I've made it one month here! I'm enjoying myself immensly but having two weeks until I can come home is starting to sound more and more fantastic. I think this is the perfect amount of time for me to be gone. I'm still enjoying myself, but I'll be ready to come home when it's time.

So, I've been a blog slacker. I am now going to try and catch you all up to speed as best I can. I finished my first of two classes last week. It was cultural heritage which for all of you non-Hope College people means history, philosophy, and english all rolled into one. I'm not a huge fan of this requirement so although my class was interesting I am thankful to be done with that general education requirement! My new class that I started last Thursday is called Intercultural Communication. We're reading a book called The European Dream. It's a fabulous book, that I honestly enjoy reading. This is a breath of fresh air in itself. We are learning mostly about the differences between Europe and America. Although I initially thought, "No duh they're different, a whole ocean sits between them." we're learning so much more than that. The differences range from obvious to minute. For example, as Americans many of us believe that if we work hard it will be enough to get us to where we want to be. Europeans don't buy into this nearly as often. At first this boggled my mind because my goal in school has always been to work hard and if you get a good grade out of the deal, great. It's just different mindsets. We're starting a project analyzing aspects of Viennese culture. I chose to talk about personal space. I never thought of myself as having a particularly large bubble, however it has been made apparent that I do in fact require more personal space than many local Viennese do. Take lines for example, if I stand too far back from the person in front of me someone else will simply cut straight in front of me without a second thought. It's interesting to think about these assumed rules that at home I don't even notice anymore. Needless to say, I'm loving this class. The 2.5 hour time block which normally turns me into an antsy pantsy little kid flies by because I'm so interested in what I'm learning.

Enough talk of classes--I do other things here, too! I've been quite busy with homework so I haven't been to as many museums as I would have previously thought or desired, but this weekend we have off of all obligations. I have elected to stay in Vienna. Possible adventures include the zoo, art museums, spanish riding school, english speaking protestant church service, etc. Time will tell what I decide to do!

Last night I went to my fourth country since I've been here in Europe (well, fifth if you include that I was in Germany for a while during my underground tour of the salt mines a few weeks back). We travelled to Bratislava, Slovakia for the afternoon. How crazy is it that I just went off to another country for the afternoon?? It is about an hour or so drive. Per usual, we piled onto our bus and set out for our destination. We arrived and met our tour guide who showed us around the city a little. We of course saw a "panoramic view" which made me fall in love with the city. It's a small city that isn't completely overun with tourism, I like it a lot. If I were to make it back here someday I'd want to head back there and spend more time. After our tour we had dinner and then went to the brand new opera house to see the ballet, Swan Lake. The music was great and the dancers breath-taking. I loved every minute of the performance. During intermission we were given champaign. I declined but had a sip of some else's just to see if I liked it. I did not. Maybe it was cheap champaign, or maybe I'm just not an alchohal person, but yuck, haha. Today I have no class because it is a Holy Day and my professor cancelled. The holiday is in latin Corpus Christi, which in English means the body of Christ. Vienna is predominantly catholic so today stores and even some restaurants and museums are closed. I am taking today to do homework/ update my blog that I've been obviously neglecting. Okay, now I'm off to go do homework! If you've just read this, I have another new blog post about Prague below. I hope all is well wherever you may be!
-Tess