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I'm here! Finally. It's weird, being plucked out of one world and dropped into another. I arrived on Sunday around 1. At the airport I picked up both my suitcases to find one of them completely open. Not unlocked, totally unzipped. I could just imagine all my bras and underwear decorating the suitcase loading area and gumming up the works of the conveyor belt. But by some miracle, I may not have lost anything. I felt kind of like a robot as I loaded all of my things onto a cart and got a taxi, while german conversations whizzed by my jet lagged ears. I wasn't worried because I had been told that everyone in Vienna spoke English as well as German. Except my taxi driver. Oh well, I guess that's what written addresses are good for. We sat in silence in his Mercedes-Benz with a fancy black leather interior while he drove me through the gray and drizzly Vienna streets. For a while I was worried that I had payed extra for some fancy chauffeur service, but later I found out that all the taxis are like this. When I arrived at the Diplomatische Akademie (my place of study and residence for the next 9 months) we unloaded my suitcases, the broken one opening again allowing a few socks to jump ship into the wet street. Luckily the person who was supposed to let me into the Akademie (it's normally closed on sundays) was there as planned. Unfortunately, I had found the other non-English speaker in Vienna. He showed me up to my room in the empty building. The other students wouldn't be arriving until next week. Except for I think the man tried to tell me that someone else was living on the second floor. I tried to ask him which room, but the language barrier was too firmly grounded for either of us to make any progress. He left after mentioning something about 9 in the morning. I had no idea what was happening at 9 in the morning, but I just set my alarm for that time just in case. Breakfast in bed at 9 in the morning? Someone will be painting your room at 9 in the morning? We'll be streaking through the quad at 9 in the morning? I had no idea, but whatever it was it didn't wake me and neither did my alarm. Later I decided it must have been that the cleaning people had come. I ran into the cleaning lady, a short asian woman who... SPOKE ENGLISH! 1 in 3. My odds were improving.

My room is lovely! I have a big window that looks over a grassy courtyard with pretty trees and flowers.



The building looks really old but the inside is modern and well maintained. More info to come on what this building actually started out as...



On Sunday the other Fulbright kid studying in the Akademie moved in, which is nice because otherwise this place is kind of creepy all empty and what not. He's from Arkansas and seems pretty cool. He kick's my ass at German. This is useful to me right now, especially as far as filling out forms and grocery shopping goes. At noon a friend of a friend living in Vienna came to pick me up, show me around and take me out to lunch. It was really nice to see the city some and EAT (I hadn't eaten anything substantial since the flight on Saturday). The architecture here is amazing and the city is very walkable. I can't wait to explore it more! At night I went out with Brian (the Arkansas guy) and we met up with some other students from the DA (diplomatic academy) who aren't living in the dorms. We drank beer and played Trivial Pursuit, which was in German so part of the game was translating the questions into English, haha. Did you know that a snail actually moves faster than a sea horse? I didn't.

Today the Fulbright orientation started. It was a little long for my shrunken attention span which has not been in a classroom since May. The people running the program were really nice though, and the other students seem really cool. A lot of them are doing individual research projects and teaching english, and they are spread out all over the city. The office where the meeting was held is in this great area called the Museumplatz. There are tons of museums all in one area. I ate lunch with a girl I met who graduated from Brown in this cool museum cafe. It was all glass and there was finally some sun out today!





I am going to try to be a better communicator this year than I was in France. I really am! So if I haven't posted anything for a while, just send me a bitchy email or something. In the mean time, I will be trying to improve on my non-existent German. First on the list: numbers!

I miss you friends!!

Auf Wiedersehen!