to go straight to our hostel, it was about a 3 minute walk from the train station- great location!! I was really nervous about this place, because it actually was a hostel, with shared facilities, and it looked a bit sketch to me. I was worried because we were going to be staying there for two nights. Luckily, Heather and Kari had a great attitude about it and they were not worried at all, so I just trusted their judgment. It turned out to be totally fine. We were really blessed our entire trip with no problems at all in Italy!

Travel to Italy and Germany

I will not have internet for the next week... I am so excited to go to Rome, Florence, and Munich!!! I will definitely post pictures when I get back!!! Auf wiedersehen!

Frankfurt, Germany Temple Trip

I am really excited to write about my trip to the temple in Germany!! First of all, I was in Germany!!!!! We crossed the border about 1 am, and soon after we had a 45-minute break where Heather, Kari, and I took a picture (the one where it’s all black in the background!) We took an overnight charter bus, and left the Wien Südbahnhof at 8:30pm on Wednesday. It was really a challenge to sleep on the bus the entire night, and when we arrived in Friedrichsdorf, Germany at 6:30am Thursday we were all really tired. There were twenty of us on the bus, and I think a few more met us at the temple. The temple is in a small town called Friedrichsdorf, which is twenty minutes outside of Frankfurt am Mein. The church owns a small dormitory building, which is right next to the church building and about 100 feet from the temple itself. It is interesting now that I think about that because it really was sacred ground, and I could feel the sacredness when we arrived. It was a really neat experience, because now I know what it feels like to live 8 hours away from the closest temple, and to make the journey on a bus overnight, and then spend three days on holy ground.

So, the baptismal sessions were split into two groups, so I was in group A and we had to be in the temple at 7:30 am, an hour after we arrived. So, we ate breakfast, changed our clothes and immediately went inside for our temple session (oder Taufsession). Although I was kind of tired, I had a great experience being in the House of the Lord. It was really neat to hear everything spoken in German, and we were able to each do 15 names each session that we were in. I am so grateful that we have the opportunity to do the work for those who have passed on from this life to the next life. In our session on Friday morning, the temple worker told us that in our session with only 7 girls, we had done the work for 96 names! And that was only one of the sessions! It really was a great experience to be in the temple for three days in a row!

So Thursday after the two baptism sessions, a group of twenty of us took the S-bahn into the city of Frankfurt. We went to a character museum that was filled with comics from one man, I guess he is a famous author…??? I really have no idea, I just know that in order for me to understand most of the comics I either used context clues form the picture, or asked one of the native speakers that were with us. Anyway, I was just really excited to be in Frankfurt, the same city that I had learned about when I was in my German class in high school. I was also really excited because I never planned on going to this temple trip until about a week ago, and it was a really great experience to have! I was so blessed to be able to go and to experience what it is like to be a European! And, we were with the Austrian YSA (auf Deutsch JAE) and to learn from them. This trip was also a great way for me to feel closer to the native Austrians because we were interacting with them so much, and I was practicing German, and they could help me, and they were also practicing their English and we could help them. It was really just a neat experience all around!

Thursday night after dinner, we had a Fireside give by one of the members of the Frankfurt temple Presidency (I think) and it was about temples and how we are in the last days where the world is getting more and more evil, but more and more temples are being built which helps us as members to strengthen our faith (Glauben) and our testimonies (Zeugnis) of the gospel of Jesus Christ (das Evangelium des Jesu Christi). After the fireside, we had a testimony meeting (Zeugnisversammlung) with just the YSA (JAE). This was a powerful experience. Of course, each testimony was auf Deutsch, and I was absolutely amazed at how the Holy Ghost works! I could understand so much of the German, and I really felt the power of the gift of tongues. The spirit that was present in this meeting especially touched me. Testimonies were shared from the heart. The gospel of Jesus Christ is true no matter what language you speak. I also had the opportunity to share my testimony auf Deutsch. Although my vocabulary in German is small, I was able to speak from the heart, and as I was speaking I thought, “wow, this is how the power of the spirit works.” It was truly an incredible experience. That experience also helped me to just open my mouth and start speaking German. So now that I am back in Wien, I am going to just open my mouth and the words will eventually come. Ich weiß dass Jesus Christus lebt. Er kennt mich personnlich. Ich weiß dass das Evangelium wahr ist. Gott ist unser Vater. Er hat ein Plan für uns. Jesus Christus ist mein Erlöser. Er hat alles für uns getan. Er liebt uns. Ich bin sehr Dankbar für Christus und für Gott. Sle helfen mich mit alles dass ich tun. Ich sage diese Dinge im Namen Jesu Christi, amen.

Final thoughts from Sunday

Today was fast and testimony meeting at church, and I was so amazed at how much German I could understand! My ‘guest mother’ gave the lesson in Relief Society and the topic was “Glauben” that means Faith auf deutsch. I thought to myself, how did they know that I needed this lesson today??? Of course Heavenly Father knows that I needed this lesson, and through the Holy Ghost I was able to hear lots of things that I needed to hear today. It is faith and not fear that helps us get through trials. Faith without works is dead. Be of good cheer and do not fear for I the Lord am with you and will stand by you. All of these things were talked about today, and are so important for me to learn and to understand. At the end of the meeting, five minutes were given for sisters to bear testimony, and it was so great to hear the sisters testify of the love that our Savior has for us (auf deutsch) And also in sacrament meeting, I could understand many of the testimonies that were given, and my testimony was strengthened of how blessed I am in this life. I am so amazed at the greatness of our Savior Jesus Christ. He lives, and He knows us individually and He loves us so much! My German is getting better every day and I know I am here for a reason, and I am so excited to continue to learn!

Here are a couple church vocabulary words:
Zeugnis- testimony
Erlöser- Redeemer
Glauben- Faith
Gebot- commandments
Ewigkeit- eternity
Taufe- baptism
Umkehren- to repent
Die Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzen Tage- … (take a guess)

Around the city excitement!

Here are some pictures of things that I have done…
Tuesday I sat on a Strassenbahn, and then went wandering around the city a bit with McKay. We went up to the doors of the Rathaus, and the Parliament buildings. The picture of my roommate and I is at the Rathaus Park. For our architecture class, we went inside the Parliament and Rathaus buildings, and inside the Rathaus, I got to sit in the seat of somebody important ☺. Thursday night was an amazing concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at Schloss Schönbrunn, with an expected audience of 100,000 people!!! It was so crazy to be there with so many people, and it was an amazing performance. That experience helped me feel very European, with the smell of cigarette smoke, and tons of bottles of beer… so we did not stay very long. Friday night was “Lange Nacht der Kirche” where all of the churches in Vienna, all 23 districts, were open and had various performances throughout the night including concerts, sermons, tours, and such. I had the opportunity to be one of the very few people to climb tons of stairs up to the top of one of the towers of the Votiv Kirche, a church that was built in the 1800s as a ‘thank you’ to God for saving the life of Kaiser Franz Josef in an assassination attempt. Apparently, the only time they let people climb the tower is during the ‘Lange Nacht der Kirche’ and we were part of the last group that got to climb. It was pretty scary being in a tiny, dark, spiral staircase that was filled with tons of spider webs, and when we got to the top, there were dead pigeons laying on the platform. I felt pretty nasty after this experience. But, now I can say that I climbed a real bell tower! And, once we reached the bell platform, we climbed a tiny latter and then another spiral staircase, this time with a handrail with the thickness of a hairbrush handle (sorry I can’t think of anything else to describe it, but it was really small). It was made of steel, but was pretty high, and any wrong step would be …BAD! It was a fun adventure though, and as we climbed up, and down, we all were saying words of encouragement trying to distract ourselves from the crazy thing we were doing. I don’t have a great picture of when we were climbing, or of when we were at the tip top, but I do have a picture of when I was about halfway up. It was a really pretty view of the city!