The Life and Times of the Past Week

Things I've done since my last post:
1. Been to the Natural History Museum: Way too many dead stuffed animals for one building, but still- what an incredible building it is!
2. Gone to a 9-story aquarium filled with strange and beautiful sea creatures. On the top floor was an art gallery opening (free food and wine!) and a rooftop view of downtown Vienna.
3. LOTS of Sauna Club meetings
4. Made best friends with some Kebap guys down the street who make some pretty sick falafel. Brought my camera in there the other day and they nearly lost their minds, they were so excited to give us photo opportunities. Jess and I both cut some Kebap meat (greasy and smelly and gross) and got a little too close for comfort with Billa and Taiwan. I don't think those are actually their names but that's what it sounded like...
5. Went to Budapest: FLEA MARKETS EVERYWHERE

just a little preview of some photo stuffs...

this just feels like the longest vacation ever

sundays are so weird here! pretty much nothing is open at all, so all there is to do is sit around and hope not everyone in the whole building does their laundry at the same time as you. it's about 6 p.m. here and I've spent all day doing just that and stinking up sarah's bed with all my dirty clothes. now it's naptime for everybody but me- im going to listen to a lot of talking heads and think about my next ideas for prints.
yesterday was my friend's birthday and we went everywhere- the danube, to take pictures of the incredible grafitti by the river, to the kunsthaus, then to prater. the prater is a park like any other, except in the middle there is the hugest, most obnoxious theme park you'll ever see. there are michael jackson and ecstasy-themed rides as well as the most kebap stands you'll ever see in a 2 mile radius. this is saying something, too, because there are kebap stands on literally every corner of every street. especially in the naschmarkt, you can't move for all the men shouting about how mesmerizing their kebaps are.
last night, jess, devin and i decided to make the most out of this silly dormitory and check out the sauna. i haven't felt the same since! it took all the tense-ness out of me in the form of sweat or something. going to a sauna seems like such an over-60 men's club thing to do, but i'm pretty sure we're going to start a club, we had such a good time. in addition to that, we went dancing afterwords at some goofy bar called kaktus with sarah and some of her slovakian friends- im pretty sure thats why i slept for something like 10 hours last night!

here a couple of really weird and silly differences ive noticed between vienna and the us:
1. there are no public trashcans, anywhere! jess says people would put bombs in them or something, but i dont think thats true, is it? nevertheless, there are fifteen ashtrays per inch on the street pretty much.
2. you can take your dog anywhere! and people do!
3. you can smoke anywhere! and people do!
4. so few women keep their natural hair color, and their dye jobs are like GO BIG OR GO HOME (aka really obvious)
5. in bars and stores and clubs, they play ALL american music (including a lot of lady gaga)

theres so much more, but im pretty sure my roommate hates me because i got her sick and keep typing away while she napping. so im off!

What is the German word for Sudafed???

So I have finally decided to admit to myself that I am sick and should start acting like it. I've been staying out pretty late most nights and it has resulted in my inability to hear anything and a nose that runs like the Nile.
the past couple of days have been pretty low-key because of this (after feeling sorry for myself and being homesick all day, I slept for 15 hours yesterday!) but still I almost passed out in my Photo class! Which would have been totally embarrassing because everyone in there is Austrian or German and therefore has gelled hair and a matching Valentino scarf and handbag.
Speaking of- I started my classes Monday. The Photo class is the definition of a waste of time, which really bums me out. In St. Louis, the Photo 1 class gets to rent out 35 mm cameras and learn all the technicalities of using them while taking a ton of pictures each week. But here, you have to use your own camera (which I don't have) and it is all about like... what looks good or something. Who knows, we have spent the past two classes talking about whether photography can compare to other mediums as an art form. there is a fat chance that this teacher is going to be the one to convince me so. As Charly (German-classmate-who-looks-like-jared-leto-man) said very very accurately, "what a load of nonsense."
BUT, on the other hand, my Art Theory and Criticism class should be pretty cool. The teacher is this artsy older woman who wears a lot of long skirts and jewelery, and who has a reputation of being very hard. There are only six people in the class, including me. It's discussion central and we'll just be reading reviews and talking about what makes or breaks them, reading art magazines, and all that. I usually have pretty little patience with art mumbo-jumbo, but maybe I can understand what the hell anyone is even talking about at White Flag after this class.
Tonight my roommate Nidya is taking Sarah and me to some BMW car show or something, which should be an experience I won't relive very often. Wish me luck on convincing people I am not just there for the free food!

tchüss baby!

So here is a little something, if anyone cares to read it, about things i am doing and seeing for the next coupla months. it is really a selfish thing more than anything, because instead of typing out basically the same email eighty times to all the people i love, you can all just snoop on me here when you are bored at work or have insomnia or something.
a quick recap of the first couple of days:
-walking around until my legs felt like they would fall off
-finally getting the jist of the whole trolley car to u-bahn to bus ride situation figured out so i can actually get to webster (which is about forty five years from the dorm). its not a campus or anything either, it's this really space-agey-type building with four floors and a lot of windows. there is a lot of chrome in it, i guess is what im saying.
-donaufelder is the dorm i am staying in, but it is more like a complex with four steiges, or buildings. i am in steige 2, away from my st. louis friends, but i'm beginning to feel okay with that because i cannot handle partying every single night and need to run away to my bed sometimes.

i've been to stephansplatz several times where there is the center of the circle that is vienna- this ginormous cathedral that is surrounded by an H&M on all sides. yesterday was a super touristy day too, because we went to the MAK (weird and lame) and the flohmarkt (totally awesome- i am a master negotiator, got a alby durer print for 5 euro! im pretty sure it is cut out of a magazine and shoved in a frame, but no matter, it is the only deco in my room right now). later we went to what i think was called the werner musikhaus, to listened to a mini opera. standing room gets really hot, but the- i don't know what you would call it- venue (?) was totally gorgeous and covered in murals and lots of goddess columns that were in retrospect probably plaster. NONETHELESS, i will wrap this up by saying that on our way to some bar that can only be found by iphone GPS we stumbled across rachael whiteread's nameless library, the first sculpture jeff hughes ever lost his mind about in my presence. it was incredibly surreal, and then incredibly embarrassing when this kid pretended to be dead on the front steps of it.

things to be happyyyy about:
1. school starts tomorrow! i am taking independent study at the applied arts institute in vienna, a HUGE and beautiful building next to the MAK, which according to devin has a huge whale in it that have ribs used as shelves. rad.
2. my adapter should be coming in the mail soon, so i can check my email on an actually regular basis!
3. REUNION WITH DEVIN

things to be worried about:
1. ten euro a day is NOT enough to go see museums and travel and eat. i have to pick one of the three on a daily basis.
2. the amount of getting silly these kids do here... my body cant keep up!
3. the paris subway system and the idea of meghan and i trying to navigate that alone. HA!