I started off my week in a not very good way: by getting horribly lost. I ended up being half an hour late to my oral placement test for the 3 week German intensive course that I'm starting this week.
This is the map I was given, and normally I do well with maps but apparently my problem was with listening.
In the middle left side of the map, there's a building labeled 78. Now, I was told "something something building 78" so I was like "I definitely have that. What's not to get there?"
The piece that I was missing is that I was given a street address and not the number of the building on the map. If I was given the number of the building, I would have gotten #48.
This led me to get directions in German and I made a phone call in German ENTIRELY BY MYSELF. That felt really good. But what felt the best was probably actually getting there.
You know what doesn't feel great? Jet lag. I've been dealing with that a lot this week.
(That's a picture of the sunset I saw on the plane to Madrid)
At first, I figured it was just because I was running around and always busy that I was so tired, but I realized that I was just getting used to a different time zone. Because Austria is 6 hours ahead of the United States when I go to bed (usually around midnight my time, 6 pm USA time), I think my body just thinks I'm taking a nap because I wake up around every 2 hours.
Despite the fact that I'm exhausted, I am unable to actually sleep at night.
Jet lag: 1 star out of 5.
I've also gotten a lot of questions about my room! So let's answer those real quick.
I have my own room (for the first time!), share a bathroom with one other person, and share a kitchen with 7 others. It's not nearly as disastrous as you might think.
There's also a door that can open into a window (I was fascinated too) that I liked to keep open at night... until Monday night when there were 9 mosquitoes at one time just flying around my room. There were also a few spiders and flies. I was not happy. It was a massacre.
On Tuesday I started my intensive German language course which is a three week class that is going to write German grammar on a bat and smack me with it until I actually get it. And that's pretty much exactly what I need.
Some interesting happenings include that I am the only American in my class and that one girl is actually studying American language and culture and I was like YOU'RE STUDYING ME! It was honestly very exciting for me.
We did a speed dating of sorts to get to know everyone in the room and everyone asked the typical "where are you from?" question and I got a couple shocked looks when I said "America" (apparently a lot of people thought that I was from Finland or Sweden because I'm blonde and pale. That is absolutely fair.)
After I said that I'm from America, people would also ask where in the US I'm from, and with maybe one or two exceptions, most knew what New Jersey is. I wondered why that was. But then someone asked me about
Aka the New Jersey Native's nightmare. Most of them aren't even from New Jersey.... whatever. Don't even get me started. But I did have to confirm that I don't have that kind of a Jersey accent, or the "typical Jersey" accent in general.
On Wednesday there was a gathering of all of the international students at a pub. This was not the pub but I just saw that on my way there and almost gasped because of how beautiful that was. Just admire it.
The pub was a lot of fun! It was exciting to meet other native English speakers because we can all share that moment of "why are we learning a language that's significantly harder to learn than our own??"
My personal favorite happening was that at I was talking to a group of people who were from Spain and Austria and when they got up to leave, they gave me that European two cheek kiss thing. You probably know what I'm talking about, but I forgot that people do that because I have literally never seen it before. I think I just stared for a second before they apologized and were like "oh I'm sorry, a lot of people here do that!" It's been incredibly interesting to meet so many different people from so many different places so far.
On Thursday I had probably the most beautiful meal ever. I'd just like to point out the Eiskaffee which is ice cream in coffee...and chocolate covered coffee beans on it. I'm not kidding. It was amazing and I don't even like coffee!
After that, I had to go to a meeting for getting Austrian health insurance because it's required that I get that since I'll be here for 10 months. Despite having been to this room a few times, I got super lost. However, it led me to appreciate how beautiful my university is.
Also on Thursday I had to do this mountain of laundry that I swear was looking into my soul. and also a mountain of German intensive homework that was similarly staring into my soul.
On Friday I celebrated one full week of living in Austria by doing...
Absolutely nothing special.
I have been so busy and hadn't had time to get caught up with my loved ones, and was so completely exhausted that I just took the night off and wanted to do nothing.
That was the plan at least.
Before the Kim Night happened, my SIM card stopped working. It completely stopped working. And I use my data for maps, bus schedules and literally everything. So I had to take a bus into the city center and go to T-Mobile and get it fixed.
I got there without data, only relying on directions I had received (in German) and navigated the SIM card issue fully in German. I gave myself a gold star.
After that, just watched some tv shows and got caught up with my friends back home.
Where at first I was kind of worried that I should be doing cooler, more brag-worthy things, I realized that mental health days are incredibly important for making sure that I am at my fullest potential for happiness. What's the point of exploring if you're not gonna enjoy it?
Saturday was fun and a lot of shopping. I mostly just wanna show off my new ankle boots. I think they were made for me.
Sunday was a very relaxed day where I had lunch/dinner with some of the Overseas Neighbors. I learned why exactly Austrians want to put pumpkin seed oil on everything: because it's amazing.
It was an absolutely fun (and incredibly delicious) way to end my week.
Have a great week everyone, see you next week :)
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