Hot Awakening

It is 3:10 am in Villach, Austria (7:10 pm Seattle time). I am wide awake with wonderment and hot flashes. Well, maybe I am too young for those, but the point is I am sweating at 3 am with barely wearing any clothes and the windows open. Why not write in my blog since I have the time now, no one is popping in and out of my room to check in on me, its quiet, and I have to document my first couple of days here with the Austrian family.

First thing I noticed here upon my arrival: everything is Beautiful. Markus, my host dad's eldest son (22 years old), picked me up from the Vienna airport, about 3 hours away from the house in Villach, and we drove all across Austria on the Autobahn. My original plan was to take the train from Vienna to Villach, but the family wanted to see me home safe after a 20-hour long journey on planes. Markus knows English, sometimes he had to ask me to repeat words or find what vocabulary word he was searching for, but in return he got to laugh at my poor pronunciation of the long German words on the road signs. The hardest one I struggled with so far was Pörtschach (pwert-shawh), the closest I got to saying it was probably something like "poort shock." I have trouble making that guttural sound in the back of your throat in which you would pronounce "schach," or the "ch". I will just try to imitate a cat, arching her back ready to release a fur ball from her latest cleaning session. Hmm... No, maybe not. That might look foolish.

I will definitely be learning as much German as possible in the next two and a half months. The family speaks very good English (even the little kiddos!), and we all can communicate at the dinner table just fine. However, when I am out by myself, the neighbors will come up to me and say something in German, I just smile in agreement and hope that that was enough for them to either be content with our engagement, or let them know I had no clue what they just said, and to notice the big fat red American stamp on my forehead.

Okay, more about the lay of the land. Since I do not have pictures yet, but hopefully there will be some soon when I can get my hands on a new camera, I will try my best to describe. I am located in Villach, as mentioned before, not Klagenfurt, from which I have told most of you. Klagenfurt is the larger city known in Austria by the foothill lakes of the Alps and Villach is about a 37 minute train ride away. The house is next to a popular lake (of which I have swam in twice already yesterday), you can google map it if you want:

9520 Sattendorf
Mitterlingweg 14
AT Austria

(HINT: also my address....)

Everything in Austria is a bit smaller and greener than in the States. There are little white houses with red roofs and large lawns scattered in the lush green hillsides, with a few cattle grazing about. The population of Villach is 50,000, and the entire Austrian population is about 7 million, of which 1.8 million live in Vienna. This place has a small town feel, but everything is spread out but easy to get to. It is about 30 minutes by car/train to get to downtown Villach from my home. I have yet to explore downtown much, but in about six hours, when we get up (they like to say "stand up"), Markus will take me to downtown on the train for breakfast/café/walking around. I hope to practice a few German greetings and learn my way around a bit, without acting too American... I can already tell that I will very much like my stay here, it may be very hard to leave. Friends, do not fret, I have to come back for fall classes, but I might be a bit grumpy about it. :)

Also, Andreas, my host father/boss, will make my work schedule tomorrow for the Geotechnical engineering internship and as the Au Pair for the kids. The kids are here about every other week or so, the rest of the time they are at camps or visiting their mother. So I will have much more to talk about on my "Existential Engineering" side of my adventure, but first I must use this blog to show my friends and family how my travels are going as well.

On a final note, my host family is Wonderbar and very very nice, generous and good humored. I am so very lucky that all has worked out so nicely. Until then, Gute Nacht, I must try to sleep, even though the sun has risen already...