Chris you called it!!!



For those of you that don't know, my uncle chris kept teasing me before we left that Richy (A long time friend, my uncle jordan's best friend, and neighbor growing up) will get engaged while we are in Vienna. We ran into some rings in one of the palaces and couldn't help it!!



Two weeks ago Wednesday we left for Salzburg (where the sound of music was). On the way, we stopped at Mauthausen, a concentration camp. I couldn’t believe the suffering that people were put through. Over 100,000 people were killed there! While I was walking through the gas chambers in the basement, I could still feel the evil down there. I had the most strong horrible feeling come over me and had to get outside.
After that, I went to the rock quarry where they were forced to carry huge granite blocks on their backs, up hundreds of stairs. It is now been overgrown and is so beautiful with waterfalls, flowers, and green trees.

It amazed me what God can do, turning something so horrible and evil into such a beautiful place. It gave me comfort, showing me that they are in such a better place now. Going to the camp was a very good experience, but I hope that I will never have to see that again!!
After the gloominess, we traveled for another couple of hours and finally arrived in Salzburg. The first thing that we did lifted everyone’s spirits. We went to a place called Hellbrunn, a place that was created 400 years ago by an archbishop that really liked to have fun. Trick fountains! As you can see, they still work!


All of the girls in front of the Sound of Music Gazebo. I am 19, going on 20... on thursday!!!!




The hotel that we stayed at can be documented back before Columbus!! Man, Salzburg is gorgeous! Even though the town is hundreds of years old, there are still a lot of open fields and green land. There are trees everywhere.

The first evening that we were in Salzburg, a couple of us went wandering and came upon Mirabella Gardens, just as the sun was setting. It was beautiful. Then to top that off, there was an Austrian orchestra playing in the middle!

I went on a hike with some of the girls in my group and we ended up on the top of a hill that overlooked the city, with the Alps as a backdrop. We could hear all of the many church bells ringing (which im guessing about 15 different churches every hour!) and the meadow that we were sitting in was full of flowers. I really felt like I was in the sound of music!


Eating on the patio of a delicious restaurant..

We also went to a marionette show of The Magic Flute, as well as a salt mine where we had to wear big white suits and got to slide down huge wooden slides!

On the way home, we stopped in a very small city called St. Wolfgang. It was the most beautiful place that I have ever seen!!! It was on a huge lake in the Alps, with green everywhere, and small very old Swedish-looking buildings. It is a place that I really do hope to visit again.
Eating a scone in St. Wolfgangs, flowers and all!!

Weekend of playing

Happy Birthday Cade! I miss you like crazy!!!! Ill have a surprise for you when I get home!!!!! I love you!!!!!!!!!!!

To all of you that have written comments, I have no idea how to write back! I am sorry! I love getting and reading them, i am so sorry if you dont get a reply..

Friday:
The weekend started with looking for a football. Richy, Bruce (his name is Bryce, but our german teacher kept accidentally calling him this in his funny accent and he now is stuck with it), Karly and I went clear across town and finally, after wandering for a very long time, we found the Vienna Vikings store. Football is definitely not a big sport here.

On Friday night we went on a train to Neiderosterrich (lower austria) to a tiny lds chapel for an lds singles get together. Our group made up most of the singles. We had an Austrian BBQ: Bratwurst, steak, crazy salad, and bread. After we ate we had a football (soccer) game in the church's field. Brag moment: I scored four out of the six goals for our team. (I am very very proud of this, considering i havent played soccer in years!!!) Hah enough of the big head... We stopped by Tichies for Gelatto on our way back. It was amazing..
After ice cream, a few the austrian singles took a group of us to Q, one of the dancing clubs.
It was very fun, but I could not stand being in club for very long because of all the smoke! Everyone here smokes! One of the running jokes now is that at least one of us is going to develop lung cancer from this study abroad.

Saturday:
I woke up smelling smoke and realized that it was my hair and skin. Everything, especially my jeans, reeked of smoke! After showering and trying to get the smell out of everything, Karly and I went to the park with some of the local austrians and played volleyball and then went to a young man from austria's baptism. I was very neat to see the church working the same way across the world (except for the fact that it was all in German, and then had a table full of delectable European desserts.)

Sunday:
I will write about sunday's in Austria on a later blog, this one is already too long.

Monday:
Karly, Richy, Danielle, Bruce, and I set out at 9:00 to find this hike to an underground lake. The ride to the starting point was only supposed to take 30 minutes, but we had some complications. While we were on the train, a man came around to check tickets. I didn't think anything of him, until I saw him talking with Karly and Bryce and I could tell that something was up. Richy and I didn't want to get into any kind of trouble, so we casually got off on the next stop. Come to find out, he was just charging them 1.70 for passing through two stops past the boundaries from where our monthly transportation pass ends. Rich and I decided to walk the rest of the way, which was only one stop. It turned out to be very beautiful. We had fun taking pictures by hanging the camera on branches, and taking other fun pictures. I felt bad for the other three waiting for us!

This one's for you Jord:)

Don't mess

We laughed very hard at this one, i think i got a couple of Rich's excited hands to head from this one. We look like monkeys in the jungle!

Rich and Karly, waiting for the bus. We had some intense card games going on between these two! Every minute they had they were playing.

It was Pentecost monday, and because this is a catholic nation, the whole country slows down. We had to wait an hour for the bus to take us to the starting point, and then when we got there we had a little surprise waiting for us. The hike was not really a hike. It was a 9$ tour of a mine that hit a spring in the late 1900's, got flooded, and then was used by the Nazis as a concentrations camp, building planes. We decided to try it, and it actually turned out very neat, it just wasnt the intense hike I was looking for, walking around with a bunch of retirement home, site seeing across europe, old, americans.

Bratislava!

Sorry, the pictures are in reverse order..


Some of the gang, me, and my friend from Brazil on the boat ride home


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Brother Jacobs, Richy, and me, on top of the ferry during the ride home.





Karly and I in front of one of the Bratislavian government buildings

Emily, one of my buddies for the day..




Cheesy, I know.. Emily loves taking pictures like this!

Three of the Argentinian boys

Jeremia, the Italian Rugby player

the good and the bad

Im sorry I havent kept up with the posts. I havent had a lot of time, and we only have internet when we go into the school..
This week has been extremely fun, but also a little discouraging.. It's been overwhelming with ry finally going into the mtc, not really getting a chance to talk to my family, hearing really fun things that friends are doing at home like skiing and rock climbing trips, school starting, and not speaking the language. Other than the couple of time that i was discouraged inside, the week was great.

School started this week. Hard, but interesting. I am taking an art history class from a native austrian and I have learned a lot already! We went to the Vienna Museum on tuesday and got filled to the brim about every detail and more about the sculptures, the town, and the paintings, and old houses. We have spent a lot of time already in museums, i swear there are more museums here than in all of America combined.

Wednesday we rode for an hour on a bus to Bratislava, Slovakia. Before i came here, I dont think i knew that this place even existed. It was the most interesting town i have ever been in! We got off the bus stop and the first thing we saw was every color of graffiti. There is a lot of the normal names of Graffiti, but there is also amazing murals of Graffiti! My roommate and I took some pictures by it, just as my camera died. The rest of the day is documented on my friends camera, sorry, Ill post those next week. Brother Jacobs (our director) just left us as soon as we got off the bus. We all just looked at each other like, is he serious? It ended up being a good experience though, venturing our own way through town. Most of the day was just wandering through the streets, looking at architecture, stores, landscape, and the normal and the crazy Slovakians. Downtown is on a big hill, and the streets are very close together. Some areas have been cleaned up, but I think that my favorite part was going through the run down parts of town, seeing, well i cant think of the words, but it was neat.
We went hiked up to a massive castle, looking out over the city and the danub river. On our way down I started talking to some guys and we ended up walking around with them for awhile. The four of them were from Argentina, but the very cute one is living in Italy playing professional rugby. As we were saying good bye, he kissed my on the cheek, hah i was not expecting that one. I was supposed to meet up with them again in Vienna, but when we got home from bratislava my eyes were far too tired, and i wasnt up for any more of that kissin..
We found a market down an alley with very cheep stuff, I got some white sneakers for 4 US dollars:) The shopping was not great in Bratislava though, I dont think that they can quite get out of the late 90's American style.
The churches were very beautiful, and the architecture of all of the buildings was amazing!
I liked the people of bratislava (except for the fact that they loved purple hair). They were all very friendly and kind. It is not like Vienna, where if you give someone a friendly smile, they look at you as if you are crazy.
We met up at the shore of the Danub, caught the high speed ferry-like boat, and took that home. This had to have been the most scenic things i have ever seen. The trees were luscious and green; tiny, cute wood fishing houses scattered along the shore, and there were random little old towns and castles along the way.

Yesterday I had school until 3:30. After school, Richy, two friends from the group: Bryce and Danielle, and I ventured out trying to find an american football to play in the park. No luck. At 7:00 we went to The Sound of Music Opera, we got standby tickets so we didnt have to stand! So much better!!!! The opera was beautiful and fun, but they changed my favorite song not only into german, but also from "doe a deer" and so on, to singing about cdefgab. For example e was elephant?? it was weird.