The first week of classes, the Vienna Phil and one quiet weekend!

My new comforter! Haha!

Montag 20 September: Today was the first day of real classes! I only have one class on Mondays and it's not until 1:15! I woke up early non-the-less because Meg's phone went through the wash and she needed me to set an alarm since she has class in the morning. Oh well. Every other Monday the cleaning lady comes and cleans our apartment and brings new sheets. Today's sheets are very funny! My new comforter (the sheets consist of a fitted sheet and then a comforter, no other sheets, just the comforter) has a pattern that is a zebra print center and then side borders on the right and left that are red with these kind of Grecian heads on them. They're so funny! I had lunch with Amanda and we tried a new place called Mama's Kitchen. I got a snitzel semmel sandwhich, which was really good! My one class today was Austrian Art and Architecture. I'm so excited for this class! Every Monday we have a lecture and then on Wednesday we go on a field trip! We get a free museum card so we can get into several museums for free! Another part of the class I'm really excited about is our journals. We have an ongoing assignment that is this journal. There are a few required entries, right now I'm working on my "What is art to me?" entry and then we are supposed to make entries for each of our field trips and have some entries of individual experiences such as travel or other Viennese excursions. We were so pumped about the journal that Kristin and I went out to shop for Moleskines right after class. After some searching I found one! I made dinner for everyone tonight. I wanted to make grilled cheese, but I don't know the word for groyere cheese in German so I just went with the easy way out and made pasta. Pesto with sundried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. Yum!

Dienstag 21 September: Today begins the long days. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I have class at 9 and then have another class at midday and then another night class. I can finally go home around 8. Marathon days with awkward breaks in between. Today started with German and then I had Classical Symphony, which is a musicology class. At night I had Nations and Religions. I'm trying not to buy a weekly U-bahn pass until October so I can buy a month pass. Plus this week is supposed to be really nice out, so it's not so bad to walk. After Nations and Religions Katie and Ben and I went to get sushi. We have this favorite sushi place near our house and all the maki is always 50% off. It's so good!


Mittwoch 22 September: I start Wednesdays with Nations and Religions again. My professor lives in Budapest so he takes the train to Vienna, teaches Tuesday night then Wednesday morning and goes back to Budapest. In Art and Architecture we talked about all the field trips we'll be going on which makes me super excited! Today was the first day of performance workshop which was stressful to say the least. We tried to discuss schedules for ensembles... I'm playing in ten ensembles... This is a very difficult thing to coordinate... For the time being we had to sacrifice our Friday afternoons for two coachings, which is pretty upsetting considering that most people are done with class at 10:30 or at 1:00 on Friday and can then go and travel. I will not be done with class until 4:00 on Friday now. Frowny face. I'm not very happy about this. I was even more unhappy when I found out that while all the string players were trying to figure out schedules everyone else in the workshop got a free standing room ticket for Friday's Vienna Phil concert that will be conducted by Dudamel! What?! Are you serious?! Dinner tonight: more sushi! haha. They love us there! While we were waiting for our sushi they brought us four of these honey schnapps drinks and then three fortune cookies and some sort of special candy just for us! So great!

Donnerstag 23 September: No performance workshop today, which is exciting and means that I get done with class at 3! This entire week has been just great for practicing! I've been very productive! Not a whole lot going on today, just homework and a little bit of shopping on MariaHILF. (The shopping street, really called Mariahilferstraße.)

Freitag 24 September: Thank Gott it's Freitag! What a long week! Wow! Today I just had German and Performance Workshop. There was an Alexander technique lecture in workshop and it was really funny to observe everyone watching their posture during the lecture, haha. Ben gave me his ticket to the Vienna Phil for tonight!!! I was so happy! It was so incredible. It was another one of those experiences like seeing the Eiffel Tower! The program was Gioacchino Rossini: Ouvertüre zu "La Gazza ladra", Julián Orbón: Tres Versiones Sinfónicas, Leonard Bernstein: Divertimento for Symphonic Band, Maurice Ravel: Pavane pour une Infante défunte and Maurice Ravel: Boléro. There was this one part in the Bernstein that was a string quartet bit and I actually got a little teary eyed, it was just so amazing and beautiful. It was just so incredible! I can't even really express in words how amazing it was! It was so clean and shimmery and beautiful. It was just inspiring to see an orchestra where everyone clearly cares! It was also amazing to see this sold out concert hall where people pay to wait outside an hour before the concert to stand for two hours in the back of a concert hall and even that is packed! The concert hall was amazing too. I don't have pictures because cameras weren't allowed (even though many people disregard this rule). Dudamel was just incredible too! So amazing. The dynamic range was unreal! It was so insane how quiet they could get! Everyone in the audience was so into it and it was just so crazy to see that many people so into Classical music! No one was asleep or looking at their phone, they were just there. The Vienna phil will only actually be performing in Vienna two more times while I'm here, but I will gladly stand for two hours with a bunch of smelly people to see it again! Basically, thank you Ben for the ticket. After the concert we went to Chicken Dinner, which is totally my favorite night time hang out now! Zan really wanted to make Austrian friends, but I the norms here are very different than in the States. People don't really go out here to meet other people. They already have their people and they go out to hang out. There is no penetrating those bubbles. Just because someone is looking at you, does not mean that they are interested in talking to you or approaching you. They just like to stare here... When we finally got home, I was so tired and ready for bed!

Packing up at the Flohmarkt

Samstag 25 September: So this weekend Lauren and Meg are at Oktoberfest so I have my room to myself, and I'm not going to lie, it's pretty nice! I slept in this morning and then had a relaxing day of homework, laundry, grocery shopping. Just getting done what needs to get done. It was really overcast and rainy today, so that was kind of a bummer. I was going to go to the flea market, but I didn't make it until it was shutting down since I didn't want to go while it was raining. I got a coin purse for only funfzig cent! (50 cents) I was really exciting because I've been looking for a coin purse everywhere! Marisa made dinner for us tonight and it was so delicious! She made dill chicken with rice and bell peppers, yum! It's quiet with two of the roommates gone. (It's kind of nice, seven girls can be a lot at times) After dinner Marisa and I worked out to one of her work out dvd's, which was really painful and fun! At night we took it easy and Emily and Zan and I went to Phil to get some hot chocolate. I got a hasselnuss cho, which is an Italien hot chocolate with hazelnut! Yum! Tomorrow the plan is church, practice, Beethoven house. It should be a fun Sunday!