March

It's been a fairly good month, despite a week of sickness, and the fact that I've had a dry cough for the past couple of days.

The beginning of March marked the beginning of the summer semester here in Salzburg, and I dove right into my classes and my life here again. I spent a bit of time being sick, and my first weekend back in Salzburg wasn't exactly what I had planned, but still nice. I enjoyed a nice girls only dinner with Steffi and Verena, two of my Austrian friends, at Cappomio, a German Conversation Group with others from my program at the top of Hotel Stein on a beautiful day, and a nice day outside with Brittany, eating pizza on the grass overlooking the Salzach river.

The following weekend I was feeling better, and enjoyed every minute of my free time. On that Friday I went shopping with my new "Austrian Buddy" Steffi and my future roommate, Tina. We then went back to Steffi's place and cooked and enjoyed talking about cultural differences between Austria and America. On Saturday I went for brunch at a friend's, then went swimming in the afternoon. In the evening friends from my church group and I went to our friend Tobi's for a nice dinner, and then we watched Sister Act on the projector. In German. That was weird...Whoopi Goldberg sounded like a white woman! On Sunday I slept in late and cleaned my room.

This weekend was a good one as well. On Thursday my two future roommates, Astrid and Tina and I went to Ladies Night at the Cineplexx where we watched Schmuckstück, a French film dubbed into German, featuring Gerard Depardeau, who has clearly gained at least 100 pounds since his last film appearance. I loved the film because the main character, a woman in her 50s or 60s, was tired of being a trophy wife. She finally got tired of it and decided to become the woman she wanted to be.

On Friday Kerstin slept over. We celebrated her birthday by cooking together, going out for cocktails (Verena joined us), and then went to O Malley's irish pub, where I drank a hot chocolate (after 4 glasses of wine and a cocktail there was no way I could handle any else). On Saturday I went to visit Tina, my future roomate, in Wels. She took me to Linz and showed me around, which is a really cute city in Austria. On Sunday she took me over to her father's and her stepmom's. Her stepmom made apple strudel especially for me, and I enjoyed watch their daughter, age 3, run around pretending she was a horse. Her father's and stepmother's friends came over and the man couldn't believe I was American. He was like what about your parents? You can't originally be from the US. Your German is so good!

That's all for now!

Love, Molly