Museums and Friends

There are so many things that I could write about, so where should I start?  Well, I am naturally inclined to give some excuses for not writing in a long time... first of all, my computer hard drive crashed, fortunately it was mostly fixed after two weeks.  And then classes officially started, and all of a sudden I find myself spending a lot more time doing schoolwork (or mostly worrying about schoolwork), practicing, rehearsing, and so on.  Between school time I also managed to find time for other small weekend travels and trip planning.  Many students on the program have used regular two-day weekends traveling to nearby cities like Budapest, Prague, or Salzburg.  So far I haven't done any of such travel (honestly it's making me feel kind of lame), but this weekend I am going skiing in the Alps with the IES group.  My friend and I also picked out a few weekends, mostly in April, for traveling.  In addition to the cities I just mentioned, we really want to go to Graz.  But we decided it would be a better idea to go to some of these places and enjoy the beautiful scenery when the weather gets warmer.  I have also been busy working on my summer research grant application.  It is kind of hard for me to believe how much effort I have spent on summer internship and research applications.  In the past few days I have been thinking that none of these applications are looking optimal at all, what if all these effort and time just go wasted and I will still end up having nothing to do in the summer?  Then I really started thinking, how silly of me to try to apply for so many different things!  I was really quite disheartened by such thoughts!  My last excuse would be this: overall I was just not in a very good mood – I think I might be going through the phase when things start to get hard after the initial excitement passed – I was constantly having too much on my hands, sleep deprived, and I think I will blame that mostly on the research proposal.  That said, I did figure out how to utilize the Universität Wien library, including its online research database, so that was very gratifying.  When I cannot write merrily about travel and life stories, I feel that I should refrain from posting, because who wants to read about me being depressing, stressed, or angrily complaining about every little detail that does not suit me?  Anyway, enough of the excuses.

I decided to write about two things, one is my language buddy, and the other museum tours.

Elisabeth and I went to the garden at Schönbrunn.  Here on the hill one can see the palace and a view of the city.  Elisabeth took this picture for me.  I should have gotten a picture with her, but I didn't.

I am such a greedy person.  After meeting with my first language buddy, Elisabeth, when IES said that they found so so many Austrian language buddy volunteers, and that we could have two or three language buddies, I went ahead and got a second language buddy.  So far I have been in contact with both, but I have not met my second language buddy yet.  Elisabeth is great.  I was particularly happy after our first meeting.  That was before post-intensive break, a few hours before my laptop crashed, and before my trip to Paris.  First of all, I adore walking.  I feel like that is the best way to spend time with a good friend when one actually wants to have some conversations.  I am a slow walker, but I do not mind walking for hours.  Elisabeth is probably the same way.  The first afternoon we just walked around the city, instead of having lunch, or going to an exhibit (I love exhibits, but they are not places for conversations).  Another wonderful thing about my language buddy is that we converse entirely in German; I would only ask, in German, how to say certain things, and so forth.

This week I only had limited time during my day (I do not like having classes in the evening...), so we only took a walk in the Schönbrunn garden.  We planned to go to a trail in the city outskirt; we will have to do that when we have more time!

Naschmarkt produce

Gotta love the sweets.  Look who's wearing the hat I made this winter?

I am taking a class called Austrian Art and Architecture.  Almost every we go on a tour at one of the museums.  It is perhaps my favorite class.  Last week we went to Wien Musuem Karlsplatz – a history museum of Vienna; today we went to Kunsthistorisches Museum (and of course we will be going there a few more times!).

Stephansdom

Okay I was going to write about the museums tours, but my internet does not seem to be working so I will continue another time!