My loyal readers,

Vienna is absolutely amazing. That’s it. That’s the whole post. No I’ll give more details but wow I never want to leave. I may be pretty back and forth and disorganized because there’s a lot to cover but I hope I can adequately articulate my experiences. To start off, here is a picture of the opera house, which is in the center of town and is across the street from where I have my classes.

So for those who I haven’t explained this program to, I am taking a business German class, a culture/history/art class of Vienna, and then I’m doing an internship, where I’m working in an elementary school.  There are two other students in my program that are at the same school as me and it’s been such a highlight of the trip so far.  I’m working with two first grade classrooms and I go back and forth between the two.  In one classroom mostly just play English games with the students. In the other room I have played English games, I have worked in small groups with students that are new to Vienna, and I have helped work on crafts for Mutterstag.  With the small group of students, there is one girl in particular that has only been here for two weeks now.  One day I was helping her with addition.  I would roll a dice and she would then add the numbers together.  I was noticing that the rest of the class was working on adding money but they weren’t using that big of numbers.  I kept going higher and higher with single digits until we got in about the 60s. They I tried to see if she could add double digit numbers.  She was able to do it pretty easily much to my surprise.  Then I tried subtracting with big numbers. She was able to do it but then she crossed it out because she didn’t like doing it.  I then tried multiplication with her and she was able to multiply simple things such as 2 x 3 and 3 x 7. I told her teacher after and she was very surprised just like I was.

On the second day of school, we had a Schullauf or school run where we went to a park so the kids could run laps for charity. This is the day where I was very surprised about a lot of things.  At this point I had already noticed that the school here had shorter hours and focused less on student behavior.  But the morning of the school run I walked into the classroom to find almost all of the students changing into their matching shirts that were given to them.  Both boys and girls.  I was very surprised but no one thought anything of it.  I just thought ok that’s how this goes.  And then to get to the park we took public buses.  That would never happen in salt lake because of liability but here it totally goes.  Granted public transit in salt lake isn’t nearly as good but still. Also the kids I work with are so cute and easily rival the kids I worked with in India.

With my cultural class, I have been fulfilling all of my tourist dreams.  That and also my host parents took me around part of the city where their church is and favorite ice cream shop.  The city is stunning and there is so much history.  Being here makes me feel so much smaller, but apart of something bigger.  It’s humbling to be in a place where so many generations have come before me.  I love that all of the people here know and value the history too.  On the way to my school for instance there is a small monument of all the keys that belonged to Jews in a particular housing complex that were taken by the nazis. That is just one small example of many. I want to post all of my pictures except I feel like that would be a bit annoying and take a lot of time so I will just use a few.

Here is a picture of the Hofburg.  It is the largest building in inner city.

This is the Rathaus, which is a government building. It’s a neogothic building meaning that it wasn’t actually built in the time when that architecture style was prevalent. It was actually only built I believe within the last two hundred years. 

Here is a picture of some Roman ruins that the city has built over. This part is interesting because you have these old Roman ruins, a neoclassical palace where Sisi lived, a church with Romanesque, Baroque, and Gothic elements since it’s been standing through all time periods (Michaelerkirche), and then the stables which has a Renaissance architecture style. It’s a little time capsule.

So with all of the churches I go to I take a picture of the altar and the organ because organs are the coolest. This church was one of my favorites.  You will notice in the second picture that it isn’t perfectly straight from end to end, which is because it only had so much room to be built. This church is called Maria am Gestade.

Here is a palace that has been used as a fire station since the 1600s. Just a fun little thing.

Look who I found! It was so fun to see my cousin Lindsay across the globe! She’s in another study abroad program and she’s here for a few days. We went to a free concert in Museumsquartier by the Wiener Symphonkier.  It was amazing and salt lake needs to step up their game quick. 

Today for Mutterstag I went to my host father’s sister’s house, which is actually where he grew up. They have really made me feel apart of the family, which I’ve appreciated so much.  They are all so friendly and fun to be around. I am truly grateful that I got lucky enough to live with the host family I have. After we had lunch, my host father and I went to a soccer game. Vienna played Salzburg and sadly lost 4-1. The fans were never quiet though despite it being a one sided game. I wish fans in the US had this same energy.

Well at this point I’d be surprised if anyone stuck around to get here so I’m going to end it here. You can see that I could go on and on. 

Frohe Mutterstag!