note:

posting will be less frequent for the last week of my visit because my internet access is not as convenient as it once was. so i apologize for that.
today we did our first show run. it was long and a bit crazy but im sure it will all come together by friday.
well... that's it for now. one of the other dancers arrived today (the daughter of our host family) so she's living in the computer room which is why i can't use it very much. and then we move on tuesday to a house with no internet. so... perhaps this is it.
if so, all my love and i'll see most of you in seven sleeps!

november the twelfth. two thousand and seven.

today was our last day off here in graz.
actually that was a lie
we have another one the day after the show.
but our show is on friday and we leave here first thing sunday morning.
i must say, i'm pretty excited to come home. there are definately things about graz that i will miss. but im ready to come home.
i would really like to come back someday. due to the circumstances surrounding this visit i feel like there are so many things i never got the chance to see and experience. i have experienced a lot of really great things and i have learned a lot and grown as a person and as a dancer. but i think i would fall more in love with europe if i came again with more money and more time and perhaps with less rehearsals and maybe with a husband..... right now im so grateful for this experience, but my heart is still at home.
today was cloudy and cold. feels like winter is on it's way. i slept in and had a nice slow morning. the most exciting part of the morning was that they just opened a new tram line close to our house so we no longer have to walk half an hour to get to and from the tram. just in time for us to move out... good timing. (we move out tuesday night because annette and bernt have people coming in from out of town to see the show, so they need the space to host their guests)
i wandered around downtown for the afternoon. got lost a bit. as i usually do on my days off...
bought a couple things
met lise and pam
went for dinner
went to the english movie theatre
saw hairspray
much better than the heartbreak kid
john travolta makes a hideous woman
met up with silke, one of the dancers from austria and went for punsch - another traditional drink here. they have seasons of drinks (i guess like how we only have eggnog at christmas) sturm season is just ending and punsch season is beginning. it was quite delicious. it's like a warm, christmassy sangria.
well... goodnight
8 more sleeps!

smiles

Well. Yesterday and today were both just rehearsal days so not a whole lot to fill you in on. The show's coming up soon and things are starting to come together but we definately have our work cut out for us.

I seem to have strained a muscle in the front of my neck today, which was unfortunate... Everyone told me I needed to ice it and we ended rehearsal early because I couldn't run things anymore. So I stopped at the grocery store to buy a package of frozen peas to ice my neck on my way home (which already sounded like hell to me. who wants ice on their neck as they walk home in the cold? Not me, I'll tell you that much...) However, as it turns out, they don't sell small bags of frozen peas in Europe. They sell small boxes of frozen peas or they sell 2 kilogram bags. There was no way I was about to put a 2 kilo bag of peas on my neck and hop on the tram so I bought the smallest bag of frozen things I could find:
McCain Smiles.
(Actually to be honest, there was a smaller package of something that looked like spinach slime pellets, but I wasn't willing to purchase them)

I waited until I got out of the store to tuck the smiles into my scarf (thick necks look suspicious in stores...) and I took the tram home. It was horribly uncomfortable and cold and strangley but my neck does feel a bit better now...

shopping and a hilarious joke

today was another lovely day off in graz. pam and i had planned to get an early start on shopping and whatnot but annette invited us to have lunch with her so we went into town to do some grocery shopping and then had a german lesson and some lunch.

after lunch we went shopping for gifts and for annette's birthday which is tomorrow. we bought her a present and then were trying to pick out a card for her but it was hard because they were all german and then we amused ourselves with the idea of picking a card that we secretly knew was an anniversary card or something and pretending we thought it was a birthday card. for some reason we thought this would be hilarious because annette is always trying to teach us german. hilarious.

we had a nice day shopping. i bought some cheap boots cuz mine are falling apart and some legwarmers because the dance studio is so flipping cold all the time.
and later on we met up with lise and had dinner (a strange but delightful little place called mangolds where there's a buffet and you take what you want and then they weigh your plate and charge you accordingly.) and then we went to the english movie theatre and saw the heartbreak kid, or whatever the new ben stiller movie is called. it was utterly terrible but nice to hear people speaking english. pam and lise were excited to buy beer from the concession stand.

we only have one more day off before coming home. all the rest is spent rehearsing... kind of too bad. i do like days off...

one day i'll post pictures...

so. what do i have to tell you today.
well... yesterday we had a nice little day off. pam woke me up to tell me that bernd (our house papa) had made us breakfast so the three of us (anette wasn't there cuz she is visiting her daughter in germany) had a lovely little breakfast and bernd showed us how to properly eat an egg out of an egg cup. good little life lesson. i'll be showing off next easter.
after breakfast we got dressed and bernd took us on a little tourist adventure. we went to schloß eggenberg which is a big castle built by a neurotic man. unfortunately it was closed to tourists for the winter as of october 31st. so that was crappy timing. but we saw some pictures of it and it looked pretty incredible. but we did get to go through the art gallery there and wander through the park and hang out with many peacocks (including an albino one, like the one the malfoy's have at their house...) it was a beautiful day and it was an incredibly beautiful place. i had a bunch of postcards picked out to buy but when i went to buy them, we were told we weren't allowed to because the lady who worked in the gift shop was on her lunch break... so sorry to all for the lack of postcards.
after wandering around there for a while bernd bought us sturm and maroni (apparently austria has seasonal drink specials... we happen to be here in sturm season) and we sat out on a patio and watched the peacocks.
after schloß eggenberg, we went for a little walking tour of some of the places bernd thought we would enjoy. we saw a huge old cathedral and a school for priests in training (i'm sure there's a better word for it than that) and after wandering for a while we went and he treated us all to delicious sushi.
it was such a nice little trip and we were so touched by his generosity.
and today we just rehearsed all day. sunday is the day we have almost the whole cast together and it's always a little more scattered and hard to organize. i feel like we have a lot of work to do in the next twelve days.

two other things i like about austria:
the autumn leaves stay on the trees so much longer than they do at home. it's very pretty.
i like hearing the church bells ring. they ring a lot, especially on sunday.

in two weeks and a couple of hours i'll be home. crazy.

even more boring than yesterday!

another busy day of rehearsals over without any incidents to report.
after rehearsal the whole crew (well, treasure, christina, thomas, lise, pam and i) went for sturm and maroni (basically sweet wine and roasted chestnuts. they were quite good actually. i was surprised by chestnuts yesterday - they were softer and pastier and less nutty than i expected, the caught me off guard and i couldnt decide what i felt about them but today i appreciated them. i was prepared...)
tomorrow we have the day off and we have plans to go to schloss eggenberg. i don't know much about it but we're going there.
well. my eyes are having a hard time staying open... so goodnight!

this post is pretty boring.

nothing much to report today. rehearsal went well. we felt a little on edge in the morning, it seemed as though the lady could have turned on us at any second but the afternoon went well and it was sunny for the second day in a row. and the studio we dance in has big windows so the room warmed up so much better than normal.

after dance we didn't really have many options of things to do because it was another holiday and everything was closed (they have a lot of holidays here...) but we found a little pizzaria open and had pizza for dinner and that's about all there was to my day. nothing overly memorable. oh except for a man sleeping at the tram stop today. he was a normal looking man dressed relatively well. a golf shirt and a pea coat... he looked fake. pam and i wondered if we should be concerned and try to help but then we realized it would probably make things worse if we tried to wake him up and then didn't have a phone and couldnt speak the language and basically couldnt communicate or do anything. we thought that might be confusing for him. and he was breathing...

and there was also an old lady who wouldnt stop talking to us and asking us questions no matter how many times i told her we couldnt speak german. a man who looked like bryan adams tried to explain it to her but it didn't work. i think she might have escaped from the seniorumzentrum...

crazy that my time here is just about half over. i am having a good time but im so excited to come home.
sorry about the boring post...
lots of love to everyone.