Last Post of the Year

As I am sitting here cooking the first layer of my dip for tonight I figured I should write one last post of this year. I want to start off by saying thank you to my family for their wonderful gifts and cards, Teddy wants to send out a thank you to the lady who sent him a card, he really enjoyed it! I also want to thank all of my friends who made this Christmas break a wonderful experience, and made me less homesick during it.

I feel like I should write something poetic, something to always be remembered so that when I am famous people can quote me in the papers they are writing, but unfortunately that is just not quite my style! Instead I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and hope that for the coming year all of your resolutions hold, your days are filled with happiness and you are as blessed as I have been!

Happy New Year,

Tiny

I also think that this song is a pretty good one for the New Year, so turn it up full blast and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XZ12nrz47U&feature=BFa&list=PLF79E0AB0D2F730A3&lf=results_main

Paris Part Two

As was mentioned in a comment I went over my word limit on my last post, and I will be doing it again on this post, but I hope it’s broken into enough parts to follow! J

Day Four, Christmas Eve. We went to the park again, but this time before we went we stopped at this amazing Chinese restaurant, which let me tell you was sooo good we went back for Christmas day dinner! We had a totally awesome day at the park. We got onto tons of rides and had supper at the Agraba Café. The food there was amazing, but the best bit was that we got to meet Goofy, all dressed up as Santa Claus! We were able to go on Space Mountain twice, cause there was no line up which made it pretty awesome.  Also saw the Parade of Lights (or as we called it the Glimmering Shimmering Parade of Lights) and it was fantastic. Afterwads a lot of people left the park so we got on some of the rides that there had been really long line ups for beforehand!

Day Five, Christmas!! I started off the morning skyping with my family which made it pretty awesome, thanks to them for staying up so late! C(who told me I should call her C9, so I will) and S started the day of by opening stockings. The girls got me one with some candy and a Tinkerbell Key chain (she’s my fave)!!!! It was totally awesome. Then we went to do some shopping at the Disney village, after brunch at Planet Hollywood! It was so awesome to get a real burger!! (a funny thing to want on Christmas, but there you have it!) We went back to the Chinese place after our shopping, and S & C9 skyped with their families!

Last Day, We spent the day at the airport pretty much, had lunch at the airport, found a post office and got everyone to their gates with their boarding passes. S had a good book that she had finished so I got a lot of reading done! It was nice to read a real book! Then C & R from Vienna came and picked me up so I could sleep over and then the train home.

It has been an awesome break so far and I am looking forward to all of the stuff that’s going to keep happening, but for right now, I am exhausted, so I’m gonna make myself a tea, force myself to stay up later than 7pm and then go to bed!

A Tired but had an Awesome Vacation,

Tiny

Our First View of the Eiffel Tower

C9 and S with Teddy in the Starbucks.

See after the Starbucks everything cleared up.
It is a lot taller than I remembered!

This is where we got these delicious
Macaroons!!!

L'Arc de Triomphe (this was the second full day in
Paris)

In the Christmas Markets we found this stall,
we couldn't resist!

The Mona Lisa at the Louvre (taken without the flash on,
cause that's what they tell you)

Paris by night, in the giant Ferris Wheel

More in the Ferris Wheel! That's S and Teddy and me!

DISNEY!!!

Teddy and I found Pascal!

I told you we met Goofy!

The Tinkerbell Keychain!!! (I was putting it on my keys,
I am getting quite a collection now, Canada, Finnland and now
Paris)

Paris Part One

Alrighty so Paris has been amazing!!! But more on that a little later. Anyway, the first day I was freaking out because I had to get a train to Vienna, a bus to the airport and then a plane to Paris. None of the websites made it out to be as completely easy as it was! I had no trouble, and the guy at the security saw my Canada shirt and said “Canada is excellent” and pointed to the Canadian pin he was wearing! Met with C and S (some of my friends from Calgary) and we went to the hostel. We went to the most amazing bakery just down the street from the hostel, but that is all that I can say that was good about it and so we booked ourselves into a hotel near the airport, and get this it has a towel heater!!!!  We also walked around the Eiffel Tower on our first day here. It is freaking amazing.

Day two was better, cause we’d slept a whole lot. We had a slowish start to the morning, but once we made it into the city it was amazing. We went to the Champs D’Elysee and had breakfast from a Christmas market. The lady was wonderful because she took my French/German in stride and then answered all of our questions in English! I say French/German because I can’t seem to speak French without some German sneaking in any more, oops. J We walked up the Champs D’Elysee to see L’Arc de Triomphe, which was only slighty amazing, and we also stopped at the Macaroons store that a friend of C&S told us we had to go to. We were going to walk to the train station and get to the Louvre fast, but unfortunately the ticket system for the metro is ridiculous here and we couldn’t get back on, so we walked! I remember the walk being a lot longer, but I think that is also because we didn’t have the markets to look at as we went. By the time we got to the Louvre we were all ready to see the paintings and sculptures. If you remember there was this whole crazy business about my residence permit earlier on this year, and for the first time it came in handy. (Yes I realize that me not getting kicked out of Austria is helpful, but this is better) You get free entry to the Louvre if you are between an EU resident, with a card!!

Day Three we went to Disneyland. After the first real sit down breakfast (which we missed by an hour, but they still served us like it was all open, so we didn’t know till after we’d eaten) we got to the airport to catch the Disney shuttle! (The joy of having a hotel right near the airport). It was completely awesome. We went to Frontierland, and let me tell you that the Haunted Mansion isn’t quite as scary when you don’t know what they are saying! But the rest of the park was amazing. They made it snow on command! (Ok they were bubbles, but it looked like snow!!!!) We had a great time and Disney is of course Disney with all of the amazingness and details and just everything!!

I’ll do another post with pictures when I get home.  Merry Christmas everyone, I hope everyone’s having a great time!

Tiny & Teddy

Pimp My Ride

So I have been a really good girl and not opened any of my gifts so far! Pretty good considering that I could and no one back home would be any the wiser. But my mother and Aunt told me that I needed to open my Aunt’s gift before I went to Paris. Well that is coming up quickly so I opened the gift last night. Now I want you to look at the video and tell me what you think.

My ride is now the jealousy of all the other stundents in our dorm!! Oh and of course you will notice that this time it was a video, instead of pictures. But what is really cool is that the video was made on the other gift that I got in the package!! I want to really supremely thank my Auntie C, Uncle S, and cousins S & C.  You guys rock and I can’t wait to see what else comes from this new device!!

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful season and that you have fun whatever you are doing.

Merry Christmas,

Tiny and Teddy

PS Yes after watching the video I did force M to give me a haircut, so I should look presentable to the French boys in Paris and EURO DISNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited for this holiday!! Once again Merry Christmas everyone and I’ll talk to you when I get back!

PSS Thanks Daddy for the wonderful idea for the video!

Singing in the Rain

No it is not raining today, but it was on Monday when we had our practice!! Today though was the second concert that I had with my choir, the first was on Sunday. It was totally awesome! Lots of people came and I want to thank you for all of your support, it was totally awesome.

We sang lots of cool songs some in English, German and then there was one in Russian. I didn’t pick it, but according to everyone it was really obvious when we sang the one in Russian, because everyone was doing the head bob trying to read the words. It was a great concert and the Glühwein afterwards was pretty awesome too.

Last night C & R invited us for a real New Mexican supper, tacos with corn tortillas and Green Chilli Peppers!!! My Auntie C brings those from New Mexico sometimes, and they are super tasty. We had a great time then too and things are winding down nicely. Now I just need to get everything organized for my trip, make sure everything is peachy and hopefully all will be well!

I will post once more before I leave I promise,

Tiny

PS I dont have any pictures of the concert, because ... well ... I was kind of busy, but I promise I will have pictures when I get back from my Christmas adventure!!!

Laundry #6

Saturday, a wonderful day! It’s the day that I have laid aside to do nothing. And by nothing I mean I get to go up and down the stairs (or elevator as the case may be today) and do a massive amount of laundry. No matter how hard you try there just always seems to be more to do, kind of like dishes!! J Any ways I know I haven’t been very good at updating this week, but it has been a little crazy. But the joy of telling everyone, including yourself that you aren’t going to do anything at all is that even when you get little things done you feel so accomplished!

More on the week. We got home from Vienna on Monday, on Tuesday I was obediently in class, wishing I could get some more sleep, but then S(from the states) and I went for a kebab, that makes the whole day better. After classes I went to the Finnish National Day party and needless to say after that I wasn’t doing any work on Wednesday! (Thanks A, M and N!! J)

As I mentioned in an earlier post I received the most wonderful package of pancakes and syrup, and what do you do when you have pancakes and syrup? Well you have a massive pancake breakfast, of course!! On Thursday we had a day off so we invited a ton of people over for pancakes and it was awesome. So much fun!! Then Friday I was over at E & P’s and we made Nanaimo Bars!! We had to substitute lady finger crumbs for graham cracker crumbs, sugar overdose (just like they should be!!)

I’ve now snagged both washing machines, and I’m going to try to do some vacuuming (but maybe later, cause it’s not fair to run the vacuum at 10 on a Saturday). Oh and the water for tea is boiling time to go.

TTYL,

Tiny
PS After typing this all up, M went and checked the mail and guess who's parents package just arrived!!!!!

This was the meal for the Finnish dinner,
Moose, potatoes and other veggies, that I cant remember!

This is Finnish bread, it was delicious!

Ah pancake mix!! How you make it so much
easier when you are making massive
amounts of pancakes!

Half of the table. (We moved one of the desks into the
middle of the room and people sat on the beds/chairs,
notice M has finally put her Canada quilt on the wall!!)

The other half of the table. (Can you guess what the
wall of inspritation is going to be? And can you see
Teddy? He is in there!)

This Weekend... Vienna?

I love how in this country you can say that! This weekend we went to Vienna. We arrived really late Friday night, but it was a direct train and I got to sleep on the way so it was ok. We were picked up by friends of my Auntie B, C & R who were totally awesome the whole trip!! We got to their house and pretty much went straight to bed! The next morning we went to the UN Christmas Bazaar where we volunteered for the Canada booth. It was soooo cool. They had typical Canadian baking and you could tell the Canadians when they would walk by and go “WOW Nanaimo Bars, I haven’t had those in forever!!” We got to walk around after that for a little while. We had food from Armenia and Kenya, the most amazing thing I’ve eaten in a while! After the bazaar we went back to C and R’s where I had a nap then we got ready for the Opera. We went to see La Boheme and it was just beautiful!

Sunday we walked around Vienna with R and another exchange student who was staying with them K. It was awesome. We got to see churches and also eat in the restaurant that was an underground cellar! But one of the coolest things was the Café Central. It was supposedly the place where the spies would meet after the Second World War. I just had a hot chocolate, but it felt cool to be there.  Then for supper we went to this place where they had collectables everywhere. I couldn’t stop staring at the axes over top of the table across from us!

Monday we had a tour of the UN building. It was really cool to see everything. We got to go into one on the translators booths! That would be a pretty cool place to work. The train ride home was nice, got to see the landscape. Then choir, then home to write this up. (So if it sounds a little tired, that’s because it is!)

There you go P is that fast enough for you?

Had an awesome weekend! Now I really have the travel bug!

Tiny

Ride to Vienna

Armenian food! The meat balls were Turkey!

Kenyan Food!!!

The Canada booth!!

One of the girls we worked with and
Teddy!

Oh how I missed my Ginger Ale!
I think I've had my fix now
for another 8 months!!

Teddy said that he really enjoyed the Opera!
You'll notice he's wearing his
'Good' Maple Leaf Shirt

St Steven's chuch, it was massive!!!

The Hot Chocolare from Cafe Central

Teddy was an Official Visitor!!

Perfection and Pancakes

Today is supposed to be inspection day. I say supposed because they said they’d be here between 7:30 and 8:30 and I am typing this up at 10:00. You can understand that last night M and I were up late just making sure everything was in order (I had a late class and then choir practice). Then we woke up early this morning just to wait for two hours and no show.

But am I upset? No I am not, because I owe a huge massive thank you to Mr. A! (yes I realize at home I call you J, but Mr. A sounds really cool!) Oh yes. You see at 9:30 the bell rang and we thought it was the inspectors,  woot woot, we could go back to sleep! But it wasn’t. It was the post man! Bearing gifts!! I want to take this moment to apologize, cause the Christmas card was at the bottom of the package I opened it all before realizing that I should have probably waited a little longer. However I am really happy that I didn’t, cause I was thinking that the only thing that would make up for needing to be up so early was if I could make pancakes. And there was the most amazing pancake mix in the box, and MAPLE SYRUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Stamps bag is already on my wall and I have been dancing around the room like a 2 year old since I got the package! Thank you Mr. A! (I should also mention that Mr. A is also the one whose mother made me Teddy!!)

Pancakes anyone!

Tiny

PS YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! ;)

PSS If you are the one who sent the silver box, could you post in the comments whether or not it is a Christmas gift? It's driving me crazy!!

Teddy's ready for breakfast!

The Christmas Card! It is really beautiful!

I am also ready for breakfast!

Supporting the team all the way from Austria!!

Notice how clean the kitchen is. I think it's perfect!!

No the lump in M's bed isn't that it's messy, she's
gone back to sleep!

Laundry #5

It is amazing how something like the laundry can be so important in a blog. Far more important than I thought it would be but there you have it. Anyway, this weekend we are going to Vienna, and I am trying to do my laundry, so I’m not walking around in nothing. Notice I used the word TRYING. Usually this apartment is great for doing laundry, yes we only have 2 machines and one dryer, but there almost never seems to be anyone doing laundry. Except today. And the reason for this is that the one machine wasn’t working. But I fixed it and then someone snagged it out from under me (the load before still had 12 minutes so I came back upstairs to do some cleaning/stay warm). Sigh. Ah well

But more importantly is that this week has been pretty awesome so far! And we are going to Vienna this weekend, so Score!!! I also received a Christmas card, but I’m not opening until at least December. :P Anyway, I’ll be making my 6^th trek down to the machines shortly in the hopes that I can get  a machine.

The girl with no clean clothes,

Tiny

PS this is officially my 50th post!! WOOT WOOT

The Laundry room (not today)

My shelf of clothes normally,
notice that there are actually clothes,
this is also not today! lol

The Little Things

Some days it's awesome parades, trips to Italy and finishing all your presentations that make you happy, and some days it's not. Like today for example, nothing too special. I got to sleep in until 8:45 (and other than Sunday that is the latest I have slept in for two weeks), and then M and I went grocery shopping, not usually a very awesome thing, more of a regular thing. But today it made the day awesome! We went to the Hauptbahnhof to get the groceries today cause I needed a Vorteilscard (the cheap train card).  There is a store up there called the Merkur, which we’ve been told about, but have never actually been there before. Anyway, it was much bigger than we expected right off the bat, but as we were walking down the aisles we found the most amazing thing ever… The International Food Aisle!! (Yes I do realize that being in Austria all of the aisles are international for me but just go with the flow on this one) We have been looking for some rather strange items, curry powder, soya sauce, you know things that should be in every person’s cupboards, and we found them!!! But not only that, we also found tortilla shells and Taco mix!! It was just the best thing ever!!!!!! (A very random thing to be happy about, but wow was it awesome!)

Following the shopping experience I headed off to class, and we had two little bilingual kids come in to talk to us. We had been playing “What’s the body part” in English and German and one of the little girls came up to me. She started to point at her hair, and I thought ohhh she wants to keep playing! So natuarally I said, “Yeah, that’s your hair! Where’s your nose?” She pointed with the other hand but kept pointing at her hair. I tried like three more times and didn’t get it. Then her sister said, “Violete” The little one was trying to tell me that my hair looked strange!!!! It was sooooo cute!!!

And then I got back home and there was an email from my Grandma! She sends me lots of emails and they just make my day!! So all in all the little things have been making my day today!

A happy for the little things,

Tiny
 
PS I got the demon thing wrong. They come on the 5^th then St Nick on the 6^th and then there is something that goes on the 24^th. Thanks P for pointing that out.

PSS Yes I know I went over my word limit, I’m just in a really good mood and don’t care!

This was just something pretty from the Chirstmas
markets that I thought I should photograph

More X mas Market

My Fave pic of All of them I think!

Christmas Krampus

I’m not quite sure how to do this so I will quote P on this one. A while ago he was telling us about this holiday they have here in Graz and he said something along the lines of “It’s this holiday where people dress up as devils and beat children and girls that scream too much.” (Sorry if I misquoted you P but this was in like October) Amazingly that is kind of what it was.
Don’t get me wrong this was like one of the coolest things I have ever seen, but as part of Christmas here they have the Krampus celebration (which happens on the 5^th of Dec) where the devils come and they beat the children that are not being good. Then Santa comes to the good ones on the 24^th. It is a pretty cool celebration and they have a parade to celebrate it, so guess where I was this evening! It was fantastic! All of these people were dressed in these amazing costumes. N (from England) kept saying it was like a horror film. The people dressed up came from all over and each group sort of had a different theme. For the first time ever I think I took more photos then M (my roommate). We started out behind this lady with a baby carriage, but then she left so I ended up right at the front, which I guess means that I am getting nothing for Christmas, cause one of the Krampus smacked me in the face!! It was just completely amazing.
Afterwards we just walked around the Christmas markets with E & P, M(from Finland), N & her mom and mom’s boyfriend.  The markets are a lot of fun!! (The fact that there is a different type of Gluwein at each one had nothing to do with it, I promise! ;P ) Now home to type this up and load the photos!
A much happier,

Tiny

PS Apparently when you are a Ling major you are not allowed to make spelling mistakes (hello I work with the IPA (not the proper alphabet), M, deal with it!! J)
PSS Auntie B I have the recepie for the Finnish Blueberry pie now!!

This is the meeting place that we
always go to in the Hauptplatz

I think even Hollywood would be jealous of some
of these ones.

They had bells on their butts so
they also made weird sounds

I'm pretty sure this is the one that hit me,
I have over 200 photos of the parade!

Creepy glowing eyes

More creepy

He has glowing horns

This guy was a little tired!

Christmas Baking

Sorry I haven’t been very good about blogging this week, I’ve been going through a little bit of a low in the culture shock cycle. (If you want to know what the culture shock cycle is like check out this video, except instead of talking about her mother it’s about being in a new country, PS I was in the cave this week http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVovNi55HrU&feature=related (Also M has to live with this craziness so a big thanks there!)) Any way I am back to my normal self and am writing this blog post. Not too much going on. Wednesday we met the Mayor of Graz at this ‘Welcome International Students’ thing, it was kind of nice, saw lots of people there.  But most importantly Friday was the Christmas baking day!! We baked tons of goodies (not all, but when do you get all of them baked anyway? It just means that we are going to have another one!) It was awesome. There is no such thing as too much chocolate and P’s face when he ate the sugar cookie, only slightly amusing! (No I didn’t get a picture, ah well) Anywho, lots of homework planned for the weekend. Oh and did I mention that I finally have plans for Christmas! Yay! I’ll tell you about them later.

Tiny

PS Dont ever get a phone that tells you that your email box is full.

The Chocolate Almond things (they were delicious)

All of our various supplies! (Yes I know there's not
a lot of photos but hey I was busy baking!)

Random Post

This is just so that you dont think that I've fallen off the face of the planet. Last night we went to a welcome party from the mayor of Graz, it was cool. Otherwise, I've mostly been doing work and school and stuff. But just to keep you all smiling, check out this video, I can't stop laughing whenever I see it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWQf13B8epw

Tiny
PS we also invented the telephone!

Christmas Lights and Finnish Dinner

On Friday we went to the first night of the Christmas markets here. It was lots of fun with all the lights, but we’ll have to go again to see what all was being sold, there were tons of people! Lots of fun!

But last night we were invited to M and A’s for a typical Finnish dinner! It was completely amazing. The food was fantastic! We started off with this bread and smoked salmon (or cheese in my case, I love those guys!!) and salad. It was great. There was also some typical Finnish alcohol, not my favourite part but everyone had fun watching (it tasted like the Finnish chocolateJ). Next we had meatballs, mashed potatoes, veggies and reindeer! Yes reindeer and it was delicious!!!!!!! It was kind of like roast beef, but not quite, a little gamier. Everything was so tasty. And then for dessert we had blueberry pie, but not like grandma’s, it was like custard with blueberries in it in a pie crust! So many blueberries too!! We had vanilla sauce on it too, which was so tasty! The evening was perfect and so much good food, not to mention amazing company!!! I think I’m gonna say it … I think it was even better than Thanksgiving.  

A very full,

Tiny

PS What happened to Calgary in the game?? 41 – 10 for Laval? Really?

Some of the Chirstmas lights!

The Spread of food (or rather some of it!)

The whole table. There were 15 of us!

The Blueberry Pies, soooo tasty!