Volkhochschule

Today was my second day in Vienna and I love it.
I arrived last night at the hotel after wandering around for an hour. It was my own fault. Susi and I looked the directions up on google maps and I somehow passed by the building several times because the building number was 3A but the name was not the one the site director gave us. Turns out that Hotel Avis, the original place, was under construction. So Hotel Acadamie was were I was actually supposed to go.

I got there with 30 mins to kill and talked with my roommates for the night, Alice and Rose. Later the entire group went to an informal dinner with the faculty. I am very excited for classes on Montag. There are 11 students and 12 teachers, so each class has no more than 5 students. 

Later that night some of us went out for some Bier and got to know each other. The group of people are very nice and I think there won't be any problems, since everyone seems to get along.

Today we woke up at 8am, got ready, ate from breakfast, and met Frauke Binder, our site director, for a tour of the city. We spent some time at the place where I will be attending class, the Volkholkschule. It is almost a community college type place and offers other classes outside my program, like Yoga or dancing.

We ate lunch at this inexpensive (and delicious!) Persian restaurant. It was buffet style for 5 Euros!! After a little more instruction at school we went back to the hotel and waited for our host families to pick us up. Cyd, my roommate, had flown into Vienna a couple days earlier and so had already been staying at our hosts apartment. My host mom, Bibi, is very cool. Her apartment is really modern and quite large for a Viennese place. She has 3 Katzen named Kurti, Emmi, and Fanni. She keeps them on her side of the apartment because in the past the cats have gotten into stuff and some people don't like cats. I'm excited to give them the catnip toy I bought them tomorrow:)

Bibi took us out for a delicious dinner at a typical Viennese Inn (name to follow). Cyd and I ordered Schnitzel mit Salat, and Bibi ordered Goulash.

I'm very happy with everything so far, minus the bugs. I have yet to see a mosquito but have been bitten at least 9 times and boy, do they itch like crazy!
Right now I am finishing up a couple quizzes from summer class and might do some of the reading tonight, so that I can start my take home final. I really should work on it tonight since I think the students are going out tomorrow. We will see;)

I will upload pictures sometime this week.

Tschuss!