I Could Have Danced All Night
Yesterday - Saturday, February 4 - marked the halfway point of my time this year in Austria. Whoa. Somehow half my Fulbright year is over! And the next 4.5 months are going to be so busy with visits and work and trips that I know they will fly by. I leave for Tunisia on Tuesday, and I'll be there for a week. Two and a half weeks after I get back, Gregory arrives and will be here for a week. About two weeks after he leaves, Meg and her man will be here, and a few days after they depart, my parents get here and will stay for almost two weeks. Once they leave towards the end of April, I'll only have about six weeks of work left. At the end of May I will go be a College Choir groupie while they are in Italy (and see Gregory again :-D) After that, my sister will be here, and Emily might come sometime in June as well. AND I don't work in June, so that month is basically free for fun. This is going to be crazy, but I have to admit, I am very VERY excited to be able to play tour-guide to all my loved ones! So, I fully expect this spring to pass without me even realizing it. And the next thing I know, it will be July, and I will be back in the States, moving on to who knows what.Who knows what. That's for sure. I am currently sitting in what I would deem to be the most painful part of any application process - the waiting phase. I just want to know, and this waiting is rather excruciating. Alas, I still have at least a month left to go. Blah that! :-) But whatever happens next year, whether I'm back in school or join the workforce, I know it will be good and it will be what I'm supposed to be doing.
Enough worrying for now! I can't let myself think too hard about stuff like that. Anyway, as I mentioned above, I depart for Africa in just two days!!!! I am traveling with Kim, Ted, Danny, Kelly, and her boyfriend Jeff, and we will be staying in the Tunisian resort town of Hammamet, which is in the northeast. Two days of our trip will be spent on an overnight "desert safari," where we will see the southwest part of the country (including, obviously, the Sahara!!), and one day we will spend in the town of Sousse, which is a moderately large city. Ted has a professor friend who lives there, and she is going to be our tour-guide for the day so we will get to see some authentic Tunisia to go with our typical tourist fare, so overall, it should be a great trip!!! I really can't wait (and frankly, it will be nice to go somewhere where the temperature is a solid 30 degrees ABOVE freezing rather than under it!!!) I plan on taking plenty of photos, so check back in about 2 weeks for some North African flavor in my very European blog.
As for that city that I am still living in, as beautiful as Vienna is in all weather, there is something about it that makes me think of it as a winter city. The buildings are just too solid for summer. The snow on the rooftops, the people all bundled up, the dogs in their sweaters really add something to the city, and I swear, the Rathaus is best viewed at night with the snow swirling. Things here are going wonderfully, as usual. Work has been fine recently. I had a slow week last week because it was the school's "Projekt Woche," or Project Week. It is the last week before break, after all finals are finished, and each day, instead of having normal lessons, classes do projects that help them bond. Some classes go camping, some go to the theater or movies, and one class painted their classroom. I was called into action to help one poor class of 2nd formers (equivalent to 6th graders.) These poor kids have a math teacher as their homeroom teacher, and for Tuesday's project, she decided that she wanted the kids to learn math in English. Oh boy. So, she enlisted their English teacher and myself (and surprisingly, the math teacher did NOT take part) to teach these kids how to say fractions, decimals, and simple problems in English. What a nightmare. Three hours of math in a foreign language. So anyway, needless to say the kids weren't thrilled to be there, and their behavior was terrible. Basically they were just counting down until the day ended, and I can't say that I can blame them, frankly. How dull.
Other than that, the only other class I taught last week was the dreaded 8B, the class that hates me. I went to them on Friday, the last day before break, and talked to them about U.S. history in the middle of the 20th century (per their teacher's request.) Naturally, after about three minutes, this evolved (yet again) into a debate as to why the U.S. is evil. Are we warmongers? Or just hypocrites? See, they agreed that the U.S. is bad, they just can't agree on WHY specifically. One girl said that we can be condemned for all the wars because war is inherently evil. And another guy said no, we just suck because we are hypocrites, and if we attack Iraq, we should attack North Korea as well to stop they hypocrisy. As you can imagine, it was a thoroughly unenjoyable 50 minutes, but oh well. At least their attacks were made in English, right? So, even though I only taught about 5 hours total last week, I feel as though I've really earned my week off ;-)
Other milestones achieved....on January 26, I attended the Vienna
Technical University's Ball. It was held at the Hofburg (the Hapsburg winter palace residence), and it was something else, to be sure!! Kim and Alexis came over beforehand to get ready (being a girl is so much fun, if only because 
of primping!) We knew that food at the ball would be ridiculously expensive, so we made chocolate-chip pancakes for dinner. Here is a photo of my (failed) attempt to make a Mickey Mouse pancake - notice how his head splattered when I flipped him. Anyway, dinner was delicious, as chocolate-chip pancakes usually are, and afterwards, we proceeded to dress ourselves, fancy up our hair, and apply our makeup so we would look bee-utiful. Here is a photo of me fixing Alexis' hair to go with her hot dress.We arrived at the ball at around 8:30, which gave us a chance to wander through the various rooms before it got too crowded. Seriously, these rooms are amazing - just out of a fairy tale, really!! The ball opened officially at 9:30 with the TU debutantes and their escorts entering the room, along with the VIPs. After a short speech, the debs and their guys did a rather complicated version of the Viennese waltz that seemed to end in a cheerleader-esque pyramid. It was quite a spectacle, and I sincerely wish that I could upload the video that I took of it to this, but alas, Blogger doesn't permit it. Anyway, they were whirling and twirling in perfect rhythm, all while moving around the dance space in intricate patterns. It was very very cool to see, and it really made me wish I could dance well!
After the opening sequence, couples started to move onto the dance
floor, and within about 20 seconds, it was packed!! We moved off to our side room, where our table was located, because tragically, at that point, only an hour and a half into the evening, my shoes were already becoming instruments of torture (oh, what we women put up with in the name of beauty and fashion!) Here is a photo of my shoes (which are cute) and my still-swollen sprained ankle (which is not cute.) Actually we were seated in a really good location - we were literally the room right next to the big ballroom, and there were a few sets of double doors leading into to the dancing, which meant that we had a good view of what was going on on the dance floor. It was also really nice for 
the whole Fulbright crew to be together in one place again, which rarely happens because of everyone's crazy schedules. Also, who can resist getting dressed up and getting to hang out with friends? Here are some of the ladies looking classy and stunning (Kelly, me, Nancy, Alexis, and Kim.)What else - oh yes, I did dance. The first was a waltz with Danny, which took place when the dance floor was still packed. It was terrifying, because couples kept whirling at us, and they didn't stop! They would hit us, bounce off, and twirl off on their merry way. Thus,
we sort of kept to the edge of the floor, where it was safer. That's where all the non-Austrians were dancing, you could just tell! It was definitely fun, though, and I'm so glad I was able to dance one true Viennese waltz! The only other time I danced occurred when I was trying to take a photo of the dance floor. After I took my picture, I got tapped on the shoulder, and "Peter," an Austrian, asked me to dance. However, the music was swing (which I am slightly more comfortable with.) It was rather awkward making conversation with a stranger who only seemed to speak Austrian dialect with a very thick accent, though. Alexis took some paparazzi photos of us out there, for your viewing pleasure.After about three hours of this wandering/dancing/sitting, Alexis and I decided we were in need of sustenance, so we headed down to the student bar, where
we could get cheap beer and wieners (haha pun!) At 2am, we were drinking beer out of a plastic cup and eating hot dogs. I still can't decide if that felt more like a Braves game or college. Anyway, we were a bit punchy at that point (and I finally caved and took off my shoes, which led to the greatest feeling of relief of my life), and we took the following photo. Finally, around 2:30, we decided to call it a night, and Kim and Alexis and I headed back to my place to crash before work on Friday morning (can you say "ugh?") And that, my friends, was the end of my first ball experience. It was a lot of fun, and it was certainly a spectacle. How Viennese :-) Oh, and if you are interested in more photos, there are a ton on my photo site, to which there is a link on the menu bar to the right.Hmmm what else has happened since my last update? Guy and Nancy threw themselves a going away party, since they left to go home to Mississippi on January 27. We miss them already, but the party was definitely fun (as always!!) Happily enough, they were able to come to the Ball for a little while before they took off (their plane literally left two hours after the ball officially closed at 5am.) This past Thursday, I took my first Austrian exam, and I think I did well. Lord knows I put in enough hours at Starbucks with Alexis going over the material!! (yes Starbucks - no smoking in Vienna is hard to find!) Other than that, not much is going on. After I get back from Tunisia, Alexis and I (and anyone else who's interested) are going to join a gym (hurrah for student rates! I'm going to be a student forever!!!) I'm looking forward to spring, when I can recommence walking everywhere. And I guess that's it for now :-)
Talk to you soooooon :-)
Tschussi!
posted by Carly Fowler @ 4:03 PM
3 Comments:
thanks for the update--what fun!what is schussi? any relation to sushi? hahaha
Hey!!! You're back!!! You didn't die in that desert! Woohoo. Hey...I hear they got some bird flu over there in Austria and Germany so watch out...I don't want you bringing that stuff back over here. Don't catch it. MwahahahhahaMwahahahMwahahahah. Just kidding...no but seriously....don't catch it.
wow Carlos, you look HOTT in that brown dress!
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