"There's a dead body in my cola"

I honestly do not even know where to start with this.  How do you record absolutely everything that made your week just so amazing?  The truth is, you really can't.  But I'll try to go from the beginning.  Prepare for an insight to the March 2013 STS Intensive German Course...

My train left from Wels at 5:45pm on Monday 25th March.  I met Elliott and Jarrad on the train and after our first stop, Patrick met up with us.  We had a little bit of fun on the train.  The first part was the only group of seats together were in the "quiet" area which we didn't realise when we sat down.  Whoops.  When it was announced that our stop would be the next one, Jarrad decided to go to the toilet and when he came back, we decided to tell him that we had missed our stop; even though the train had never stopped.  The look on his face was priceless.  We then spent the last ten minutes of the trip making fun of the signs that had been translated to English and had either spelling or grammar mistakes.  We then got off in Bad Ischl and met up with Chelci, Hannah and Katrin before heading to Strobl to Katrin's house; where we would be spending the week.

"After actuating..."

Arriving in Strobl, we met Philine and had a beautiful dinner of spaghetti bolognese and salad.  It was a really great salad Philine!!  Elliott and I were the ones who did the "salad challenge" where we finished all of the salad, and this then became a ritual for the rest of the week.  We just decided to hang out for a bit then and catch up.  Going back into talking in fast English was an instant reaction that we all had just from being around each other.  Chelci and I went to bed around 11:30 but, as all girls do when they have a slumber party, stayed up talking until 1:00am.

Tuesday morning was kicked off with breakfast at 8:00am.  It became an unspoken rule that there would be a pyjama party every morning at breakfast.  Following was our first German lesson with our amazing teacher Philine!  I struggled a lot on that first morning, but by the end of the week I really saw an improvement.  It was really good incorporating games into the learning as well, rather than just reading from a book or talking about grammar and verbs non-stop; the games really helped to break that up and to put what we had learnt into practice.

Danach haben wir Mittagessen Pizza gegessen.  Es war sehr gut!  We then had Pizza for lunch and it was very good!  Let's hope that I didn't make a mistake in that sentence!!!  Soon after lunch we set off to our Mozartkugel cooking lesson.  It was interesting to see how the little chocolates were made and we made a production line where we got to make them ourselves.  Afterwards we got certificates; or "Diplomas".

That's right, you all thought my name was Tyarna, well, you're wrong! I'm Tyama!!!!

Once we were back at Katrin's house, we sat around for a little bit before Elliott, Jarrad and I decided to go for a walk.  Our 'walk' turned into a climb when we literally climbed up the mountain at the back of the house!  It wasn't our original plan to climb to the top of the mountain, but we followed a little stream for a little bit and found a waterfall that we wanted to see from the top.  We couldn't find a path, so we started climbing.  It was so hard because of how steep it was and because of all the snow, it took us a couple hours, but we finally emerged towards the top at a roadway that wasn't being used because of all the fallen trees across it.  Let's just say that was a much easier walk than what we had just spent the past two hours doing!!  We had to use our hands to help us climb up and also grab on to trees and sticks and roots so that we didn't slip back down the mountain a hell of a lot quicker than what we were going up. The views from the top were well worth the climb though.  On the way down, we decided to follow the path instead of going down the way we came up!  When we came out, we were nowhere near the house and had to find our way back.  Jarrad assured us he knew exactly where we were going, however I still don't believe him; it was the biggest fluke.

Mountain Climbing =D

When we got back, Elliott, Hannah, Katrin and I played two games of Rummy-O.  Katrin won the first game and I won the second! Woooo!!  Thank you Nanna for teaching me how to play all those years ago!  Elliott and I then landed the job of cooking the meat on the barbecue for dinner.  That was something different.  First we had to heat up our cooking rocks before we could start cooking the actual meat.  It was really quite fun.  And that meat was pretty bloody good if I must say so myself!  The others inside also did a good job of preparing their dishes for the meal.  Chelci and Patrick made a nice salad and Jarrad cooked some really good corn.  All in all, it was a great dinner.  As with the past two nights, after dinner we just sat around and talked.  Elliott also started teaching me the cup song from Pitch Perfect and by the end of the week I had mastered it to the point of us doing it together in Maccas on Friday night.

"My horse is raw"

"Nein"

Wednesday morning we had another four hours of German lessons.  We covered so much throughout the week that it is hard to pin point what we did every lesson.  We followed our lessons with lunch and then headed into Salzburg to explore around there for a while.  Salzburg is a very historical town and was where Mozart grew up!  We walked across this bridge that had heaps and heaps of padlocks on it.  It looked really cool actually.

Salzburg

After having dinner back at Katrin's, it was time we went and experienced our first German movie at the cinemas!!  We saw "Die Croods" in 3D, which was an experience in itself.  From listening quite closely and also watching the actions of the characters, it was quite easy to pick up the story line and what was going on.  Some parts were quite funny and it would be interesting to see the movie in English to fully determine whether it was good or bad.  I didn't mind it though.  Back at the house we went about our usual nightly ritual of talking and practicing the cup song before going to bed.

“There’s a dead body in my cola”

As usual, Thursday morning saw another four hours of German.  I do remember that in this lesson I learnt something that I should have known already about the Austrian lifestyle!  We were focusing on food and ordering at cafes and restaurants when the topic of tipping came up.  As we don’t tip in Australia, none of us had given it any thought, until we found out that in Austria they tip!!  We all felt so bad because we had gone two months without tipping anyone!  We did a role-playing game of customers and a waiter in a café.  Let’s just leave it at it was interesting.  There was a lot of laughing involved and I personally don’t think that the prices were acceptable and would not go back to eat there again.

Lunch once again followed our lessons and we had Austrian sausages.  In the afternoon we went to a small museum that showed Austrian history and also focused on Austria during the Nazi period.  Our guide took us to a tunnel that was built by the prisoners during the war.  It was all very interesting.  To actually see the places where these things occurred is really quite creepy, but makes it all seem that much more real.  That night we had another great dinner before spending the evening at the Thermal Bath in Bad Ischl.  Afterwards we continued with the nightly ritual.  By this point, I was getting quite good at the cup song.

Friday marked our last full day together.  We had more German lessons followed by Kaiserschmarrn for lunch; which was delicious as per usual.  We then headed off to Salzburg where we started our “Sound of Music” tour.  Our tour guide really made the tour a great experience!  He was so funny and even told us a New Zealand joke that we hadn’t heard before!! That is rare.  If anyone wishes to go on the “Sound of Music” tour, I recommend that you watch the movie first.  I’m sure it would make a hell of a lot more sense if you actually knew what happened in the movie.  Once we were finished the tour, we had to clean up our stuff back at the house and start packing up a few things.  It was really sad knowing that the next day would be the last time that the group would all be together.

Jarrad, Patrick and Chelci

Group selfies

The Sound of Music

That night we got to “go away” in Bad Ischl (that is the literal translation from our program for the week).  Some of us decided to have Kebap for dinner and the other half of us had Maccas.  It was raining by the time we got into town and being holidays, there weren’t many people around.  We spent a couple hours just walking around town, which was quite nice and the rest of the time we spent at Maccas.  Elliott and I did the cup song in time with each other and had all of these people look at us, it worked really well though.  Candy recorded it at one point and it was going really well until Elliott decided to throw his cup at me!  I had a Twix McFlurry, which is something that I haven’t had before so it was pretty good.

After doing the cup song

Breakfast was at 7:00am on Saturday!  It was the earliest we had been up all week and we had been out the night before as well, let’s just say that people had trouble concentrating in class that morning.  Once classes were finished we had lunch and then we got our certificates for completing the week.  We were graded on the week and I was so happy with my grade!  I got a 2 which is brilliant because I had convinced myself that I was going to get a 5, 4 if I was really lucky!  I still have a very, very long way to go with my German but the past week helped so much that now I think I may actually be able to achieve it.

Certificate =D

This moment though, marked the end of the week.  It was sad packing our things into the car and driving to the train station.  We said goodbye to the ones who weren’t going on the same train and departed our own ways.

Throughout the week, Elliott and I took many, many selfies and he also did handstands everywhere we went.  It was just what we did!

Elliott and his handstands everywhere =)

Selfies!!!

I would like to say a big thank you to Katrin for letting us stay in your house for the week and also to Philine for being our German teacher!  The week would also not have been the same without the wonderful people that I shared it with.  I’ll see you lot at Vienna weekend!!  Good luck with everything back home Chelci and I hope you have a safe flight.  You better keep in contact with me!  I’ll miss you a lot!

We will finish up with a few more photos from the week =D

Selfies in the street mirror =D

Footprints in the snow =)

Elliott and the Egg

STS!!!

We returned to the same phone booth - this time we won

This amazing group <3

Until Next Post.

Adios Amigos.

Tyarna xx

First Package =D

This is just a really quick post to say that I got my first package from home!!  It contained FOUR packets of Tim Tams, a HUGE tin of Milo, some moisturiser, a face washer and some new make-up.  My beautiful mother even included the letter that my sister gave me when she moved families before I left home.  I was so disappointed to find that it didn't end up coming with me, then it appeared in this package!!

<3

Thank you so much Mummy!! Miss you heaps and heaps.

Also, happy 18th birthday to my best friend of fourteen years for yesterday.  I hope you had a great day Lauren!  Miss you heaps pretty lady!  Happy birthday also to my little cousin Tully!

To all my friends who started uni yesterday, good luck to you all and I hope you have a great time and make many memories while you study!!

Until Next Post.

Adios Amigos.

Tyarna xx

Orientation Weekend!!!!!!!

Where do I start talking about such an amazing weekend?!  Well I guess that I should start from the beginning.  So here it goes...

Friday was the start of our orientation weekend for all of the new STS exchange students.  My host family drove me to Bad Ischl in the morning as they themselves were going to spend the day skiing.  I got there at around 10am, but other people would not start arriving until lunch time; so I took a walk into town to have a look around.  Bad Ischl is a small but gorgeous old town.  I took pictures around town and went to the oldest cafe in the world.  I had a hot chocolate at the cafe, and I am very proud to say that I ordered it in German.  Granted it was a very simple conversation to have and was quite short; BUT, it was still in German and five weeks ago, I could not have ordered for myself.  Progress is slow, but it is improving.  After the cafe, I came across some markets set up in the street.  They were all food stores and, naturally, I headed over to the bakery van.  I picked something that I had not yet tried (yes, I have tried a LOT of bakery things since I have been here).  Admittedly, this ordering was done with sign language, and not German.  This was mainly because I had no idea what I was buying.  Honestly, I still don't know what I bought.  I kept walking around for a bit longer and came across this beautiful creek that was flowing through the town.  The water was crystal clear and looked very pretty with all of the snow around it.  I was quite cold after this and decided to go back to the youth hostel and read my book for a bit.

Oldest cafe in the world

Pretty river <3

About half an hour later, Katrin arrived with the first of the other students; Candy (Taiwan), Sarah (USA) and Catherine (Canada).  We were given our room keys and then a couple of others turned up.  Being the first to arrive in my room, I got first choice of beds.  Score!  The room was also room 21, my favourite and lucky number!!  We then went for a walk to the train station to pick up the rest of the students arriving.  Meeting everyone at the station was great and getting into conversations straight away with the people you already knew; and also meeting the ones that you didn't.  When we got back to the hostel, we helped everyone else sort out their rooms.  My room consisted of myself (obviously), Chelci (Australian!!!), Hannah (Australian!!) and Eve (New Zealand but we have now claimed as Australian!!).  

Lunch time.  Which was pretty good because I was kinda starving.  We became the Australia table, which really did nothing for our reputation.  Without realising it, Australians have been given the reputation of mischief makers, chatters, and things along those lines.  Let's just leave it at, we lived up to that reputation.  Our lunch table was full on into a very fast paced, slang conversation; something that we had not had since we broke up from each other at the airport five weeks before.  It was so incredibly nice to have a conversation where we didn't have to think about what words we used and the pronunciation of them, as well all understood everything.  We found out the schedule for the rest of weekend.  I guess we really should have known that this was going to be in German, and we scouted out someone to help us decipher it.

The first activity was a tour of the King's Summer Palace.  It was interesting I guess, but I couldn't really concentrate on it because of the amount of animal horns and heads that were mounted on all the walls.  It was really quite creepy.  

Let me just say; 

Australians; 

Reputation.  

That is all.

Back at the hostel, we had our actual orientation meeting for the new students.  Honestly it was like the meetings that we had before we left home.  This time though we got to ask questions that apply to us while we are actually here.  Getting things clarified was pretty good.  Oh, and we got free pens!! I love free pens.

After dinner, we were meant to go ice skating, but the place was closed, so we did a night walking tour around the town.  We had these stick thingys that you lit on fire and used them as torches.  The walk was so gorgeous, even though it was so cold!!

Free time!  A group of us decided to play Spoons.  Although we had to play with tongues because we didn't have any spoons.  If you have not played this game before, then you have not lived.  It is amazing.  But be warned, it can actually get quite violent.  Anyway, that was all going well.  I won, by the way.  Emilie and I decided to head to bed, so we went upstairs.  I planned to have a shower and hit the sack.  There was one problem though; my room door was locked; I didn't have the key; and my roommates were out at Maccas.  That blew that plan.  I then just went and chilled in the other girls room until the rest of them got back.  That was actually really good as I got to talk to them and joke around a bit.

I got to bed at about 11.30.  We planned to get up at 7am in time to be at breakfast at 7.30; that didn't happen.  We misjudged how much time it would take three girls to get ready and do their make-up.  Saturday was the designated skiing day, so after breakfast we got on a bus and headed up the mountain!  The drive up was going ok until the bus just stopped halfway up the mountain for twenty minutes and we had no idea why.  When we finally got up to the mountain, everyone split up into the activities we were doing for the day.

The day consisted of a snow ball fight, lots of hot chocolate and sliding down the massive snow pile.  Chelci and I found that the furtherest cafe slash restaurant thing had the best hot chocolate.  We also tried the strudel that they had there.

Me & Gemma =)

Chelci!!

Chelci & Jarrad

Selfies!

The children wrestling

Chelci & Sam

Catching snowflakes!! Wish this was a better picture though

When we got back from the ski trip, I had a long talk with Katrin which really helped me to sort everything out and think everything over; which was really good!!  I'm glad that we had that chat.

After dinner that night, we went to a thermal bath.  That was so awesome!! We spent the majority of the night in the whirl pool which was outside.  The water was so lovely and the jets to make the actual whirl pool part were really cool.  We were swimming outside while it was snowing!! That is actually the coolest feeling ever.  It was great.

There was more free time afterwards so five of us went to Maccas to chill out for a bit.  We had some weird conversations to say the least.  Heading back to the hostel, we found a stereotypical London red phone box and we just had to take pictures in it!!  We squished five people in as best we could.  Basically, we kinda got stuck.  That's our story and we're sticking to it.

That night we had a bit of fun with a few practical jokes; namely locking a group of people in a room for half an hour.  There was also some great conversations had and a lot of laughing.  

Hehehehehe

The weekend was really great and I am totally looking forward to the German course at the end of March and the Vienna weekend at the beginning of May!!  It was so amazing to meet so many people from so many different countries all over the world!! Hope we all get to catch up again before everyone goes home.

Until Next Post.

Adios Amigos.

Tyarna xx

Semester Break

This past week (18th - 24th February) we have been on semester break from school.  I had a busy week but it was really good.  I was glad to get away from school; as most people are!!

The first Saturday my host mum, sister and I spent the day shopping in Linz.  I love shopping.  It is so great.  I was happy with my purchases for the day.  Chocolate.  Is.  So.  Cheap.  Here.  We ate lunch at this AMAZING restaurant where you picked everything you wanted, then gave it to the cook and he cooked it for you.  And you could eat as much as you want!  It was so good.  The food tasted amazing and you left nothing on your plate because you got to pick what you put on there; therefore you had nothing you didn't like.  I felt like a whale walking out of there, but it was so worth it.

"No kangaroos in Austria" =D
The block of chocolate was only 1.99 euro!!!!

On Sunday, Maria and I went ice skating.  Now I suck at ice skating.  Majorly.  There were five year olds who could have literally skated rings around me.  However, it is so much fun.  I had a great time.  I think that I did ok considering it was only the third time ever that I have been on the ice =)

Monday bought forward a day of skiing.  Well my host family skiing while I walked around the mountain and took pictures of the absolutely GORGEOUS views.  It was so incredibly cold, but looking at the mountains and the fog that surrounded them was totally worth it.

The gorgeous mountains

Tuesday was a day where I did nothing and curled up with my latest book; "Eat, Pray, Love".

Wednesday afternoon, my host mum took me to Mauthausen Concentration camp from during the WWII period.  It was quite great to see.  I am almost certain that you could feel the presence of the people who were there.  The gas chamber was one of the worst parts.  It took people between 15-20 minutes to die in the gas chambers.  That would have been so incredibly horrible.  I can't even begin to imagine what they had to go through.  I am glad that I saw the camp but sad to hear of all of the things that the prisoners had to live through.  They have this massive stair case that they called the "Stairs of Death".  The prisoners would have to pick up a large rock; run up the stairs with the rock; through it back down to the bottom; go down; and do it all over again until they literally dropped dead.  I was glad when we drove away from the place where so many people were killed; but glad that I saw it.

Thursday saw a day where I did a couple of things.  I went into Wels with my host mum and did a bit of looking around and shopping while she went to the travel agent to organise our upcoming family holiday that only two out of five members of the family know about...  Later that afternoon, my host sister and I went ice skating with a couple of friends.  I thought I might have improved since I had done it only a couple of days ago; but I am almost 100% certain that I was worse than what I was.  Afterwards we walked in town and went to a cafe for a while before going home.

I then had the night to get everything ready for our STS orientation meeting that was starting the next day!  Orientation will have its own special blog post which will be published very soon!!

Before I go, I just want to say a happy 18th birthday to my gorgeous friend Emily for Thursday!! Hope you had a great day gorgeous!

Until Next Post.

Adios Amigos.

Tyarna xx

This & That

My sharing and caring host mother has decided that I need to experience a European cold, so for the past three days, that's what I've been doing!  I must say though, it isn't as fun as you think it would be.  I'm hoping it goes away very soon.

In two weeks, STS students have their orientation weekend and I'm really looking forward to that and being able to see everyone again.  I get to see my other Toowoomba girl, Emilie!

Last weekend, we had a girl’s day shopping in Linz.  It was really great and I hope that we get to have lots of them.  I bought this really, really pretty handbag (as I didn’t have one because Mum ditched mine from my suitcase the morning I left).  But hey, what better excuse than that do you need to buy a new one?!  Granted, it was expensive, but it is so totally worth it.  I wasn’t going to buy it, but after the third time I came back to look at it, I was like “stuff it, it’s mine”.  We also went to the biggest shoe store I have ever seen in my life!  I was in Heaven.  I found this one extremely nice pair of shoes, but I didn’t end up buying them because they cost too much.  Maria bought them though.  However, now that I keep thinking about them, the next time we go back to that shopping centre, I am buying them.  There are a couple of things that I need to buy for orientation weekend anyway, so hopefully we will go back soon!  We went to this little café and I had this delicious piece of chocolate cake with strawberries and jelly on top.  Yuuuumm.  Austria has so many amazing cakes and sweet things, but nothing will ever, EVER, beat my Mum’s double decker chocolate sponge cake with chocolate icing and chocolate sprinkles.  O.O What am I going to do when I’m back in Australia and my Mum still lives over ten hours away?  Shock realisation that I’m still not going to get my cake -_-

My gorgeous bag!! =D

One day, they WILL be mine

Biggest shoe store!

Monday afternoon when we got home from school, I was treated with a true Austrian dish for lunch.  Now, I have completely forgotten what they were called, but they were a massive size dumpling with a vanilla custard kinda thing and poppy seeds with sugar.  They were DELICIOUS.

Charming picture, isn't it?

Was so good!!!!

After eating, there was enough snow that I could go out and make a snowman!!  His name was Bill and he looked pretty cool if I do say so myself.  The next morning though, he looked pretty spastic, as he had melted quite a lot.  There wasn’t enough snow to make a snow angel though.

Roll

Almost done

Me and my man

Bill Snowman

Poor Bill the next day....

I have bought an early birthday present, yes I know my birthday isn’t until April, but this one just couldn’t wait.  I bought a new Canon EOS 1100D camera with an extra lense!  It is just amazing and takes the best pictures.

Camera!!!!!

First picture taken on the new camera of my lovely host sister

Toni

Photo's from the new camera

On to school.  It is very different than Australia.  Here, you don’t change classrooms, your teachers come to you.  Everyone does the same subjects, except you choose between either Spanish or French, and Art or Music.  I have my own timetable at school so that I can be in lower level German classes and therefore, hopefully, help me with my German.

On Thursday night Maria and I went to a Chinese exchange students place to celebrate the beginning of spring in China.  It was really great.  She cooked Chinese food for us and the sweet and sour pork was absolutely amazing!  She is so lovely and is going to help me out with my German as she knows exactly what I’m feeling like when it comes to learning a new language.

Yesterday afternoon we went shopping for something to wear to the festival that is happening at the moment.  I bought a really lovely top and a new bikini.  Just to be clear, the bikini is not for the festival....

I am out of Milo.  It is so tragic.  I don’t know how this could have happened.  I mean, three weeks ago, I had a full tin, and now, nothing.  Empty.  Gone.  Null.  Zilch.  Zero.  I’m going to be a few weeks without any Milo at all.

How could that be?!? O.O

Out shopping at one point and we came across this chocolate shop and I just had to take pictures of all of the chocolate.  It looked too good to resist =D

HAMBURGER!!!

 One afternoon we decided to go for a walk and the next pictures are just views that we came across.  From standing on top of the hill, you could see the Czech boarder.  It should not physically be possible to see another countries border!!! Someone from Australia can just not fathom that...

Maria & I

Now for some pictures of my lovely host family!!

Host Mum & Sister

The Family

Yeah, I live with them

Host parents

And, I really just couldn't help myself because the light switches are fascinating me!  They are a lot different to the light switches in Australia.  Same with the power points.  These things are just so easy to turn on.  There is no fumbling around trying to find the tiny little switch in the middle of the big bit of plastic.

Hope my Aussie friends and family are enjoying the summer.  I would just like to wish my little cousin Jespar happy birthday for Friday and Matt happy birthday for today/tomorrow (Aussie time/time here).  I'm sure you had a great party!

Until Next Post.

Adios Amigos.

Tyarna x