First Week in Vienna

Hi everyone.

Mom, things are going a lot better, so if you were worrying about me, you don't need to. I'm making such good friends with everyone - I never feel lonely or anything because we're all getting so close. Today Krystle and I walked to the grocery store called Billa that is two houses away and bought some stuff to eat for lunch, mostly bread, pb, jam, and yogurt. I've figured out that things are opposite here: fresh food (produce) is the cheap stuff and processed food (what I realized I mainly eat) is the super expensive stuff. How does that work, Dad? After the grocery store, we met everyone at The Ring (when I say "The Ring" it means the main part of Vienna. It's in the middle and is where we go to school at the institute. It also has the Opera, tons of cathedrals and old buildings, and the ritzy shopping district crawling with tourists.) and took the street car to the "food fest" which happened to mostly be a wine and cheese fest. I think we all sampled multiple cheeses more than once, which sufficed for our lunch. It was fun to watch; there were all these older Austrian couples there who {I think} brought their own wine glasses to sample 1/8L (their words, not mine) of different kinds of wine while they nibbled on cheese. I don't know if it gets more posh than that...

We split up into two groups after the food fest. I went with Ale (pronounced Allie) and Kristin and we just walked and walked for hours around The Ring. We just followed one old building after another. We went inside two different cathedrals (and one yesterday). I LOVE the cathedrals. They are so incredible and spiritual; they are so ostentatious with so much gold accent and decoration. One of them housed the oldest playable Baroque organ. Um...cool. I think it was actually that same one that had a glass case with a skeleton of a martyr dressed in Roman armor inside. I don't know if I've ever actually seen a real human skeleton before, I guess besides Body Worlds. One of the churches had a side room with a huge painting of Mary and a book for people to write down thoughts. I saw one I loved; the woman wrote, "Dear Mary, Our Lady. I need you to watch over me and guide me each day. Stay with me." I thought it was beautiful and so profound. A couple hours and miles later, we ended up in our main square that's by the institute {we're getting to know the area quite well}, the three of us were exhausted and hungry, so we sat down to take a break and wait for a couple of the other girls meet up with us. We needed a little bit of familiar, so we ate at Subway and then all bought gelatos. Mine was strawberry; I didn't love it, so I think I'll get a chocolate kind next time.

We all went different directions, but Krystle, Mika, Kristin and I decided to get on a street car and ride it around until we got bored. We got off after a while and found a subway then split up and went home. We're back now, and I'm really tired but we had a great time today.

How is everyone? Sorry about our choppy conversation the other day Levi. Stupid internet. I'm excited about the election! How did everyone like the flyers? What are they saying about your posters? They better like them because we worked hard on those dang things. And Levi, you know how I like to know everything people say, so please tell me word-for-word what EVERY person said about EVERYTHING please. Bitte. That's please in German, I'm almost fluent now. Poss, what have you learned lately in gymnastics? I mean...in the whole week I've been gone haha. Is Porter better yet? Porter, little buddy, you better get better so I can stop worrying about you! Have you started my letter blog? Maybe I should, then it can already be linked to my other blogs and I can just make you a contributor and you can put up the letters or whatever. Will that work? Maybe I'll do it tonight anyway and if you've already done it then I'll just delete it. What have you been doing to fill the time from no studying? Have you gotten back into a workout schedule? Krystle and I are thinking we might start running slash walking because there are a few nice parks around here. Dad, have there been any recent controversies I'm missing out on {local or national? I'm missing out even on the big news here without internet.} Is there anything else new happening? Well, I'm going to try to send this now and cross all my fingers that it will prevail over this darn internet. Hope you guys had a fun Saturday. And happy Mother's Day, Mom! Will you tell Leah to not forget about that *thing* I gave her? Thanks. I'm sending all the Xs and Os in the world! Here are some for you Benj - xoOOXxoOxOXo

kayla