4.30.2004

Hey everyone!

I´m just going to write things as I think of them so I´m sorry if the topic suddenly changes without warning.

I´ll start with the Rotary ski week. It was in a city called Schladming which is about an hour away from Bad Aussee (where my host parents´ 2nd house is). Anyway, it was amazing! As are all of the other Rotary meetings. I LOVE being with the other exchange students. I went skiing rather than snowboarding because I figured it would be a lot less painful and therefore more fun. That didn´t stop me from coming home with bright purple knees though! For the first 3 days we had a ski instructor with us from 8 until 11:30. However, I really didn´t learn anything at all from her. Then after lunch it was a whopping 80 degrees almost everyday so it was almost impossible to ski. The snow was all soft and melting. I don´t know who had the bright idea to have a ski week in the beginning of spring.

I have to tell you about the first day though. We did a little bit at the bottom of the lift to learn how to stop and stuff and then she said "OK get your lift passes out. We´re goin´ up". Talk about a jump there. Well, it was going great for me until we got to this huge hill. I started out slow and then just took off at full speed. I swear I must´ve been going 30 miles an hour and just kept going faster and faster. I had no idea how to stop so I was scared half to death but at the same time I had this great adrenaline rush and felt like I could do anything. It was one of the best feelings I´ve ever had in my life. Of course, once I got to the bottom I thought my heart was gonna jump out of my chest but it was still amazing. To think that was only a blue run! The difficulty of the runs go by color. It goes green, blue, red, then for the pyschos black. I´m really proud to say that later on in that week I went down half of a red run. I didn´t do half bad but I don´t think I´ll be doing that one again for a while.

Then came Easter. Easter was great because both of my host sisters were there. We went to church in the morning which was interesting because, since they don´t have actual palms in Austria, everyone had to bring little bouquets of those sticks with the little fuzzy flowers (I think they´re called pussy willows). And they had a special singing group there so I got to sing with them in German. That´s always fun. Then in the afternoon I colored Easter eggs. Although they didn´t turn out so well. After that we spent the whole week eating eggs. They have this game in Austria where two people take an egg and then one person hits the other persons egg with thier own and whoevers egg doesn´t crack is the winner. It sounds kind of stupid but when you play with a lot of people it´s fun.

Not too much else has happened. As expected, I´m pretty sure I gained a little weight because all of my shirts are too small now. Because of that, I decided to go to a fitness studio with some of the girls in my class. That was soo much fun. It was just like it is on tv except in german. Und wir schwimmen! I would like to go more but you have to pay in advance for a month or a year and it´s a little late in the year for that. Plus, it´s extremely expensive.

I also went to my very first opera! Two in fact. One was with my host family called Don Carlos and it was in Italien but luckily it had German sub-titles above the stage. The music was beautiful but there were about 4 different stories involved and that made it almost impossible to understand. Then, two days later, I went to the famous opera Carmen with my class. That one was in French but once again with the lovely sub-titles. I liked Carmen a lot more than Don Carlos but that´s probably only because I actually understood it.

Then last week I changed host families for the last time this year. (Note: Everytime the phrase "my host family" was used in the past paragraphs was referring to my last host family). I now live with the principal of my school, which is really weird. Only a student can understand that. He´s very nice though and we live in what is literally a small castle. It´s on the top of a mountain called Pöstlingberg and you can see it no matter where you are in Linz. I have a picture of it but I also have about 50 other pictures that I want to put on this webite but have no scanner to do it. With any luck I´ll do it the day I get home and it will be on there for a couple of weeks before it goes into the archives.

The last thing that I have to mention because I´m soooo excited about it, is the Europe tour I´ll be going on with Rotary on the 16th of May. It´s 17 days long and we´re going through France, Spain, Italy Belgium, Hungary, and Germany. Plus, I´m going to a district conference in Salzburg on the 14th of May and another one in Hungary on the 10th of June. I´m also hoping to go to Poland sometime in there and to Germany for a concert for a few days. Around the world in 2 months!!!

Only 2 months left in Austria!! What happened to this year? It seems like just yesterday I was stepping off the plane, scared to death because I had so many bags and the luggage guy wasn´t going to let me through. I know that I´ve had an opportunity that not too many teenagers get and I´ve learned a lot this year. I wouldn´t give it up for anything. I guess it had to end sometime...but it´s not over yet!

Ashley Conon