As of this past Thursday, I have officially completed my first course! I even got a nice certificate to show for it. Tomorrow, I will be starting the B1+ German course, which is the next level up, and by the end of September I will (hopefully) be well prepared for my classes at Marburg.
Category: Study Abroad
Here’s a bit of a shorter, earlier post today. This week hasn’t been super busy, but tomorrow I’m going on an all day trip with IKI to Krems and Dürnstein, and know I won’t have the time or energy to write up a full post. I don’t know whether I’ll make a post just about the Wachau trip or if I’ll wait and just include it in next week’s post.
I’ve been going to the same Imbiss stand for lunch the past few weeks after class and trying a new sausage each time. It’s cheap, and it’s letting me try out a lot of different foods. It’s also next to the Opera House, and buses of tourists will file off and eat there too, making it crowded. The benefit of me going to the same one every day despite the frequent crowds is that I am establishing myself as Not a Tourist. The workers recognize me now and remember that I don’t like mustard, only ketchup. They remember that I take the receipt. It makes my life much much easier, and the fact that I’m a recognized regular is really nice.
This week hasn’t been the easiest, if I’m being honest. I’m sure a lot of this is just part of culture shock, but at the beginning of the week I wasn’t feeling so great.
I found that staying busy is a much better strategy for dealing with that than just sitting in my room with my fan on is (also — have I mentioned that I bought a small fan to deal with the heat? it was my best decision yet).
So what have I been doing to keep myself busy?
I have a view of the Opera house from the IKI classroom.
My first few days of classes at the Internationale Kulturinstitut (IKI) Vienna are over, and have so far been pretty good. I’m in the B 1,2 level, and the class hasn’t been too difficult, but I still feel like I’m learning. All of our practice exercises so far have felt like games with small grammar lessons in between, which definitely helped me get past the tiredness from jet-lag. My classmates come from all over the world — Japan, Syria, Russia, the Dominican Republic, France, Poland….and the list goes on. There’s 13 of us, and I can’t remember yet where everyone’s from. Everyone is super nice so far!
I’ve survived my first day living abroad!
I made it to Vienna safe and sound, along with the rest of my belongings. On the flight I’d been lucky enough to have a window seat, and as we flew away from the U.S., I watched the sun set behind us. As we flew across the Atlantic, I had a view of the Little Dipper hanging above the clouds. And as we began to fly over Europe, the sun rose and turned the sky shades of gold and red.