{day one}

i'm here i'm here i'm here! 

i can't believe it. it's a surreal feeling finally being here. it has been a lot of fun already! jet lag has been pretty killer, but i've been pushing through it and i just need to last at least and hour and a half more until i can finally go to bed! i left salt lake city, utah january 18th at 4:50pm. i arrived in paris, france january 19th at 10:30 am. in paris i had an hour and a half layover and then my flight left for vienna, where we arrived at 2:35pm. the flight was a little over an hour, and i slept most of the way. i woke up early enough to look out the window as we landed and it was breathtaking. so colorful! it was raining a bit, but rain or shine vienna is beautiful. me and the other girl on my flight, adriana, were the last people to arrive. after we got our bags, we met our director and headed over to meet the other students. (some had been waiting there since 8:30 in the morning!) our guide marcus led us outside to our HUGE charter bus. we piled our bags inside and took of in the direction of the Austro-American Institute of Education. (the school where i will be studying for the next three months. once we got there, we unloaded our suitcases and entered into a beautiful courtyard and filed our suitcases away. we took the two flights of stairs up to the school and were led to a room. it was gorgeous! so many details and intricacies filled the walls, ceilings, and floors. it was incredible. we had about an hour and a half of down time until our host families came and picked us up. remember how you feel when you're in kindergarten, sitting there waiting for your mom to pick you up, hoping you're not the last one? that's how it felt. in the mean time, i got on facebook and wrote home to let my mom know i was safe.  finally, our directors called out mine and my roommate kristin's name. i saw two woman waiting for us in the hallway, and i got a little nervous! after talking to them, i found out there names are Eva (pronounced Ava) and Helga. they are both members of the church, so that was somewhat comforting! they are two of the nicest people i have ever met in my whole life. we took a cab to Eva's house. it's a quaint little flat on the second floor of a gorgeous building. my room is so nice! we each have a bed, there's 6 closets, a desk, a nightstand, and a bookshelf. after Eva and Helga showed us our room, the left us to get settled. after we were all moved in, Eva made us the BEST dinner ever, a great beginning to all my meals in vienna!
it was my first meal in vienna... soooo i'm gonna blog about it!

cauliflower soup

it was so yummy! it kind of tasted like chicken noodle soup... 

minus the chicken and noodle

grilled ham and cheese sandwich

three reasons why it was better than an american grilled ham and cheese:

1. viennese bread

2. viennese cheese

3. viennese ham

boiled eggs

at this point i was getting so full 

i thought i might pop!

but it was so good...

and i wouldn't want to hurt Eva's feelings.

:)

wild-berry yogurt

creamy+real fruit=

delectable 

oh... and this is tchina. (pronounced tscheena, and no she was not part of the dinner) she is Eva's cat and she is so friendly and cute! she's been almost filling the hole in my heart from trixi... but after i took these pictures of her, she's not my biggest fan.
things couldn't be going better right now! i am having so much fun and learning a lot already.