Vienna Adventure: Day 1

Hello friends,
I realize that I have not written in this blog in an extremely long time, and I'm sorry if you have wasted countless hours checking tirelessly to see if I've posted anything. Luckily, I'm fairly certain that none of you are that obsessive and so I don't feel quite sorry enough to keep from moving on.

So, moving on. You've probably heard or seen pictures from facebook about my recent trip to Vienna, Austria. In case you didn't hear any background details, I was there on a study abroad trip through Cedarville. I was there for exactly 3 weeks and completed a course in humanities. While there, I also kept a fairly regular journal, which I wrote as if it were a blog post so that I could later share it with any who cared to have a more in depth story of my trip.

As you well know, I tend to be long winded. So while I've managed to transfer most of my journal to the computer, I still have a ways to go since I wrote so much. I also have several other creative projects and community college classes going on right now, so I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to post my journal entries. But in the mean time, I have managed to fully transcribe my first entry. As a warning, it is incredibly long, so if you get tired, feel free to stop. Also, I went way more into detail than I probably could have, so if you're not interested in what I had for lunch, skim. I won't take offense. The only reason I included so much was just in case anyone actually was this interested in my trip. With all that said, here it is:

Friday, May 11, 2012, 5:30 AM

My adventure in Vienna began yesterday with a flight out of O'Hare at 10:20 PM. It was an eight hour flight to Frankfurt Germany where I would go on a connecting flight to Vienna. I had never flown internationally before, and I must say that I'm not very fond of it. My trans-Atlantic flight was long and “cozy”. Luckily, I was able to sleep through most of it. I was also thankful for my neck pillow and Fedora which helped to block out the light. The one major downside of the flight was that there was a small child in the seat behind mine who sporadically would start crying and kicking my chair. I’m thankful that God gave me patience and some compassion for that kid. His mother, on the other hand, I was less patient with. You would think that if after 10 minutes of your child crying and kicking, you’d realize that your singular response of “shh” wasn't working and that you should at least attempt another approach. Oh well. 

The connecting flight went smoother and I was again able to sleep for most of the flight. Toward the end of the flight, however, my stomach, which had been hurting since the day before, threatened to return to me what little food I had given it. Again, I praise the Lord for having me not throw up on the plane. I'm sure my Fedora is thankful for that too seeing as there would've been nothing else available. 

After the plane I was very thankful to be on dry land and I'm quite glad that I didn't have to fly again for another three weeks. From the terminal, I managed to find my way to the baggage claim. Seeing as most everything was in German, I was thankful that the main signs always had pictures. I bet that's how it illiterate people feel too.  

Anyway, I met Dr. Clevenger and his wife at the baggage claim area. My flight got in about three hours after everyone else was supposed to arrive, so Dr. Clevenger said he’d wait for me there. What we didn’t know then was that there isn’t a single chair in the baggage claim. Nor can one go back to the terminal from there, nor return to baggage claim once you have left. We ended up waiting another hour there for a girl who had had the worst travel day ever. Basically everything that could have gone wrong did; from technical difficulties canceling her first flight, to being bused two hours to Detroit, to the flight attendant rebooking instead of reissuing her ticket, to waiting on the plane for 30 minutes while another plane loaded, to missing her connecting flights, and finally to losing her luggage.

After all this debacle, we finally left the baggage claim, where the Clevenger's had been waiting for nearly 6 hours. I was so glad to be following Dr. Clevenger, since he’s been here before, speaks fluent German, and understands the Üban system. After changing trains a couple of times and lugging heavy suitcases over more than a couple of stairs, we finally came to the restaurant where group was having dinner. By this point, we were all famished. All I’d had since the night before was a small muffin and a handful of almonds. At first I was worried that the strange Austrian food wouldn't be good for my sore stomach. But it turns out that my not feeding it for a while made it thankful for any substance. On the recommendation of our host, I ordered wiener schnitzel with fries and salad. I forget what they called it, but the salad was actually several different kinds of salad in a single bowl. There was a delicious potato salad, sauerkraut, and lettuce with tomato green pepper and red onion. I can't remember enjoying salad more.  The wiener schnitzel was good as well. As far as I understand, it's a slice of veal that’s been pounded very thin to tenderize it, and then fried. It tastes better than it sounds. Although I should probably mention I was so hungry that I didn't realize that the ketchup was tangier than American versions until halfway through the meal. If you ever do order wiener schnitzel, try squeezing a lemon slice over it. That's how the locals eat it, and I surprisingly even liked it better than with ketchup. All of this wonderful food was enhanced by the fact that we were sitting on the street patio outside the restaurant. It was a beautiful day with a cool breeze drifting through the street and the sun slowly setting. Everywhere you look in Vienna, the buildings are decadently detailed. The buildings on the street outside Zum Hannes (where we ate) looked especially beautiful with the last rays of sunlight playing off them. It was all very relaxing after a long day of travel.

After dinner a large group of us travel together to our rooms. There are five of us staying in Pfeilgasse. Pfeilgasse 1a and 3a are two large apartments/dorm like buildings. To our surprise, we each are living in completely different parts of these buildings and have Viennese roommates who may or may not have known we were coming. This was/is rather intimidating. 

My new friend in the group, Meredith, helped me bring my luggage to room 499. She also help me figure out which of the five keys issued to me would open the door. When we walked inside, we found out several things about my new roommate: she wasn't there, was a slob, and probably wasn't expecting me. After dropping my stuff off, I went with Meredith to pick up my bedding. We discussed our mutual unease about this whole situation and then talked about when we should meet up to go to class.

When I returned to my room I moved everything on what appeared to be the spare bed onto the spare desk. I then made my bed with the yellow curtain like material they gave me for bedding. Since we have to meet at the classroom at 8:30 on the other side of town this morning, I wanted to get as much sleep as I could. So I got ready for bed, left a note for my roommate explaining who the strange person in her room was, turned off the light, and went to bed. 

Somehow I did manage to sleep a bit on the firm mattress with the too-soft pillow. My roommate didn't come back last night, so it was nice that she didn't wake me up. I'm assuming it's a she because of all the pink and perfume, although I was warned that this is a very coed building. 

Although I set my alarm for 7, I ended up awakening to the pale blue sunlight coming in my westward facing window around 5am. What struck me most was the difference sounds the birds here make. They sing a different song than American birds do. They also have this resonating, silvery quality about them which I can't tell if it comes from the bird itself or the way its song reverberates against the old cramped buildings. 

Since I first woke up, the light in my room has increased so much that I know I probably won't be sleeping in on this trip, except perhaps on cloudy days. Now that I've written this, I'm tired enough to want to go back to sleep. However, I don't have time because I need to get ready for class. I’m meeting Meredith and the others downstairs at 7:40. Supposedly one of the guys knows how to get to the classroom. In the e-mail Dr. Clevenger sent, he wrote that it takes about 45 minutes to get to class from Pfeilgasse and that the trip includes a tram, several trains, and potentially a bus. We’ll see how this goes. I'm sure it'll get easier once I've done it a few times.

KAVALENA!!!! :)

hi everyone!
sorry i havent posted in a while, but i've been busy with all sorts of schoolwork.
and even now, i should probably be doing homework.
but this is a worthy enough cause for me to spend time blogging about.

recently, my sister (val) started a business. but it's far more exciting than just that. this business is called Kavalena (combo of my sister's and my names :)) and it's where my sister sells the beautiful scarves she makes. she then takes 50% of what she makes and gives it to a christian organization that takes care of children with cerebral palsy and autism in china. how cool is that?

her scarves are absolutely beautiful and very reasonably priced. so you should definitely check out her totally legit website.
http://www.kavalena.com/#!shop
http://www.facebook.com/Kavalena?ref=notif&notif_t=fbpage_fan_invite&sk=wall#!/Kavalena
i'm so proud of my sister and want to do anything i can to help her. would you help me to do that by checking out her facebook and liking her page? and if you want to buy a scarf, that'd be even better! :) (after all, winter and christmas are right around the corner ;))

Visits Galore

i almost titled this post "Visitations, not Solicitations, with Felicitations". but i figured that it was too long and too "tation" happy.

the past 2 weeks have been filled with all sorts of visits.
the first week in august, lish visited again. :) i got to her house around late afternoon, and after her sister's first birthday party, a huge torrential thunderstorm, getting totally soaked 4 times (as in "i went to a waterpark fully dressed" kind of soaked), waiting out part of the storm at an oasis, and singing songs about rain, we finally got to my house late at night.

the next morning, we woke up super early and were back on the road (only this time with my mom and dad) on the way to visiting cedarville. some might have questioned why i wanted to visit cedarville when i was going to be moving in in about 3 weeks. but i'm really glad i went because now i dont feel as nervous about getting lost and i'm now way more excited about going there. plus, lish is really considering transfering to cedarville next year. so it was really good that both of us got to go see what the campus is like.

we ended up getting there an hour later than what we'd scheduled with the cedarfolks because i forgot to take into account the time difference between IL and OH. so there was no time for the much anticipated lunch before the campus tour was to start. luckily, the tour was pretty interesting, so it helped to distract us from our grumbling bellies. after the tour was over, we quickly went to redeem our subway lunch vouchers. it was delicious. as the old addage goes, hunger is the very best seasoning.
after lunch, we stopped at a quaint little ice cream shop called "Mom and Dad's". it looked like a dive, and it was. but they had really good icecream :)

then it was back to my house. on thursday, brian stopped by on his way to his new teaching job. we all went out for lunch at lish and i's favorite indian place. we stopped for slurpees and took everything back to my house so we could listen to bollywood music on pandora while we ate.
after we finished eating, we had a hoot an' hollerin' good time catching up and making "sleep music" for lish (brian and i attempted to record soothing nature sounds. nature sounds? sort of. soothing? not really. more like hilarious).

on friday, lish and i just chilled around my house and watched some movies before driving back to her house, where we then watched even more movies (only this time with her awesome sisters :)).
the next morning, all the pascoe daughters and i went to the farmers market. let me tell you, i've never loved my dad's minivan more than when i had the 4 of us girls, baby mariah, and a stroller all fit comfortably in my car with room to spare. i'm totally getting a minivan when i'm older. i also kind of want to make a music video about a minivan now.

i got home saturday night and my dear aunt jeanie came from AZ on sunday. i love my aunt jeanie, but we only get to see her every couple of years. on monday, we went into the city and took a wendella boat tour of the city's architecture. then we took a water taxi to chinatown. that part wasnt nearly as fun as we thought it'd be. especially since it's a long walk from the taxi stop and there were no public restrooms to be found. plus, by that time it was raining.

here's my dad on the water taxi

wednesday was much more fun. jeanie, my mom, and i all went to lords park. i hadnt been there in years, and had forgotten most of what was there. we had a picnic lunch down by the lagoon with the ducks and geese. then we went to the public museum they have there. we also stopped to see the buffalo and elk habitats. overall, it was a really fun day.

me and my aunt jeanie at the museum in lords park

between visiting lish, visiting cedarville, visiting the farmers market, visiting with jeanie, visiting chicago, visiting chinatown, and visiting lords park, i'm somewhat visited out. i guess it's a good thing then that a week from today, i wont just be visiting cedarville, i'll be living there :)

Lish Visit :)

now on to happier news.
about 2 weeks ago, my good friend Lish came to visit for 3 whole days!

you see, my parents were gone for that whole week on a missions trip to michigan. they went with Ron Hutchcraft's ministry On Eagle's Wings, which is totally focused on bringing the gospel to native americans. their work is so incredible and so needed, and my parents have long supported and loved their ministry. that's why they signed up to come along on their Summer of Hope tours and cook 4 meals a day for 60 people.

while they were off serving meals to hungry kids, i was having fun. the first part of the week, i stayed with my  aunt kathy and we had fun just hanging out and watching movies and such. then for the second part of the week, i drove up to wisconsin to pick up lish.

i got there mid morning, and since we were both hungry, we went to lish's favorite breakfast place. it's an old railroad car that's been turned into a diner. it was such a fun place and had really good food. here we are:

lish said they had huge portions, so we decided to split a vegetarian breakfast burrito. only lish is a vegetarian, and i am not. so i got a side of meat to eat with my half. only it looks like it's the only thing i'm eating.
as a side note, i dont think i've ever eaten that many veggies for breakfast in my entire life. and i doubt i ever will again. (even though it was incredibly delicious) 

here we are outside the diner

once we were sufficiently stuffed, we drove back to my house. after dropping off her stuff, we became hungry again. so i took her to my favorite fast food place ever, called Just Kabbobs (but they dont sell just kabbobs. they sell non kabbob items as well). it's a little family owned restaurant that's super cute inside and has large amounts of delicious food at good prices. since lish is vegetarian, we ordered pita bread with sides of tzidiki sauce and hummus. it was delicious.

afterwards, we went shopping and bought several different things, including Gnomeo and Juliet and super cute aprons which we wore for much of the time we spent together. i would include a picture, but they're still on lish's camera. maybe later.

we got home with just enough time to make some artisan bread and eat it in the car as we drove to church. after church, we again stopped by Just Kabbobs for more of their amazing hummus.

the next day, thursday, we went to kline creek farm. it's an old farm that my county owns and operates as a free step back into time thing. volunteers dress in 1800s style clothing and give tours and take care of the animals. here's lish, hard at work behind the plough:

we also did some more shopping, and ended the night with a movie from redbox. it was a good movie, but both lish and i were appalled at the fact that someone would make the cover of a movie called "red", blue.
just look at our disgust:

on friday, lish and i put together a care package for our friend tatiana. we filled it with stuff we had bought for her over the past few days and included some notes and drawings. we also made these awesome tie-die colored cakes in mason jars for her and her mom. unfortunately, they were no longer edible when they arrived, but the pictures of when they were made are awesome! ... if i had them... which i dont, because they're still on lish's camera. but eventually... maybe... someday i'll get them on here... somehow.
but in the mean time, here's a picture of tatiana wearing some of the stuff we sent her. she asked that the pictures she sent wouldnt be put on facebook, but luckily, this is not facebook ;)

she loves the color orange

after pouring so much energy and love into one care package, we were both thoroughly famished.
and where do you take a famished vegetarian? to a vegetarian fast food place!!!! it turned out to be a huge adventure (which i devoted an entire blog post to on my other blog. http://www.oneridicalousponytail.blogspot.com/), but right now all i'll say is that it turned out to be a fantastic indian restaurant and we had a ton of fun trying different free samples and talking to the owner and learning how to pronounce the items on the menu. we had so much fun that we even blasted the slumdog millionare soundtrack all the way home and listened to contemporary bollywood on pandora while we ate. it was an unforgettable experience, and one we've both agreed will have to be repeated whenever she visits.

after dinner, we packed up lish's stuff and cleaned up the house a bit for my parents' return. then we packed up the car and drove to lish's house. after an unintentional detour (ie wrong turn) and a stop at 711 for one final slurpee and to eat some of our delicious mason jar tie-die cake, we arrived at lish's house.

it was too late at night for me to drive back home, but not so late that either of us were tired enough to sleep. so we watched jurassic park 3 (i'd never seen any of them before) and i stayed the night before leaving in the morning.  and thus ended my awesome visit with my very good friend lish.

Louie

If you've been reading my blog even somewhat regularly, you'll know that it's very rare for me to have short posts. so the fact that i'm doing 2 in a row is just shy of a miracle (yes, i consider the dog sitting one short).
but i really dont want to write at any length about this topic, because it still makes me sad. i even considered not writing about it at all. i'm only writing about this so that my friends won't be surprised when the topic comes up sometime down the road and they find out that my cat died over a month ago and i never told them.
so consider yourself officially informed. i no longer have a cat named louie. he died on june 21, 2011 when he got hit by a car.
i don't really like talking about it.
end post.

Dog Sitting

after the seminar, all i did was lots of homework with a bit of hanging out with friends and family on the side.
but then i got a dog sitting job.
jim and carol are family friends of ours and they asked if i would take care of their 2 golden retrievers while they were on a 2 week vacation. i of course agreed.

cherokee and buster are 2 very big boys who are both very sweet and slightly needy. they loved to be with me, even when i was asleep. here's a cute picture of them:

i enjoyed having some dogs again. it's been a while since my family had a dog, and it was nice to remember what it was like.

Creation Speaking Seminar

a few weeks after i got home from wyoming, i was off on another trip. this time, to missouri.
during the spring geology trip, i learned that dave and maryjo nutting were going to hold a seminar on how to present creation materials. this really interested me because i love the topic of creation science and would love to teach it some day.
i knew that my friend brian was trying to start a new ministy having to do with creation speaking, so i told him about it and he wanted to go too. so we told the nuttings we wanted to go and they arranged free accomodations for us both. in the end, the only thing we had to pay for was the gas to get there :)

i'm so glad i was able to go. i learned so much, i met a lot of great people, it was exciting to help brian and the nuttings figure out more of what brian's amateur creation speakers ministry would need to be and include, and i had a lot of fun to boot.

on the drive down, we saw a sign for the world's largest rocking chair, so of course we had to stop. here are some highlights from the trip down:

me in front of the world's largest rocking chair. it is also the largest rocking chair on route 66.

a curious cannon next to the rocking chair. apparently, that's how they guard it. after all, they dont want anyone to drive off with it.

a lawnmower that did not work no matter how hard i peddled.

there was a cool mural next to the rocking chair. so i took a picture with it. the goal was to blend in with the picture. something that's hard to do when you're about 4x larger than the people in the painting.

we ran into some crazy weather. thunder, lightning, a downpour, hail, rainbows, and this crazy sky. i'd never seen anything like it before. this was the same night the tornado hit joplin. luckily, we weren't close enough to be affected by the winds.

the week went by very quickly. the seminar was from around 8 or 9 until 5 every day. then we'd go out to dinner, and afterwards i'd do some homework (i missed the first week of summer classes for this. but it was totally worth it). in the middle of the week, we took a field trip to the creation museum in strafford which one of the men (dr. rod butterworth) at the seminar runs. it was really cool. and if i'm free next summer, then it's all worked out to where i could be a tourguide there and live free of charge with the family that hosted me for the seminar :)

they had some madagascar hissing cockroaches at the museum. dr. butterworth asked if i'd like to hold one. even i was surprised when i said yes. here i am:

after the seminar was over, brian and i visited our friend amy swan. she went to jhbc the same year i did and we're good friends. since she lives only an hour from where the seminar was, we decided that we couldnt miss this opportunity to hang out. we ate dinner there and caught up and it was really fun.
in the morning, we left and toured a local civil war cave. my camera died, so this is the only picture i have of it.

when we walked into the main building, it came up that the owner of the cave and one of his employees were admiring my awesome boots and were saying that i maybe could one day work there. plus, the employee's name was lesley!!!! spelled the same way i spell it!!!! so i thought that was really cool. and if i come back to be a tourguide at the museum, i might apply to work there too :)

then we went inside the cave. it was the first time i'd ever been in one and it was awesome. i love caves now :)

after the cave, we were off to the long road home... or so we thought. after stopping for lunch at chick-fil-a, my car wouldnt start. so i popped the hood, called my dad, did some quick diagnostics, wiggled a wire on the starter celenoid and basically fixed my own car. it was an extremely rewarding feeling :) even though all i did was find and wiggle a certain wire.

after that, it was all smooth sailing. i dropped brian off at his house and then drove back home to finish my mountain of homework before class on tuesday.