ICH BIN IN WIEN!

Thursday, May 15th,
Halo!! I have made it to Vienna, Austria! After 18 hours of travel, including the layover I made it here at 9 this morning which is midnight back home. I was definitely feeling the jetlag all day. I kind of felt like I was a crazy person. I was finally able to take a nap for an hour at about 6 pm, and I will definitely have a great night of sleep. Now, about the day… we had orientation this morning at the school that we will be going to all summer, and they told us a little about our host families, and about the German courses we will be taking. My hostess has two young children, Isaac (6) and Maria Louise (9) and a small dog (don’t know his name yet). She goes by Alex. I haven’t spoken with her very much yet because she was not here when we arrived to our apartment. I will get to that in a minute though. After orientation, we were taken to a little market with lots of different little places to eat lunch. It was then that I realized that I am really here in Vienna, surrounded by thousands of German speakers, and I better catch on fast. Otherwise, I am going to stick out like a crazy American!! Lol. It is so great to hear the language, and I get excited when I can understand what they are saying, but I still have to work on opening my mouth. The problem is that most of the people speak English, so if I talk to them in broken German, they recognize that I am a tourist and they will respond in English. Hopefully, soon I will not be so easily recognized as a tourist and will be able to speak with more confidence. This brings me back to our host family. A friend of mine was here in Wien in the fall, and she told me that Alex is super nice and a really great person. When I arrived, I learned that she speaks English perfectly, so when my roommate and I talked to her, we both tried to speak in German, and she would sometimes respond in English. Hopefully, we will be able to let her know that we don’t want to speak in English unless it is something that we absolutely do not understand. We will be having lunch together after church on Sunday (she is a member by the way which is so awesome) and we will then talk about rules of the house, and other things that we must go over. For now, this is all that I can write because my computer will soon die and I do not have a European converter yet, so I’ve got to get that taken care of. I do need to say though that it is BEAUTIFUL HERE!!! Oh my goodness, it is so green!! I know that I am going to have an amazing experience. I have so much to learn!! Bis spater