An Actual Blog Post for my Loyal Readers

(Sorry the last two were so crummy.  You deserve better.)

I'll spare you all of the gruesome details of getting from Tulsa to my hostel in Vienna, but rest assured it's a grrrreat story.  One highlight involves falling asleep during every possible meal on three different flights (granted, airline food isn't gourmet, but a girl needs to eat!). I just gnawed on my neighbor's arm for a little while until I could buy some bizarre cream-cheese-and-weird sandwich in London.  

TU Joe and I got to Vienna on the same night, so it was good to be able to buddy up in our wild goose chase for the hostel.  I'm sure we looked totally cool and Euro as we stopped on the street with our seven collective bags (mine, of course, being neon orange) (and, yes, Joe packed more than me) (way more) every five minutes to catch our breath and unfold our 6' x 6' map of Vienna to make sure we were on the right track.  We finally found it, though, and TU Nikki and TU Hugh were already there.  We celebrated with kebaps and beers and it was all very good and Viennese.  

The next day, we met the rest of the IES group (the huge, starry-eyed group of over-packed kiddos) in the train station and left for orientation in Deutschlandsberg, north of Vienna.  It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.  I instantly made friends with the large pack of North-Face-and-moccasin-wearing students who expressed their appreciation for the beauty of the lower Alps by drinking copious amounts of beer and playing loud and obscene drinking games.  Just kidding, Mom.  

Here's my room at orientation.  See that skylight?...

THIS is what I saw out of it.  Woo hoo, Deutschlandsberg!

Needless to say, there are people of all kinds on this program.  I have been very blessed to fall into the good graces of some wonderful, curly-headed kindred spirits named Sue and Ellen who go to Penn State as well as another wonderful girl named Emily (although I have had to warn her that she can only be, at best, the second-most-wonderful Emily I know.  She took this well.).  They are very sweet, like to sing loudly and make very, very cheesy jokes, and are now my roommates in the most wonderful apartment in Vienna (much more on this later).

We just got back from orientation and moved in tonight, and I am honestly quite pooped.  I will take some pictures of the apartment and give y'all the full run-down ASAP.  (Side note-- almost everyone here is from bizarre schools on the coast, so Nikki and I have to represent the South/Midwest as well as we can.  We're all about preserving the "y'all.")  I already miss everyone, of course, and I wish you guys could be here with me.  It's incredible.  

(One more peek at Deutschlandsberg)