The day after I got back from Finland, it was time to head to St Blasen for our family holiday. The next week was to be spent on a farm surrounded by cows, rabbits, cats, goats, a pig and, most importantly, horses!
Day 1 ~ We left around 10.30 to drive to the farm. Once we arrived, we took everything up to our room and then sat down for an afternoon of games. I kicked arse in our first game of Scrabble and then came second to Nicole in the next game. She got 60 points for one word which I am still debating whether it was an actual word.
Day 2 ~ Talk about a lazy Sunday. I spent a great majority of the day reading my book; 'The Secret Keeper' by Kate Morton. The book is a really well written mystery that is in-depth literature. I haven't had to concentrate that much on English since I finished school 8 months ago.
Day 3 ~ The morning brought around the first riding lessons for the week. The first horse I rode was a lovely black mare called Romy. I have never had proper English lessons before and within half an hour I had already learnt so much. With this learning, came a lot of pain in my legs though. Oh the things you go through for horses! The afternoon saw another riding lesson and I rode a massive gelding called Konstantin. He is easily the biggest horse that I have ever been on; my forehead was at his shoulder height. If I thought my legs hurt after the morning lesson, then I don't even want to know what I was feeling after the second one!! Konstantin soon became my favourite horse.
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| The Big Boy <3 |
Day 4 ~ I rode Konstantin again for my morning lesson. The lessons were a lot of hard work and every muscle in my body was aching, I'm sure of it, but I really enjoyed them. For the afternoon, we went to a nearby lake where we could go swimming. The water was too cold for me to actually get in, but I got to soak up some sun. Not that it did much; I have never been this white in all of my life! Once we were back at the farm, I went and watched the afternoon riding lessons. There is just something so peaceful watching a horse and rider work together.
Day 5 ~ The morning and early afternoon were spent doing nothing. I went and watched the afternoon lessons again and Nicole showed me the little kittens that were born a few hours earlier. That night we went on a tractor ride that was followed by a walk to a restaurant where we had dinner. On the way back to the tractor, we had fire torches and it reminded me of our orientation weekend.
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| The older kittens |
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| The newbies =) |
Day 6 ~ I got up in time to watch Nicole have her riding lesson before the rest of us took the horses into the woods were they could splash around in the lake for a little bit. Kim's horse was having a great time and he managed to completely soak my jeans and boots. The horse that I was on was flicking the water around with his nose. My horse also decided that he wanted to take the path that was closest to the tree and my knee collided with the it. I now have a lovely bruise there. Once we were back from the ride, I watched the end of the morning lessons before we went and got ice-cream. They were absolutely massive and we only ordered small ones. That night we were sitting outside and someone was playing guitar and people were singing along. The night was really nice, even if it did cool down a little bit too much.
Day 7 ~ I spent the morning watching them play beach volleyball before we decided to go back to the lake. It took a little bit of convincing to get me to go in, as the water was really cold, but it got hot enough that I really needed to cool off. Once the initial shock of the cold was gone, the water was really enjoyable and refreshing. As it was our last night, we went out for dinner and I tried another Austrian meal that was a specialty of the area we were in. I will definitely miss the Austrian food. Back at the farm, Celine, Kim and Mona decided they wanted cherries, so they were climbing the cherry tree and we used our phones as torches. While I was holding the lights, Kim kept throwing cherries at me and, I must admit, she was a good shot for not being able to see me. I copped a few cherries to the head.
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| "I'm hunting raaabbits" |
Day 8 ~ The morning was spent packing everything up ready for the drive back home. The weather in Vienna shocked me a little bit; it was so hot! It's still hot right now. I know that we shouldn't believe all of the typical stereotypes of a country, they lead you to a false understanding of what the country is like!
It is nice to be back at home, and I am really looking forward to catching up with my friends this week as I have not seen them in a month! I cannot believe how quickly time is going!! Thank you to my wonderful host family for a lovely week; it was definitely in my top five moments on exchange.
Until Next Post.
Adios Amigos.
Tyarna xx
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