Grüß Gott!
Y'know, sometimes it's fun to be in front of a German keyboard just to have those extra letters of the alphabet at my disposal. The shortcuts don't work on my laptop except in Word, which is somewhat depressing because I do so enjoy them.
Anyhow, life in Vienna is getting better. I have a roommate now. Klaudia seems like a nice girl, but kinda quiet. Had to draw her out by asking questions, as she did with me but we weren't really jumping well between topics so it was all about making up new questions, which gets old after awhile. But she's really nice and I look forward to talking to her more, especially as my German gets better.
Co-Co, which is short for Conversation and Composition or my German class, is rather kicking my butt. We're the most advanced class in the place and so we're reviewing grammar at a light speed pace. But we've all hit our Waterloo at Subjunctive I (indirect discourse) so we're at least getting to slow down a bit. Mainly because we're discovering that we can't in fact, conjugate verbs in anything but the present tense. Poor Andrea. But we're getting there, thank goodness, and as long as we just write and speak what we know (this subjunctive thing is new for about six of the nine members of the class, me not being one of them) we sound like perfectly intelligent ten year olds, which given that none of us have had that many years of German is pretty darn good, thank you very much. :p
We went to a Heuriger on Tuesday night with Co-Co and the accelerated elementary class. That's a family run restaurant where they give you their own new wine. Oh my gosh, so good. Better than the one we visited when I was here as a senior in high school. Plus the food was really good too. And no, I did not come back anywhere near to drunk. I had one glass of wine and half a glass of Sturm, which is wine that's not quite fermented yet, plus a lot of food. Besides a Heuriger is not an excuse to get drunk. It's a place to go with your friends and have a good time. And no, the two are not synonomous. There were definitely some people from our group that had ordered themselves extra wine at dinner there and I was quite embarassed enough for them on the subway ride home. Wished I could figure out another way home, one that wasn't with the loud, obnoxious Americans. Ah well. Beth and B.A. and I will be starting our own little excursions soon. And hopefully I'll make friends with more of the people in Haus Salzburg so I can go out with German speaking people too.
I get to tour a TV station tomorrow! :) How cool is that? Andrea set us up for a tour of ÖRF, which is one of the big stations. We just might get to play with the green screens or something! :D I've never done anything like this before and so I'm ridiculously excited, in case y'all couldn't tell. Since we found out about it last week I've been hurrying this week through to Friday so that I could go do this.
Anyways, gotta go see the computer guys about making my wireless work in the IES center, and then it's off to listen to the vocalists audition for the music performance workshop. Mine was yesterday, thank goodness it's over. But for now, tschüß!
Anyhow, life in Vienna is getting better. I have a roommate now. Klaudia seems like a nice girl, but kinda quiet. Had to draw her out by asking questions, as she did with me but we weren't really jumping well between topics so it was all about making up new questions, which gets old after awhile. But she's really nice and I look forward to talking to her more, especially as my German gets better.
Co-Co, which is short for Conversation and Composition or my German class, is rather kicking my butt. We're the most advanced class in the place and so we're reviewing grammar at a light speed pace. But we've all hit our Waterloo at Subjunctive I (indirect discourse) so we're at least getting to slow down a bit. Mainly because we're discovering that we can't in fact, conjugate verbs in anything but the present tense. Poor Andrea. But we're getting there, thank goodness, and as long as we just write and speak what we know (this subjunctive thing is new for about six of the nine members of the class, me not being one of them) we sound like perfectly intelligent ten year olds, which given that none of us have had that many years of German is pretty darn good, thank you very much. :p
We went to a Heuriger on Tuesday night with Co-Co and the accelerated elementary class. That's a family run restaurant where they give you their own new wine. Oh my gosh, so good. Better than the one we visited when I was here as a senior in high school. Plus the food was really good too. And no, I did not come back anywhere near to drunk. I had one glass of wine and half a glass of Sturm, which is wine that's not quite fermented yet, plus a lot of food. Besides a Heuriger is not an excuse to get drunk. It's a place to go with your friends and have a good time. And no, the two are not synonomous. There were definitely some people from our group that had ordered themselves extra wine at dinner there and I was quite embarassed enough for them on the subway ride home. Wished I could figure out another way home, one that wasn't with the loud, obnoxious Americans. Ah well. Beth and B.A. and I will be starting our own little excursions soon. And hopefully I'll make friends with more of the people in Haus Salzburg so I can go out with German speaking people too.
I get to tour a TV station tomorrow! :) How cool is that? Andrea set us up for a tour of ÖRF, which is one of the big stations. We just might get to play with the green screens or something! :D I've never done anything like this before and so I'm ridiculously excited, in case y'all couldn't tell. Since we found out about it last week I've been hurrying this week through to Friday so that I could go do this.
Anyways, gotta go see the computer guys about making my wireless work in the IES center, and then it's off to listen to the vocalists audition for the music performance workshop. Mine was yesterday, thank goodness it's over. But for now, tschüß!