Sorry I don't write more often. My reports are falling a bit short of the daily reports I promised when I came. Things are going fine here though. I turned seventeen last week, and I had a good birthday. One of the girls in my class baked me a cake, and I got some gifts. I was touched. I hadn't expected it. I went out with two AFS exchange students for dinner, and then we walked around and talked for a while. I was craving Thanksgiving Turkey the whole time,of course, but the Italian food was still good. Of course again.  

I am also very proud of myself because I managed to keep my resolution not to withdraw any money from my American bank account. This meant that this last week I went without snacks at school and snuck onto the bus without buying tickets, but I still made it. Of course I will blow any money I managed to save in December, but still.  

The next Rotary meeting is next week. We are all getting together in Salzburg for the Kris Kindle market. I've heard it's really impressive. I love the markets here! They should do more of them in America. So I'll get to see all my friends again, as well as get all my Christmas shopping done. Dual purpose event. Cool.

I have been a really bad correspondent this month. To all my friends who are reading this (since I know our letters get forwarded to just about everyone who has ever even talked to a rotarian, lol), sorry! I'll try to do better.  

I also visited Vienna two more times since I wrote. Once overnight with some friends, and once on a Rotary event. The overnight was not really worth it, since I traveled about sixteen hours to be in Vienna just about exactly twenty-four. The Rotary one was two nights, and a lot of fun. Dan, one of the exchangees here, gave me a pillow for my birthday, since he knows my train ride is longer than anyone elses. On Sunday we had to walk around with all our stuff, on a tour of Vienna, and I didn't have any space in my bag, so I carried it. Which was fine in the morning, since I was sick and therefore too miserable to care what anyone thought, but by afternoon I was starting to feel a little self concious about carrying a pillow under my arm around Vienna. It was nice to have on the train though. Vienna is absolutely beautiful, and I could have stayed a month without getting bored at all.   

I'm still working on my German here. It's coming along, if slowly. The heavy dialect spoken in this region doesn't help, since they speak more Swiss German than German German. Voralberg has the hardest dialect of anywhere in Austria, and it is often spoken in everyday life, though when people talk directly to me I think it's usually in High German. But anyway, I'm working on it.  A cute thing happened on Monday. Susanna, the AFS exchangee in my school, and I go to lower German classes during periods off, since we don't have Latin and some other classes with everyone else. Monday we went to a first grade (like American fifth grade) class. The little kids there asked us for our autographs! We thought they were mocking us or something at first, but like five or six of them ran up to us with pens and paper as soon as we got to class, and asked for our autographs. One of them put his in his pencil case. Awww. Plus, it is of course good practice for when we are rich and famous. As we no doubt will be.   

I also go to spend a week with my second host family. I will be moving in with them in January. It is the wife of my couseler and his daughter. He lives in a seperate house. Their apartment is really near the center of Feldkirch, and the daughter is my age. They are really nice. We bonded over a five hundred piece puzzle. I had fun there.  

That's all that's really happened this month. 
Luky