This week this is only a blog to tell you that there won't be a blog, but you should click on the cute little button on my page that says videos and watch the video I made this week for my exchange-iversary, because today is my halfway day. :)

if you are for some reason not on the flavors page, go to www.flavors.me/mollyinaustria

Blog Post Update 1/10

How can it already be 2011? How can my exchange be almost half over? How is it even remotely possible that I haven’t posted in 10 weeks? It feels like days. I’m here to tell you I haven’t forgotten everyone back home-I just crack under pressure. It has come to my attention in the recent weeks that people actually read this thing- which makes me shocked, grateful, and nervous about my writing, all rolled into one. I know that isn’t remotely close to an excuse, but I do worry quite a bit about exactly how to write these, so I’m sorry it took so long!

I made a New Year’s resolution (actually I made a lot: Drink more water, work more on German, have an awesome school year) that I would keep the followers of this blog as happy as possible. So I’m hopping back on the bandwagon, and we’re going to have a great six months! From now on it may not be every week (I am a busy girl) but it’s going to be more like the very beginning. But lets not talk about the future, lets talk about the past-the last ten weeks of past.

I apologize if you have access to my newspaper articles because I imagine at times this will get a little repetitive, but it seems like now I’ve got blog followers worldwide (if they haven’t all ditched me by now) so I’m going to do an overview of everything.

On the first of November I found myself alone in Vienna- but not for long. I was soon met by my friend Brita from Estonia and we spent the day walking around, seeing sights, eating, and my personal favorite: visiting the Museum of Modern Art before heading to our friend-and YFU staff member, Loni’s house for the night. She cooked us up some wiener schnitzel (the tradition food of Vienna) before sending us on our way, with directions in hand, out into the city for the evening. We got to experience the beauty and fun of Vienna in a whole new light. The next day we were joined by a few other YFU friends and then spent the day going to places like Naschmarkt-a giant outdoor market - and St Stevens Cathedral-the tallest and most extraordinary church in Vienna, complete with catacombs. Even though it was only two days, our time in Vienna was packed with adventures so by the time we all bored our train that afternoon we were exhausted.

A few days later I started school with my new class, a group of kids (and I don’t know if any of them read this, so I’m going to say this the best I can without embarrassing myself) that are completely awesome. We hit it off immediately-bonding over a mutual love of books; specifically Harry Potter-and later that month went to see the 7^th film together. And then, just like that, November was gone-and there I was still trying to write my post about Vienna.

December, it seems to me, happened even faster because the entire month was beautiful and exciting. If you’re in search of a classic Christmas, Austria is the place to be. From the 1^st to the 24^th there are markets in most main city squares (I went to the one on Hauptplatz in Linz) where you can buy gifts for the holidays and an abundance of winter food like a punch that’s a lot like apple cider and a cheese bread where they melt cheese off of a giant cheese wheel and slather it on bread. Almost needless to say, I spent a lot of time visiting the market.

December 6^th is also Nicholas day; it celebrates the day when St Nicholas (a version of Santa) comes to visit all the good children and bring them fruit and chocolate but instead of coal the bad children get something much, much worse. It’s a thing called the Krampus, and it is a monster that lives in the Alps and travels with Nicholas so that he can punish the bad children. It would be interesting and even kind of cool, if they didn’t actually “exist”, but they do. Young men in every town dress up like the Krampus and visit the neighborhood children with switches and sacks to carry them away in and they can actually be mildly dangerous. In the week before the 6^th, I heard horror stories about when my host mom had been put in a sack and left in a field and of people getting paddled. I personally think it’s a bit extreme, but I was still happy to see them…..from a distance.

As it got closer to Christmas we started cooking Christmas cookies and didn’t stop until the day after Christmas. From cinnamon stars to jam cookies to gingerbread, we cooked them all. When we were finished we had baked over 2000 cookies and we are still enjoying them.

Christmas then came with snow-lots of it. We spent Christmas Eve morning known as Weihnachten (the real celebration of Christmas) picking out a tree and decorating it. We then went to Church where we watched a performance of the Christmas story put on by the children of the church and later went home to enjoy an indoor barbeque and an Austrian Christmas story before opening the presents that the “Christkind” had brought. We then headed off to bed, because we had to wake up early for a day of skiing on Christmas Day.

And just like November, December left with little warning and took 2010 with it. I’ve said since I got here that exchanging is like climbing a mountain and the holidays are the last few feet to the summit, and its weird to think that its halfway down. I only hope that the next few months don’t go nearly as fast as these have, because I’m scared it will be over before I know it. Time slips by so quickly that I have to grab onto every opportunity and every experience.

One last note: I read a study today that said in the 2009-2010 year 28,000 students came to do high school exchange in America and only 1,980 left from the US. There are millions of Americans eligible for high school exchange, and I feel sorry for them because they don’t jump at the chance. What they don’t know is that they’re missing out on the trip of a lifetime.

Two months

Wow. Well, I’m still alive for those of you who may have had your doubts. I’m doing perfectly fine with essentially no problems, but for some reason I was unable to write a blog post until today. I have now officially been in Austria for more than two months and truth be told it had been FANTASTIC. I am happy; I am healthy; I am learning German; but most of all, I am really, really exhausted. I know its not a valid excuse for not writing, and I’m deeply sorry, but in a lot of ways these two months have been spent trying to get a hold on things and finish getting settled. I like to compare being an exchange student to climbing a big mountain, because in a lot of ways they’re similar. I feel like I’ve spent my last two months setting my stride and getting acclimated. Now that I feel like I’ve got those things figured out, I feel like I’m ready to handle the day to day aspects of this life, and I promise, one of my priorities is getting back on track with this blog.

This time though, I think the three things just doesn’t cover what I want to say, so I figured I’d just write an update instead. So what do I have to say about the month where my blog sat in limbo? Well, for one I’ve never had a month more physically and intellectually straining. I know that seems silly, because back home I played basketball and managed a full plate of schoolwork, but this is a whole other story. I go biking, or on a hike, or unicycling, or Nordic walking, or to aerobics, or to the gym every day. I am also starting to pick up conversational German, so I’m always straining my brain to understand what others are saying. At the moment, it’s been difficult to actually do any of the schoolwork because I never understand 100% of the lessons, but I’m trying my hardest to do what I can and keep working. Mostly I have been working out of a learn German book my school provided for me, and I think its helping a lot. I am also working which my younger sisters who help me by reading books or making flashcards, and I’m also doing the Rosetta Stone program, which I think is amazing. I was told before I left Ocracoke (and I’ll sadly admit I don’t recall who it was who said it), that each language is like a different dance and to fully understand the tempo you have to have it surround you for a while and here, two months later I feel like I finally understand how to tango; now all I need is vocabulary.

Also this month, I spent a week in a town called Faak in southern Austria, just 10 miles from the Italians and Slovenian borders). Faak is a lakeside town and I traveled there with my school class for a sport week. We all had a choice of sport and I chose kayak, thinking that my experience from home would help me. As it turns out kayaking in a lake in the Alps in mid-October is quite different than summer kayaking on Ocracoke, which I learned the hard way, toppling into the 45-degree water more than once during the week. Regardless, I had a really great time and even got a taste of white water kayaking the last day, when we traveled to a nearby river for our lesson.

Directly after my sport week I traveled to Micheldorf, Austria where I met up with YFU (Youth For Understanding, my exchange program) for a weekend in a 1000-year-old castle with all of the other exchange students. It was amazing to see everyone again after we had had some time to settle in to our lives here. We slept an ungodly small amount over the weekend (I think I got about six or seven hours total) but had an amazing time. We also got a lot of advice from past exchange students who were our leaders over the weekend. On Saturday we shared songs and dances from our home countries and then stayed in the common room for hours playing Uno, listening to music, and making paper cranes. On Sunday it was sad to see everyone go, but we’re looking forward to our next castle seminar in January and we also started planning an unofficial meet up in Vienna, which I will attend within the next couple of weeks. YFU is a like a built-in family for all of us here, and I can’t wait to see them all again.

Just a small list about my life here:

1. I've started to play guitar!!! I am taking lessons from a twenty something in my town and I absolutely love it. I’m learning songs in both English and German too!

2. My favorite TV show here is called Bauer Sucht Frau (which translates to Farmer Seeks Woman) but it’s basically a dating show about farmers looking for a wife. We typically watch it as a family about once a week and I think it’s hysterical.

3. Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself loving a few foods that I came here disliking, like sauerkraut, cooked potatoes, and brown bread. After really trying it, I’ve grown to actually like them a lot.

4. Basketball is not a popular sport in Austria, which makes me and my Japanese YFU friend Chito, a little sad because we both played at home. I’ve heard that there are club teams around, but so far I haven’t been able to find a women’s teams to play on here.

5. I LOVE SCHNITZEL. I just don’t think I could ever say that enough. It is so delicious. I’m looking forward to making it for potlucks when I return.

So, I don’t think I could leave you hanging without a song of the week or month, basically because its my favorite part of this blog, but I’ve recently been a little disappointed by the Austrian pop charts because they are essentially the same as the US. The number 1 song here is Love The Way You Lie, which came from the US. I will say that there are songs that we don’t have at home, but typically they are all sung in English; musicians in Europe, rather logically, decided that they could appeal to a larger audience that way. So I wish I had a very Austrian song for you, but for right now I don’t, so I had to fall back on one of my pre-departure favorites. I’ve been listening to it a lot in the past few weeks, and with my trip to Vienna creeping up on me and looking back on how overwhelmed I’ve been in the past month, it seemed fitting enough. So the song, for this week and this month is Vienna by Billy Joel.

A few days ago, on my two-month anniversary I waltzed into school and beaming, told a classmate that I had officially been in Austria for two months. A few minutes later, she asked me if I could go back to before I decided to become an exchange student, and change my mind, would I. It took me a moment to realize that it was a serious question and when I finally did all I could do was laugh and tell her that yes, if I could go back I would change my mind, I would have learned German years before and started saving money, but I would never ever take back the fact that I came to Austria. Here in this supposed foreign country, I found a home I never knew I had. I wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had here for anything. It has honestly been the best two months of my life.

3 things 9/18

Well, if anyone doubted my poor communication skills before, these past two weeks should have wiped away any uncertainty. School started on the 13^th, and since then my life has just kind of been a whirlwind. I apologize because even though I love getting mail/emails/facebook posts/ect, I haven’t done a very great job of responding. On the first day of the welcome orientation in Vienna they told us that if we spend two ours a day on the computer, it would be equivalent to losing a month of our exchange (I did the math, its true). So in the recent weeks I’ve been choosing to do other things instead of being on the computer, but here I am a week and a day late to do the three things for Saturday, September 18^th.

1. The Song of the Week. The song of the week seemed like it was a good fit for the beginning of school, but we also sang it in music class on the first day. My music teacher is a famous pianist in Linz and when we went to class on the first day he handed out music books, sat down at the grand piano in the classroom and played the songs suggested by the students. I think I am going to LOVE music class. Just Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd.

2. Something That is Different From Home. I think it’s pretty obvious that the school system is different, but it is in a way that I love! I think it would be easiest for me to put the differences in list format so here I go:

1. For starters each class (mine is 5A, with kids mostly a little younger than me) has their own classroom and instead of the students moving from room to room in between classes, the teachers do the moving with a few exceptions like PE, art, and music. I really like this because it allows breaks to be real breaks instead of just walking immediately from one class to another.

2. Another thing is the schedules aren’t the same from day to day. We are on a one-week system with a certain number of each class each week.

3. Classes are only 50 minutes

4. We have typically six classes a day, so school gets out around 1:30.

5. There is no cafeteria and most people bring bagged food for in between classes and then eat lunch when they get home

6. We’re not allowed to wear shoes inside the building.

7. We have to stand up when a teacher enters the room and remain standing until he or she tells us we can sit down.

3. My Favorite Part of The Week. My favorite part of the week is still just as difficult to pick as the first week but I think even though everything about school was fantastic, it has to be this one moment with my family. It was on Sunday afternoon when I went to lunch to find a little heart shaped polished stone sitting at my place at the table. They explained that that all four of them had a heart like this one and when someone needs support or love they give all of their hearts to take with them. Since I am now a member of this family, I get a heart. I got to take the hearts on the first day of school and actually, I think helped.

3 Things 9/11

Yesterday was three weeks since I’ve been in Austria and in a makeshift celebration of that anniversary; I spent the day with wonderful people in a wonderful city and this week, all three things come from our afternoon:

The Song of the Week. I heard this song in a movie theater yesterday as I waited with my YFU friends Maja (Sweden) and Diego (Mexico) to get into our movie Beilight (in the U.S.A. Vampires Suck). The first notes played through the speaker system and I got goosebumps. To me, this song represents my exchange year but I can’t quite put into words how. Bittersweet Symphony by The Verge

I’m cheating; there are two songs this week because picking between the two was impossible. This song has a story. Yesterday as we walked through the city of Linz, we passed a little toyshop and someone brought up the first line of this song “You and I in a little toy shop”. After it was said, there was an unspoken understanding and we ran back to the shop and went inside. A few minutes later, we returned with what we had been looking for; balloons. Red Balloons. To go with the second song of the week …99 Red Balloons by Goldfinger (Partially in German)

Something That is Different From Home. Have I mentioned how much I love public transportation? It’s really incredible. The bus system runs 24 hours with very few delays and low rates for students. I’ll take public transportation everyday to and from school (the bus is actually double-decker and made by Mercedes. Go figure) In addition to the buses, there are trains that go all across Austria (and the rest of Europe for that matter) and once again, low rates for students! The public transportation is actually really helpful to us exchange students because it gives us an easy way to meet up with other kids who are staying in different parts of the country.

My Favorite Part of the Week. Yesterday I met with the other Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) exchange students for lunch. There were six of us in all: Maja (Sweden), Diego (Mexico), Katrijn (Belgium), Znook (Thailand), Morgane (Switzerland), and myself. We went to a little café outside a castle on the Danube. It was the first group contact we had had since our initial orientation in Vienna, so it gave us all the opportunity to talk about what are lives are like here and to discuss the next upcoming challenge, school. It’s a great thing to have a built in network of friends that you can trust and enjoy spending time with. I think we’ll do it again very soon!

The truth is: today was one of the best days of my entire life; its possible it tops the best day ever list. I know its Saturday and I promised a blog post, but I'm exhausted and I just can't put it all into words tonight. So until tomorrow; Auf Wiedersehen!

Three things 9/4

Wow. I’ve officially been in Austria two weeks. Time didn’t go any slower this week than it did in my first and the initial excitement hasn’t even begun to die down. Which brings me to my three things for the week:

1. The song for the week. This weeks song I’d never heard before I came to Austria, but now I feel like I’ve heard it as much as any overplayed Lady Gaga or Ke$ha song in the States. It has topped the Austrian pop charts since I’ve been here, and it’s starting to grow on me a bit. Here it is folks, what Austria is listening to: We No Speak Americano by Yolanda Be Cool

2. Something that’s different than home. I think the difference that has shocked me most is the fact that all of the students attending an upper-level school here (equivalent to our sixth grade and up) are being taught second (and sometimes even third) languages. But what surprises me most is that they really know them. My youngest host sister Nadi has only taken English for a year and the only error she has revealed to me in two weeks is that the TH words tripped her up a little. My other host sister Nina (who speaks English too) will take on French this year as well. Kids here are bilingual before they turn twelve while their brains can still pick it up like its nothing. It leaves me wondering why the U.S. hasn’t adapted a similar system.

3. My favorite Part of This Week. On Sunday afternoon, my host mom suggested that we go on a walk. Having already adjusted to the lifestyle of my family here, I laced up my hiking boots, knowing “walking” wasn’t just going to be a stroll through the town. We followed a walking path as it snaked its way to the top of the tallest hill in the area and finally stopped at a small restaurant named Gis. The four of us (my host mom, two sisters, and myself) ordered hot chocolates and warm apple strudel from a woman wearing traditional Austrian clothes (there was more than one person in lederhosen there) and sat outside and enjoyed the view and the fresh mountain air.