4 Mädchens!

It has been a crazy last few days. My journey to Vienna started out fine. I got on the train in New London at 3 in the afternoon on Tuesday. I hated myself a little for packing two suitcases. I could barely maneuver them on my own. I got to Newark in plenty of time, after going up and down many escalators with all my luggage. I finally got on to the plane at 9:25 that night I met my seatmate, another student in my program, who I had arranged to sit with. To our surprise, the guy sitting right next to us was also in our program. We enjoyed the free wine and beer and movies for the next seven hours, and we had no idea that we were about to embark on a slightly extended journey. When we got close to London the captain announced that there was heavy snow in London and there was only one runway that was usable. So we circled above London for the next hour and a half. Fun times. Then after landing, we sat on the tarmac for another hour. And saw that it had snowed about an inch, and it was no longer snowing. The captain dragged on and on about the runway and the roads being"slippy" for the "heavy snow." Clearly London doesn't know what heavy snow is. Anyway, our flight was cancelled, as were almost all the flights that day. So we got rebooked by a nice Irishman while standing in line, ( British Airways customer service is quite excellent) and got hotel vouchers. At this point we hadn't eaten anything and barely slept. The closest hotel was a half hour from the airport in Wembley so we hopped on a bus with about five thousand other people and off we went. To London. We went to bed at 5 pm London time, after we ate of course, and woke up at 3 am to catch our flight to Vienna. We were all very happy to be together instead of all alone. It was quite the bonding experiance. Our flight the next morning was fine, and we met a bunch of other poeple in our program who got their flights cancelled too. So we FINALLY made it to Vienna. Not everyones luggage made it, but mine did. We fit all 3 of us and luggage in a taxi.

The next two days at orientation in a hostel on the edge of the city, near the Vienna woods. People fell asleep during presentations, at the dinner table, sitting on the floor. I crashed at 9 that night, and slept for 11 hours. But tonight its 10:15 and I am still awake. Hopefully tomorrow I will be a real person and get to see more of the city, because I have barely seen any of it. Plus tomorrow night we are being taken to a wine place, to meet the faculty.

Oh shit. The power just went out in our apartment. We are having exciting times with power converters.

Anyway, we moved into our apartment today. Our land lady speaks very little English, and we speak hardly any German. But we communicated somehow. I turned out to be the one , out of my 3 roommates, with the most German knowledge. So I used my one semester of German to say a couple sentences and translate a few words. It was interesting. We have a pretty big apartment, with tons of storage, and a balcony with a great view. We still have to go food shopping tomorrow, because everything is closed on Sunday.

I'm so proud of myself for staying up until 10:30, but we have to continue to be orientated at 9 tomorrow, so I should probably sleeeep.