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!!!