Interesting Encounters and Failed Outings

So I knew that by coming to Vienna, I would meet some interesting and eclectic people. Little did I know. Here is a short list of interesting encounters I've had since I've been here:

1) One of my classmates works as a line judge for Wimbledon. Yes, the tennis tournament. Yes, that's awesome.
2) Also, one of the people in our administration looks like Madam Hooch.
3) Finally, I met a girl in my Chinese course who comes from Luxembourg. She moved to Vienna because she's a PROFESSIONAL PING PONG PLAYER. ?!?!?!
4) Oh, and I'm friends with people from Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Turkey, Canada, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Luxembourg, Argentina and Kazakhstan, among others. Yea, no big deal.

Here is a picture of us:

Failed Outing #1 (I number this as 1, not b/c this is a list of many, but b/c I know that this is just the first of what will undoubtedly be a list of many)

Since I don't have class on Monday until 4pm, I decided to out on this beautiful day(!) to run a couple of errands and buy some things I needed: some pens, a dictionary, and laundry detergent (so I don't keep stealing my friend's).

Success rate: 1 out of 3... kind of.

I got the pens, and got what I thought was laundry detergent, but couldn't find a dictionary that I liked. I got back to school and upon closer inspection saw in very small print "Do not pour directly on laundry" (btw, this whole bottle is in German, French and Italian only). Now being somewhat skeptical, I asked some of my German speaking friends if the liquid that I bought was, in fact, laundry detergent. After all, it said things like "Fresh Meadow," and "4x Longer Freshness," all over the bottle. Guess what? Even my native German speaking friends had trouble figuring out if this stupid thing was laundry detergent or just fabric softener. Of course, in the end, turns out I bought fabric softener. I guess I'm just supposed to know that "Lenor" only makes fabric softener? Now I have to go back and see if I can exchange it or get a refund or something. Yay.

In other news, I finally went to visit Schönbrunn palace the other day, so I'll post pics of that soon. Also, those of you who asked for postcards should be getting them within the next couple of weeks. I finally went out to buy some.

Tschüss!

So they tell me I came here to study...

A week in the life of...

So here's a little breakdown of what classes I'm taking (Yay so interesting, right?)

Core Courses:

Political Science: Scopes and Methods

Principles of Microeconomics
Evolution of the International System 1815-1945

Principles of International Law

Institutional Law of the European Union

In other words, PolySci, Econ, History and Law. Forget the fancy names.

Other Courses:

Current EU Issues: Institutions and the EU Decision Making Process

Middle East in World Politics

German A1+ (Second to lowest level)

Chinese A1 Phase 1 (Lowest level)

As you can see, my language levels are atrocious!

Busy busy! Most of these should actually be really interesting, but the amount of reading? Yikes! Plus things aren't organized here quite as well as I would like. Oh well.

And then, after that, we go to cafés, bars, or sightseeing. Studying? What's that? So here are some pictures of random friends. Hopefully, they will not hate me for exploiting their images for the sake of this blog. =D

On a random side note: You KNOW the bureaucracy's bad here when you have other EUROPEANS telling you it's bad even for them. Wow.

Also, hello to any cool Italians who are following these posts! =P