austria!

i have been here for one month now and i must say that i have already experienced things i only would have dreamed of! when i first arrived here  things were a little strange, being another country and all. i really had no  set place to go. my first family was traveling in grease somewhere and my  second family was at there vacation house on a lake somewhere in austria.  when i got off the plane i met my host brother and his friend. they were  really nice, although i couldn't really understand what they were saying in  german, but what they didn't know was i caught on fast! so after a couple of  hours of looking at the beautiful city of vienna, we drove 3 more hours to  lake autesee! i spent 10 days there before language camp. it was a beautiful  brand new house on a lake, in fact it was so new that there wasn't even  phone lines put in it yet, or a tv. so having no computer and no television,  i had to resort to the austrian way of passing by the time. this was ok for  me , something new, i was very open to trying new things! so we went  sailing!

so my first time sailing was very enjoyable, i learned a few things about  it. the second time sailing they tricked me into jumping off the boat and  grabbing hold of a rope! i did it, but the one thing they didn't tell me  about was that the water was about 100 feet deep and the temperature was  approximately 55°f! i thought that i was going to drown when i hit the  water, but i didn't. well, i missed catching onto the rope so i kind floated  there for a while before they could turn the boat around. everyday we went  sailing until i had to go for language camp, which i was very excited about  because i wanted to learn the language and meet the other exchange students! so august 19 i arrived at language camp. it was a little strange because it  was at a boarding school. i really didn't know what to expect, but it worked  out nicely with all 55 exchange students. i was a little surprised of where  all the exchange students were from. there were 55 of us and atleast half of  them were latin american 15 of which coming from mexico. being from florida  and having put that i took some spanish in school on my application, they  stuck me in a small house with all the latin american girls. it was a bit  strange because i was thinking in english, studying german, and listening to  spanish! you better believe that i had some headaches after all of that!  well every day we woke up at 6:30 am to eat breakfast at 7:15 am. after that  we had class at 8:00 am till 12:00 pm when we then ate lunch.we resumed our  classes at 1:00 pm until 3:00. after that we were aloud to do whatever we  wanted to do with our time. so most of us walked 45 minutes into town to get  ice cream, being that the temperature was said to be unusually hot for  austria (95f°). after the first week rotary took us on a trip to the salt  mines in hallstat! it was very interesting. we went up the mountain in a  lift to just go right back down inside the mountain on a slide. it was fun,  we got to dress in a jump suit because it was suppose to be 40°f inside.  after the final 2 weeks was up everyone was a bit sad to leave, but it was  what we had to do! so i continued on with my journey to vienna. here i finally met my first host family! i was extremely tired from camp,  but i manage to make myself presentable! 3 days after i arrived here, i  started school. i must say the school appeared to be a bit ghetto, but  almost all grades attended it so i figured since there was little 8 year  olds running around it, it couldn't be that dangerous, and i know that  rotary would never set me up in a school like that! i got placed in a class  with all 15 year olds. i couldn't be placed in my appropriate grade because  all the students do their last year of school is prepare for tests! so i am  kind of happy that i got placed 2 years back.

well so far vienna has treated me good for this month. what adventures lie  next , i will not know. auf wiedersehen