A Little Catching Up...

I have some catching up to do with the old blog writing...

On Friday I was given a ticket to go to the Theater im Zentrum in Vienna, aka, the youth theater. One of the teachers at my school thought I might be interested, and she had an extra ticket, so she gave it to me. It was really fun to go. It was funny to see all the student's faces and their reaction to seeing me outside of school. It's like TAs don't have a life or something! Haha!

I saw "Creeps." It's a "casting show" involving three girls who all think they got the part in hosting a tv show. In reality, they all got called to go to the studio and were asked by "the voice" to do different things. They were actually being filmed the whole time, and the point behind it is the voice is kind of a creep. I was surprised to hear a lot of English words being used...but they're trying to make it hip and cool for young people. The audience was mostly students and their teachers anyway. (Speaking of English...I was on the bus today, and there was a different bus driver than the normal one who I've explained to several times where and why I need to get off early...so the substitute driver was there and I was explaining it to him and told him that it would be great if I could get off that this one stop. He said sure, of course, and in he said, "Ja, dass ist es nicht so bad!" Hahaha! Instead of using the German word for "bad" he used "bad"! That was funny!

Saturday I was invited to a teacher's house for her birthday celebration. She was one of the teachers I got closest to at my other school, and it was really nice that she invited me. There were all in all 15 of us at her and her fiance's house. They also have two dogs, who were (to my surprise) cute. One is a puppy and the other is his father. They were very well behaved, so that was a plus! We ate fondue style, by taking meat and grilling it on a small grill on the table. We had salad and vegetables as well. It was really good! And of course, there was chocolate cake for desert. It was nice to get out of the bustling city too. They live in one of the outermost suburbs of Vienna.

Sunday was spent at the computer, locked in research for my dissertation proposal...we'll see how it goes once I submit it....

Today, as I was admiring the sun and the fact that I could look out of the train and actually see what is around (now that the sun is up at around 6:45am...), I was looking at the construction work on new train tracks and all of a sudden, I look, and there is one of the workers, facing the train, taking a leak!!!!! That was just something I could have done without seeing this morning! SO GROSS!!!!

One of the nice things I saw on my train journey to school today were several fields with deer grazing on the grass. I saw probably 20-25 deer, and also, "as fast as fast can be" 20 or more rabbit/jackalope looking creatures running and playing in the fields. That was nice...to know that something exists outside the city besides just buildings. It was nice to see nature today (minus the glowing stream of that guy's pee....I am traumatized now, and WON'T be looking out of the window at the construction site anymore)!