enshuldegung

today is my birthday. i wanted to write happy birthday in german as my title but the only german word i currently know is enshuldegung and i don't even know how to spell it. it means sorry. i'm not sure why whoever invented the german language insisted on making all the words so long. it makes them terribly difficult to remember them. i'm also not sure who invented the german keyboard and mixed up all the letters on me. not impressed.
in any case, i am in austria. so far i'm having a good time. not a whole lot to report yet as most of my time since leaving has been spent traveling and sleeping. the flight was long but safe and i think my no jet lag pills worked. i was rather tired but mostly due to the fact that i'd hardly slept in 30 hours. so after a good 13 hour night i felt pretty good today. pam and i have spent some time wandering the streets here and downtown graz is very beautiful and european looking but nothing is open on sundays so we havent been able to do any shopping or anything - but we've definately made plans to. there are lots of really cute stores and an h&m on every other corner. The house we're staying in is just outside of the city in a beautiful little area. It's not very european looking but the house is huge (it has an elevator in it) and it has a big natural pond with lilly pads that the house goes out over and it has a glass floor in a place so you can look in the pond - apparently you can even swim in it in summer. The couple who owns it is very sweet. They found out it was my birthday today and they sent pam down with a little almond loaf with a candle in it and a gift - a dvd of an austrian ballet. so that was really sweet, especially since nothing is open on sundays so it wouldn't have been easy to find things.
In any case, I should go to bed. Tomorrow's the first day of rehearsals so I need to be fresh as a daisy. Auf Wiedersehen!