American Schnitzel

Like most everyone else in the blogger world, I am going to write a post about my New Years and all of that good stuff! I will just say it now, New Years in Vienna is something everyone should have on their bucket lists. New Years in Times Square seems to be the place to be for New Years for any American but the idea of having to stand for 6 hours to watch a ball drop seems to extreme for me. Even though Florida is a great place to live New Years is not a big hoopla like it is here. My family has no real New Years traditions other than sitting in front of the T.V. and watching the ball drop and afterwards going to bed. Exciting I know. There is quite a build-up to New Years in Vienna, buying fireworks, stands all over the city selling luck charms which can be strange to any onlooker. Stands that look similar to Christmas markets sell Pig charms to big stuffed pig toys, mushroom, four leafed clovers and chimney sweeper figures in all different sizes. Having any one of the named item...

Moving abroad can be a big decision for anybody, but what happens when you don't know where to go? If you are not moving for work reasons, it makes the deciding of where in the world to go a bit difficult.  Most common is to move to a country where the language is same as your own, or a large popular city. London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona are the top names I have heard when people are talking about Europe. It was also the cities people would have expected me to move to. But in fact not only is Vienna a big metropolitain city but it is cheaper than the cities talked about above. Paris can just burn a whole through your wallet by finding the tiniest closest to call home, I would say it is comparable to trying to live in an apartment in Manhatten close to Times Square. Also another thing to think about is you don't want to move abroad with out knowing the quality of life. So not only for me personally was Vienna the perfect choice but now according to Mercer's 2011 Quality ...

That is RIGHT I offically turned TWENTY last Sunday! I must say that I had a really good birthday and due to my good friends here it was a great weekend. It began with a Surpise birthday party for me on Friday. That I actually came late to! What I thought was going to be coming over to one of my friends apartment for coffee ended up being a schock. My friends not only went to the lengths of making me Empanadas, a banana and guava cake, with decor, but they even went to lengths to get their hands on my cell phone for my boyfriends phone number. K had a birthday a week prior to mine and when I was not looking she was feeling my purse to see if I had left my phone in.  O asked me if she could send a quick text to her boyfriend on my phone since she was out of minutes and she and her boyfriend were having a quarll. SNEAKY!!! It was a really good suprise and made me very happy to have friends that would do so much for my birthday. As funny as life can be my close friends are not ba...

Learning a new language can be as difficult or as simple as you make it. When moving abroad and not knowing a single word can make your life more than complicated. I have been asked my opinion more than once on what program I would reccomend for learning a new language, and my personal expierence is if you are trying to learn a new language you will never go far by learning it on your own and living in your home country. I know people can learn a new language and not have to live in a region where the language is being spoken but you have to have so much contact with a certain language before you can really get the flow of it. In America we are surrounded my English, you can't drive 6 hours in one direction and find a different language being spoken. We have Spanish and as a South Florida girl for my whole life I was surrounded by Spanish and had contact with it everyday but I had no drive to learn it. So my spanish is so small you could say it is nonexistant. Keys to REALLY le...

The end of this June I will have been in Vienna for officially one year. With almost 1 year under my belt as a Expat I wanted to share the positives about being thousands away from anything familiar. When you become an expat not only are you starting your life all over again but it also makes you find or see who you really are. It pulls away the facades and shows you your true self. I have found that when you grow up in the same area and have the same friends for years those friends and also your family define who you are. They tell you what is normal for you, they know you in a certain way that confines you even if you don't realise it is or even if you like what they see you as. But when you decided that no matter how many friends you have and for whatever reason it might be but leave that comfort zone nobody is giving you those bumpers like in bowling alley. No one is telling you what defines you, who you are. You have two choices when you step off that plane into an unknown ...

Today is my first day of going back to my German Class for semester number two. It certainly was nice to have all of Febuary off for break, but it will nice now to have a little purpose back in my day. Last semster was certainly a bumpy road learning a new language when everything is in the language you are taking. I am taking German courses through the University of Vienna before I can start my regular courses with the University. The courses  not only focused on being able to speak German, but also reading, grammer, listening and writing in a three hour class. It certainly was not easy but so helpful. I think this was the first time I was the only American or only native English speaking person in a room or in a school in my whole life. I had heard that there was or is one or two other people in the school, that the German courses make up, that was either from the States or whose native tongue spoke English. Put it this way, I didn't mind it because it just helped me push thro...