Catch-up Part One

Apparently you have been hounding my mother to make me write some more.  Sorry about that.

So since my last blog, I have done much.  Umm...  the weekend after, on Saturday, I went canyoning.  It was interesting.  We were all in wetsuits and basically made our way down a canyon.  This included climbing up and down rocks, swimming in freezing cold water, and jumping into small pools of water.  The largest jump I made was about 30 feet having to avoid rocks.  It was fun. I will probably never do it again.  Also from a result of that, I experienced the Austrian medical facilities because I somehow messed up my knee on that trip.  After an X-ray and poking my bruises (very mean), the doc just told me I overused my knee and should avoid hiking for a week.  This is surprisingly hard to do in Salzburg.
Oh...between the canyoning trip, my friends and I took a train to Linz.  We got there around noon-ish and walked around the city.  We looked at churches and other buildings.  Everything was Maria Teressa yellow, which made me really happy. :) Then we went to a free outdoor concert from the Philharmonic where they played Bernstein's Overture to Candide and Dvořák's New World Symphony.  It was ABSOLUTELY gorgeous!!

On Tuesday, my two classes both had excursions.  Due to my knee, I could not join. :( I ended up sleeping in and getting to school to enjoy Ferdinand's free food for lunch.  I just did homework the rest of the day while everyone else was seeing beautiful sights.

The next day we took a tour through water canals.  Since Salzburg is surrounded by mountains, they needed to import water from to live.  They did that through canals.  Once a year, for three weeks, they stop the water flow and take tours through the tunnels.  It was fascinating to see the architecture of the tunnels.  Because they were so long, they would only build them a little at a time.  It is possible to see the canal changing with the fashions (Romanesque and Gothic arches).

There is so much more I should write right now to get you caught up, but I am exhausted.  I will write soon!

Tschüss!

Leanna

New Post

There will be a new post soon. I promise. Sorry I haven't been posting.  There has been so much going on that it is hard to keep up with it and impossible to keep up with writing about it.  My next post will be either Sunday or Monday.

Wow!

Wow does not even to begin to describe today.  After German, we took a 2 hour walking tour of Salzburg. The tour guide was great! She made it very interesting by being passionate about the city and telling us her favorite parts.  Then three of us saw the Sound of Music in the Marionette Theater.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was amazing!  At the end, the curtain call was the real marionetters controlling the von Trapp puppets who had marionettes of their own! Wow.

So I haven't written in a while.  I met my group.  There are 13 of us.  Two people I clicked instantly with and we are good friends.  Everyone in the group, however, work really well together.
I also met my host family.  I have a host mother and father, a host 8 yr old sister, a dog, and two bunnies.  It is very nice and I really like it here and with them.  They are very patient with me when I attempt to speak German.  The dad and daughter only speak German, so that is fun.

Classes started yesterday.  The first half of the semester, I am taking Intermediate German and Understanding Austria.  They are both a lot to focus on, but are fun and filled with a ton of interesting important ness...

Well, I have found that when you put your all into learning alllllll day, you get very very tired.  I'm going to bed now.  (I'm glad there is free unlimited coffee at the school.)  If there is anything you want to know about that I haven't written about, please put it in a comment and I will answer your questions.

Auf Weidersehen!

P.S. I don't remember which text I used before, so this might be different.

HERE!

Well I'm here so I guess I can't put off writing in this any longer.   I arrived around 9:00 am my time (3:00 am for you).  I got here and this is really nice.  I've never been in a hostel before.  There are 8 beds in my room, but only 7 are filled.  There are only 14 people on this trip....  


So anyway, you are probably wondering why I named my blog Journey to Bloom.  I was thinking about having it be something to do with travel, but that is overused so I came up with Journey.  Then I was thinking "Well, what am I going to do over there?"  Answer: grow musically, spiritually, culturally, and have a blast (hopefully).  


At the Aldersgate Renewal Ministries Conference this year, I attended a workshop called "Bloom where you are planted."  This seemed like a good plan because I knew I was leaving and would have to create a completely new life over here. Luckily, I still have my most important roots, but many where taken away.  In the workshop, they used gardening to tell you how to analyze your situation and what to do about it.  They were things like being completely uprooted, being uprooted mostly (leaving a few roots), being transplanted, and I don't remember the other ones.  


On a side note: Everyone here either has a mac or a very small PC.  I was just noticing that as I looked around.


Back to Blooming... I figured out that I was being uprooted for a short time with only a few roots remaining.  Although it is really hard to bloom with only a few roots, I learned that I need to bloom anyway.  The only way to do this is to put myself completely out there.  I'm finding this extra hard at the moment because I am waiting for the rest of the group to get here so I can meet them for the first time.  They all know each other already and if I don't watch it, it has the potential to be very awkward.  
Well, I don't know what else to say about it so... 


Gruss Gott!
Leanna