Alright, here begins the next round of the blog blitz. I'm going to start with the week or so before spring break, move onto my trip to Rome, talk about Mom and Dad's trip to visit me, my weekend in Amsterdam, and my spring break round two. So I hope you all have your reading glasses on, because my fingers are getting a workout! Just keep checking back over the next week, and you should be all caught up before next Friday, when Erika and Paul get here.
I wish IES had posted their midterm schedule much earlier, and I might have been able to add a couple of days to my spring break. As it turned out, I had a German final on a Saturday, and only a term paper for Econ due the Tuesday of midterms week. So I had a lot of free time on my hands. Luckily for us, Barbara's birthday was going to be over break, so Andre organized a surprise party for her a week early so we could all celebrate together. It also set off a series of arts and crafts projects, which I'll get to in just a bit.
On that Sunday, there were about fifteen to twenty people tucked away in Andre and Seth's apartment (they live above Barbara and Adrianne). At the appointed time, Andre called up Barbara and told her that he needed her help with something and she had to come down right away. Luckily for her, she got dressed first and didn't come down in her pj's, or else she might have had a really big surprise. Since they have an entry way, we closed the doors to the living room area, which are never closed. Barbara was a little suspicious and Andre just told her that the doors were broken. As she opened the doors, she saw some of the boys posed together, and when she stepped in the room, we all yelled surprise. Unfortunately for us, Barbara is one of those people who don't really register surprise on their faces, so we didn't get any amazing pictures right then.
The boys had gotten a cake and a hunk of gelato, which had about twelve flavors or so (it was heaven). Some other people brought wine or crackers or such, Mandy and Wini and I brought an IOU. We were a bit behind on our project. But it was a very nice afternoon, and a break from being home in my apartment, which I tend to hole up in on weekends. We ate, drank, and played with balloons. How much better can it get?
Monday and Tuesday were crazy crafting days. Mandy, Wini, and I made Barbara a scrapbook for her birthday, so we went through everybody's pictures, saved the ones we liked, pared down those to a managable level, and had them printed. Then we went shopping for scrapbooking supplies and scissors. Because it was split three ways, we could spend a bit more than we would have otherwise been able to. All day Tuesday was spent with scissors and glue in hand, and we really churned out an amazing scrapbook, if I do say so myself. We tried to organize it according to different places we'd been or things we had seen with Barbara, and each page had about 3-4 pictures on it. I had done most of the cutting, gluing, and such, then Mandy and Wini came in when they were dry enough and wrote captions or filled the blank space with silly stories or poems pertaining to the pictures. I have to say, I was really proud of how well it turned out.
We made a concerted effort to finish on Tuesday because Barbara had gotten some bad news and needed to be cheered up. The book did that. It made her laugh, and I think she really liked it. I'm still so proud of it!!!
That night, we had plans to make French Toast at my apartment, but Barbara was MIA. Mandy and I were a bit worried about her, so we took our supplies, including the toast and the scrambled eggs, and jouneyed to Barbara's apartment. When we got upstairs, we found Barbara -- she had been out on a walk with Andre and left her phone at home, which was why she wasn't answering when we called. Since she was already heating up a pizza, we split the pizza as an appetizer, and then warmed the French Toast and eggs up in the oven for her. Maple syrup here is really hard to come by, and kind of expensive, so getting to use it is really a treat. I love French toast!
For dessert, I had bought strawberries and heavy cream. When I'm at home, Mom will sometimes make homemade whipped cream with heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. We tried to do the same thing, but a fork and a bowl just weren't working. Andre had a whisk, so we tried using that to no avail. Then I got the bright idea of putting it in a jar and shaking it, like you do when you're in Girl Scouts and you're making butter. This actually worked!! How cool is that??? So dessert turned out really good too :-)
Since Wednesday was the last day we'd all be together before we went our separate ways for break, we decided to have a picnic in one of the gardens near the Hofburg. We ran to Billa to buy the supplies, and made up our sandwiches. Then we laid out the blanket I had snitched from my apartment and had our feast. It was really wonderful, until some random guy decided he needed to go to the bathroom and peed on a tree. That kind of kills the whole perfect mood. I have to say, that's one thing I can't get over here. There's a lot more urine spots on the sidewalks than can possibly be caused by dogs, and it's really gross. I definitely won't miss that when I get home.
That night, the contingent of girls going to Greece left, except for Anna, because she forgot her passport at home, only to find out that she had it on her the entire time. Big oops. But she managed to find a flight for the next day and met up with the girls in Athens.
I spent that night packing and getting things in order to go to Rome for a week. I can't even tell you exactly what I did, probably wasted a lot of time, but it was nice and relaxing. And Thursday continued the same way.
Thursday night around 7:30, I got on my overnight train to Rome. A boy named Philip was in the car with me for a while, but since he didn't have a seat reservation, he got bumped by the people who actually did. Trust me when I say that Philip would have been the better traveling companion. We had a very nice conversation before he had to leave -- he told me about how he is almost done with his service work, which was with the Red Cross here. Every young man has to serve either two years in the Army or in the service sector after they graduate highschool and before they go to college. We talked about where he had traveled and where he was going to travel.
After Philip left, the car I was in got fuller and fuller. Eventually, we had six people in a very small space and we were filled to capacity. It'd be nice to say that it was absolutely wonderful and I slept like a baby, but that just didn't happen. I actually didn't sleep that badly, but the train stopped at every station, and the ride itself lasted about fourteen hours. I'm not a great traveller, so I wasn't feeling all that great (it was probably just nerves), so when we pulled into Rome around 9:30 the next morning, I was quite relieved. Once I got off the train, I made sure I called Dad, so he'd know I was still alive, and he told me that he had been sleeping with the landline phone on one endtable and his cell phone on the other, so when I called, I would definitely get him. In fact, because I had expected to be in Rome a bit earlier, he had been laying awake for about an hour waiting for me to call. I think he was more nervous than I was!
However, I have to get back to the real world of Vienna for a few hours now, which means your reading pleasure stops here. If you're interested, I've posted pictures of my trip to Rome, but right now they don't have captions. They are in either four individual folders on my picasa site, or depending how quickly it finishes uploading, you can see them all together and in chronological order in the big folder. There are also pictures from Mom and Dad's visit. They're not complete because in the confusion of packing everything to go home with them, some pictures ended up on my external harddrive and I don't have access to that anymore. Hopefully, I'll be able to talk Mom through uploading them for me tonight. Some of you may also have noticed my pictures from Amsterdam, which is a very liberal city (and not in the wrong American political perception of liberal, but in the wider sense), have been taken down for the time being. This is because there have been complaints as to some of the content, and the entire folder needed to be deleted since the photos in question could not be deleted easily one by one. In my defense, I would like to state that there was a clear warning in the title of the folder, however, I am sorry to anyone I have offended. If anyone reading this would like to see the album in its unedited version, please let me know and I'll send you the pictures. As soon as I have the time and inclination, I'll repost the non-offensive pictures, but I'm pretty much not promising anything for a while.
Until then,
Amanda
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