All Hallows Eve

Well not really, but close enough. Yesterday we had a party, just a few friends over for some “Lady’s Fingers” and “Blood Punch” and cookies and chocolate(can’t forget the chocolate). M and I had bought some face paint just in case anyone wanted to do some, but it turns out we were the only ones. But after what she did to me I can understand. She turned me into a wood nymph. What started out as a harmless Jack-o-lantern on my cheek turned into a masterpiece complete with makeup and a ‘costume’, for lack of a better word. Then I got a hold of the face paints, but my attempt was a lot less successful. Lol.  Anyway we listened to some music, talked and most importantly we carved pumpkins! It was so awesome, they will definitely be scaring away the evil spirits, and maybe some of our neighbours too! It was lots of fun! But as we didn’t really get dressed up this Halloween I’d like people reading this in countries where you are celebrating Halloween to leave a little comment about what you are wearing for Halloween, or how you plan to spend the day of Ghosts and Ghouls!

Happy Halloween,

Tiny

Decorations!

Prepping the Pumpkin for massacre

Lady's Finger anyone? 

The Winking Emoticon Pumpkin ;)

The Drama Queen Pumpkin

Holiday in Graz and Goulash

Yesterday was a National Holiday here is Graz. It is to celebrate the different groups of the Allied forces leaving at the end of the Second World War. To celebrate everything is closed, including the University! So we were invited to E and P’s house for an afternoon of baking. We made lots of ‘Traditional Austrian Food’. We started with a bread called Stritzel, it’s a braided bread with sugar on top, that is usually eaten on All Saints Day and Easter. (All Saints Day is also a vacation here!) While E, M and P’s mom were making the Stritzel, P and I worked on the Goulash. It was awesome to see how they make ‘traditional’ goulash cause it is very different from our ‘Canadian’ goulash, or at least the goulash we make at home. Man was that fun! I may not have mentioned this before so I will say it now, the whole afternoon we were trying to speak German. I did finally break down and start speaking English, but everyone else says I did ok, so I’ll take their word for it. Back to the food, for the Stritzel, it being a braided bread and all, we had to braid it. By that time A (from Finland) had shown up and we got to watch a video explaining to us how to make the bread. That was a whole bunch of laughs! (It all was actually) But then we were done. We then got to do the most fun part of the evening which was eat our food! It was all delicious! But of course we couldn’t be done there! P wanted to make Tofflen Taches, which are kind of like cream cheese filled pastries but there isn’t really a Canadian equal to Toffeln, so it’s kind of hard to describe. Those were also delicious (both M and I had them for breakfast this morning).

And because it was the national holiday, we got to learn the Austrian National Anthem, thanks to E. We also got to watch the President’s speech on the TV. And I actually understood some of it! The rest E translated. It was a pretty awesome speech. After the speexh, we determined that M was the best Toffeln Tache maker, so we let her do that while P and I worked on the cupboards in the kitchen. It was fun!

When we got home, we cut my hair, and helped M with her version of the Post-it-Notes that she will be putting on her wall. I dont think there will be any Post-it-Notes on hers though.

Tiny

P making a game plan. (It didn't really work out that way!)

Me Chopping onions (it wasn't fair they all took pictures of me crying)

The Goulash and the Noodles (I can't remember the German name)

Trying to figure out how long to make the parts of the braid (we had 6)

The Toffeln Tache (I ate the one in the top right corner for breakfast lol)

Battle of the Beets

 As those of you who know me well should know, I am not the best at rotating the items in the fridge. Alas neither is M. The other day we came home and we noticed that there was a rather unpleasant smell in our apartment. Of course we have the bio garbage separated from the rest of our garbage so we decided that was the smell, took it to the bin and that was the end of that. However, the next day the smell was back. We opened the window, lit a scented candle and did our best to ignore it, but when one of us went to open the fridge door, we were both overwhelmed by the most disgusting thing I have smelt in a long time. Naturally we thought it was the left over lettuce we had from about a week ago, and the cucumber, and the apple. Needless to say a deep breath, a quick grab and another trip to the garbage bins outside and we thought, Yay. The smell, though, was not finished with us yet. Last night, when M went to open the fridge door the smell was so completely horrible that I couldn’t sleep until we opened the door, the window and lit our scented candle. We now knew that there was something else in the fridge that was making the smell and the longer we left it, the more disgusting it was going to get. We went through an inventory of all the food we had put into the fridge for a while and we realized that over three weeks ago, we had had beets for supper. And they were still in the fridge. And sure enough they were the culprit of the smell. Last night though we were both not in the mood to do anything about it so we left it until this morning. It was hilarious, we talked through every step, the door was propped open, the sink was emptied, the Mr Clean was taken out of the cupboard. M braced herself to run the garbage downstairs as I got ready to wash the container and fridge out.

The plan worked like clockwork.  There was lots of holding breath and gagging, but the smell is now gone. We still have the candle lit, but that’s cause I like the smell of the candle, and we are now going to get some homework done!

A very unsmelly,

Tiny

PS Check out the video on my last post if you haven’t already, I really liked making it and I’d like comments on what you think!

Chocolate and Chocolat

As is typical for a bunch of girls on a Friday night, we decided to order in Chinese food and watch a movie (we went over to visit A and M and N). We chose to watch Chocolat, and of course you cannot watch Chocolat without eating chocolate. M (I've given up the search for a new nickname) and I were in charge of the movie and the chocolate. Once we arrived however we found out that there was already some chocolate waiting for us. Check out the video and see what we thought about it. PS M talks really quietly so I had to put in subtitles.

PSS I was informed correctly that I forgot to mention there was this Finnish Licorice filling inside the chocolate (that was the part I didn't like) So I had to make a little edit to the video, still, Enjoy!

Day to Day Update

So, of course, it has just occurred to me that I haven't made an update in a little while (Monday, I think) and that I shouldn’t just update when I do something awesome but also on the day to day things. Thus this post was formed. I have now officially been in all of my classes for a week (or more) and I like most of them a whole lot. The system here is a little different from back at home, not the least in that almost everyone I know is in midterm mode, and I’m just starting.  The system here is that they teach us until about November 6^th and then we do presentations on topics for the rest of the semester. My topics are all pretty awesome (or I will do my best to make them all pretty awesome) but it’s going to be a little stressful when I actually have to do the presentations (all of mine somehow landed on the same week, lol). Then we hand in a paper at the end of the semester, and onto the next one. It’s kinda cool, I’ll let you know more when we start doing the presentations. Other than that, not too much has been going on, I’ve sent my documents home so that I hopefully won’t get kicked out of here (nothing is guaranteed though J). It’s rainy and cold but we’ve been making lots of soup to keep us warm. Teddy says he likes this weather, and he’s looking forward to what we plan next! I am too!

Love,

Tiny
PS I always like these posts when they have pictures so here are some!

This is a leaf from Gosting (I hope they all turn this colour)

The view from our window! I loved the rainbow
(There are two but the other one is really faint)

Tree Climbing

Here in Graz we are part of an international student organization, which does these awesome parties, movie night and outings. Today we went tree climbing. Now I know that climbing trees may not be too appealing to some people but zip lining is, and that was what it was. We had a great time! Teddy is a little scared of heights so he stayed home, which was probably a good thing as I may have dropped him. We started off the day on the yellow course, we were all pretty happy with our ability to cross things in high air, so we skipped the ‘easy’ green course. It wasn’t too bad. Feeling awesome we then went onto the Red course. There were some spots there that we a little more difficult. (This one with the stirrups, not so fun.J) So the four of us thought, “Hey, let’s try the Black course.” Only the hardest course there. The fact that the guy in front of us got stuck on the buckets should have been a clue. It was horrible (well not the whole thing, just the buckets) I nearly got stuck and needed to be rescued but thanks to the ESN (their the international group) cheering me on I made it! Then there were only the other 7 things to get through. It was such an awesome feeling of accomplishment when we were finished. Went out for an early supper and now we’re home. Hot tea and a warm shower so I can feel my toes again, and then my big fuzzy blanket! Overall an amazing Sunday, a great way to end our Thanksgiving weekend!

Tiny

PS Don’t tell Teddy I told you he was scared of heights!



Dont the harnesses look nice

Waiting for the next challenge (the buckets)

The Buckets (you were supposed to
gracefully jump from bucket
to bucket, it didnt
happen)

My roommate, and our friends who we went Tree Climbing with!



The ESN watching me on the buckets



M's Turn (see how she's doing it J)

Thanksgiving, Graz Style

For those of you following my blog, you will know that last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving. We didn’t have a celebration cause the timing was a little weird for some people and also we were still trying to find everything that we needed in order to make a “Typical Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner”, the first thing being an oven. Luckily for us there is this wonderful invention called the internet and we were able to find out how to turn out microwave into a microwave oven! So first things first, cook the pumpkin. They make the most wonderful dressing here out of pumpkin seeds (I’m sure I’ve mentioned it) but finding the real thing can be a bit of a pain. Luckily for us the local market had some and we made our own pumpkin puree (with the help of E and P’s food processor, Thank you!). The rest of the day was mostly spent cooking, chopping, slicing and tasting (you can’t forget to taste) all of the food that we were making. N came over to give us a hand and R and C from downstairs let us use their ‘oven’ and also were out official pumpkin pie tasters (although they said it was hard having the first pumpkin pie in their fridge the whole afternoon, we made two).
Everyone showed up, and brought something to the party, from salads to appetizers to drinks, and we all headed upstairs for a wonderful meal and lots of good conversation. (Apparently (inserts cool nickname here, I am still looking) and I do say aboot instead of about!) Teddy got in on the pumpkin pie action, and E and P brought apple strudel (cause there was no way I was making an apple pie in the land of amazing strudels!) All together there were fifteen of us and it was a great success, R and C want all of our recipes for American Thanksgiving! We had fortunately found this wonderful room upstairs with lots and lots of tables, not so many chairs but we worked that one out!  We sat around the table and talked until one in the morning (luckily I’d had a nap) and it just flew by, like time always does at Thanksgiving. Teddy’s still asleep and I’m typing this up and probably going back to sleep. Overall and awesome Thanksgiving!

Tiny

The Pumpkin Puree (When we made the first
pie I almost forgot to add the sugar!)

Everyone around the table

Luckily I didn't forget the sugar
and here's the final result!
Teddy really liked it!

The Second pie, ready to be eaten!

Ugg

I think that is the best way to describe what I'm feeling right now. I'm sure it will pass, and then we'll have Thanksgiving and all will be good again, but right for right now... ugg. It's not anything too bad it's just this ridiculous stamp thingy that we need to get in order to stay in the country. Now apparently we needed to get this before we left, but as no one told the coordinators that we needed it, we didn't get it. *sighs* This is just one more thing to add to the list. *sighs a second time* Oh well. I'll try and think about Thanksgiving and make myself happy!
In good news we did very well at Pub Quiz last night, and I think that my topic for my second class of the week should be pretty awesome.
I will definately be posting about Thanksgiving at some point, so I'll keep you updated.
A slightly frustrated,
Tiny
(Teddy wonders if they'll ship him out, he doesn't even have a birth certificate)

First Day of Classes

On this wonderful Thanksgiving Weekend I was able to finally start my classes! I am so ready to be in them that I'm pretty sure The Tall One (my roommate) was beginning to think I was going crazy! Anyway, the first one is down, it sounds awesome and I already know what my paper will be on, so I can get that started right away. (Well after pub quiz). Also on this weekend we helped P to install his new floors, which was awesome! It was so much fun, just like a puzzle only without the lid of the box so we had to do some guess work. I hope he likes the finished result!

Back to Monday, I love this city, where else in the world can you go to a late afternoon class, bike home, make a wonderful supper (or at least help), Skype for an hour with your family, vote for dorm advisor, invite neighbours to Thanksgiving (which we are having on Friday), and go to a concert all within and afternoon, without feeling rushed! And the concert was amazing, I'm so glad that The Tall One told me I was coming with her.

Busy as can be with my new and amazing classes and trying to get everything organized for Thanksgiving and I love it!

Keep you posted,

Tiny

PS I really don’t like calling my roommate The Tall One, but there are too many M's and A's over here so I am trying to get her a nickname. Any Suggestions? Leave a comment, or send me an email! Thanks

PSS And also thanks to everyone who's been sending me quotes, the wall is looking absolutely awesome!

The Concert hall, it was absolutely beautiful!

(Insert new Nickname here) and I at the concert!

The Annual Thanksgiving Hike

Every year (or at least all of the years I can remember) at my Grandma’s cottage, on Thanksgiving, we go for a hike to see the Salmon. It is always so much fun, such awesome landscape and the fish are really cool, but the best thing is that it is with family.

This year however, I am about ½ way around the world and it makes it very, very difficult to go on a hike with them. Luckily for me I have a roommate who loves to go on hikes, just because they are fun! And so today we hiked up to the Gösting Ruins! We went with our friend 'A' from Taiwan (yes, she is a different A from the Finnish one) and we hiked up the hill. It was absolutely beautiful. We took tons of pictures. As is always the case Thanksgiving weekend, fall officially started, and the weather plummeted 20 degrees overnight (yes that does make it 10 above), I had to wear gloves (I know, I’m a wuss) but it was still a great hike. The ruins are marvellous, and we had such a great time. We went to the Café at the top and had some warm drinks and ‘Toast’ which is pretty much a Panini sandwich. Then we climbed down (when it started to snow, Yes my dear roommate it was snow). Of course it wasn’t that late so we biked into town and went to the famous Sacher Café. There we had the official Sacher torte (chocolate cake) and a hot chocolate. Then home, where I was able to Skype with my family! Overall not a pretty awesome Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend, even though it was quite so far from home.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
Tiny

Teddy was ready for the weather!

A and M, we were all such shutterbugs.

Teddy's new Friend

He said he didn't want to walk so M offered him a ride.

The Ruins

Cheese bread at the ruins.

More ruins

Sachertorte!! So delicious!!

Rainy Days and Residence Permits

This morning I woke up, looked out the window, saw that it was still dark and thought, “Oh goodie, I can sleep a little longer!” But before I even had the chance to turn over the alarm went off. “Hmm this is strange.” I reached for my glasses and realized that it was dark because it was raining outside. Alas I had paperwork to hand in, the stuff I went to do on Wednesday but the place was closed. So M and I headed out into the wet.

The walk was great; I really do like the rain, once I’m in it. We got to the place with no troubles. It was inside that was a little complicated, and even that wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t until I went upstairs to hand in the paperwork that the trouble started. Now here in Graz they do things a little differently paperwork wise and it can be very frustrating, running around town trying to pick up/drop off paperwork in different locations, while navigating the forms in German. This one, though, had mostly been easy because there had been an orientation event to help us through. But when I handed it in the gentleman behind the desk went straight to my birth certificate (the long one that I had had to special order) and sighed. He said “None of you North Americans have had this done right. The Americans needed their passports stamped at home, and you need your stamped by the Embassy. Didn’t anyone tell you?” I’m like “No, if they had I would have it done.” (Not out loud of course)

Oh well, it’s just one more thing to do now, and I was in a really good mood cause of the rain, so I’m sure it will all work out. Now having had a wonderful lunch (Kebab), I have a cup of Tea, Teddy and the eReader that my Auntie B gave me, which I got working, and I am going to curl up and read!! Murder Mystery anyone?

Tiny

Teddy likes reading too!

PS One of my most favourite songs to listen to when it's raining! "When I think about Angels" Jamie O'Neal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsPxZs5GNW0

Funny Story

Today I went for tea with N up at the University. For those of you that don’t know I have been biking almost every day (which by the way means that I have saved approximately half the cost of the bike not buying daily bus passes J ). Much like my German I was not very good to start with so even a little improvement fells like a lot! I was feeling rather proud of myself as I avoided the potholes I have come to find and a tree stump and I thought to myself "Hey, I'm not the worst biker in Austria anymore! I'm sure that somewhere there are little kids who are worse than me." Of course, Murphy's Law, there is this little seven year old, who passes me going much faster and doing much better. Determined not to let this bug me I think, "Ok, he was seven, he's had lots of practice and I bet he comes this way every day with his mom. I'm sure I'm better than someone who was like four." The Universe, with its infinite ability to make me look bad, then had me passed by a four year old (on a two wheeler) and his parents. At that point I gave up. I'm not the worst biker in Austria anymore, but I am certainly nowhere near the bell curve. J

Tiny

A Small Dedication

So I know that I haven’t really been dedicating these to anyone, but today I am making a special dedication. This post is dedicated to my Auntie C.

Today I went to go to get myself registered for staying in the city for a year (so they don’t kick me out) and they were closed (again) for no reason (other than it’s Wednesday). This of course frustrated me to no end. I felt like just going straight home. But then something stopped me. The other day I was a little homesick, so I opened one of my hearts. For those that don’t know the hearts are little messages that my family wrote for me when I left home, for days when I am a little homesick. I randomly grabbed one and it happened to be my Auntie C’s. It read “If you are sad right now and inside reading this…go out and make some stories to tell me, now.” And I thought about that as I was biking home. So I stopped over to do some errands and instead of just going into default English I did everything in German. Yes the one girl did talk slowly (I was buying an English-German Dictionary) and there wasn’t too much else in the conversation, but it still felt good. While I was doing these errands too, the song “You and I” by Lady Gaga came on and this is one of my Auntie’s favourite songs. It made me smile. So now I am going to throw some cloths in the washer and head outside, on this lovely day, to do my homework, and who knows what else!

Thanks Auntie,
Tiny

And PS, All the hearts are going on the Wall of Inspiration.
PSS Happy Birthday to my Big Little Bro! When I get home we'll go out for drinks!

The Heart

Slovenija and Italia

Lets start with a few things: First, IT LIVES!!!! My computer is fully functional and I can now do things with it!!! The screen feels so big. Thanks to everyone who helped out with that! Second, M from Finland, thank you for being an amazing driver, if it had been up to me we would have never even made it out of Graz!

That out of the way I now will procede with the last five days. It will be impossible to write everything in my word limit so I've divided it up into parts, so if you are reading and you need to leave cause it's too long you can always find where you left off.


Slovenija:

This was the first stop on our adventure and we went straight to the capital. M, as I mentioned before was our chauffer, N gave directions (although by the end of day one we were all a little sceptical, yes I know the maps were hard to read J) and A, Teddy and I shared the back seat. A never complained, but Teddy is a bit of a seat hog. We got to Ljubljana (pronounced Liubliana) around three in the afternoon; yes I realize that we could have gone to a completely different country just for the afternoon which was awesome! We wandered around a little, found the info centre and saw some of the sites. Then we tried to find a hostel. This is where we found out the Ljubljana is 90% under construction and the other 10% not the way you want to go. We drove around for over an hour and when we finally got to the hostel we realized that it was two blocks away from our original parking spot. Quite funny really! We then got to see Ljubljana by night, it was absolutely gorgeous! We even had a crepe and a glass of wine. We were all rather tired so we went to bed kind of early, which was good because the boys we were sharing the room with were rather noisy at 1am until they realized we were in the room. The next morning we thought the fog might not lift, so we made plans to head straight to Italy, but it did and we were able to get to the top of the mountain. Teddy really liked the view. He also made friends with the dragons in Ljubljana, even though they scared him a little the first day! Then we headed to Italia!

Teddy and the Dragon

Main Squre in Ljubljana

Italia:

So now the mind boggling part of this whole trip is that I saw three countries in five days!! You can’t drive across my home country in that amount of time! Anyway, it was beautiful. We all said that it was like even the trees knew we had crossed the border cause they looked so different. We drove through most of Trieste trying to find this campsite that we were planning on staying at, that took an hour, then we drove for another hour trying to find the campsite. Thank goodness that didn’t work out because we found this amazing place called Obelisco which was just beautiful and right next to the tram line that led straight into Trieste! The first thing, set up the tent (which was only two person, oops) then to the beach, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. The campsite had a restaurant which we went to and it was hilarious because the waiter could speak better German than English so we talked to him in German (it’s amazing the number of people who speak German there)! I ordered the Calamari and it was a shock when it finally came! Then we went to bed (after a night time glass or two of wine) N and I shared the car, which wasn’t too bad considering the tent nearly blew away in all the wind!

My bed

N's bed

The Calamari

Italia 2:
BEACH DAY! It was awesome, eight hours of nothing but salt water (it was the Mediterranean) sun and sunscreen. Or at least some of us had sunscreen. J For the first time ever I actually got a tan instead of a burn! It was wonderful. The gelato was amazing too! We decided that since we had been lost driving through Prosseco that we might as well go and have a glass of Prosseco in the town of the same name! That was a challenge. Even though we had English, French, German and Finnish, we couldn’t understand the waiter, or him us, so we guessed. It was delicious!! Spaghetti with clams (at least I think they were clams) in a garlic tomato sauce! Then we each had our own desserts, passed them around and everything was awesome! Teddy missed that day and was kind of glad because they have the strangest toilets in Italy, they are literally holes in the ground with a little foot place. Not the most fun to use. Back to the car for the evening it was wonderful!

The beach, and Miramare Castle

Italia 3:

See I’m doing well keeping these sections down! Anyway the last full day in Italy was a lot of fun. Right off the bat it was 32 degrees in the shade, I got to wear my beautiful dress! Teddy came along and was wishing he had a bathing suit. We took the Trieste/Opacia tram, and it was funny cause the machine to buy your tickets wasn’t working, it kept spitting out our money. We walked around Trieste, saw another castle on a hill (they seem to like that here in Europe) and found a Gelateria! Wonderful! Then we got on another bus to go to the castle Miramare. It is this beautiful castle built back when that part of Italy was owned by Austria and it was made to impress! We had lovely prosciutto sandwiches and walked around the castle then back to the beach. This time a got a little red, but M had after sun cream which made it all better. We finally went to this pizzeria for supper and it was fantastic. As we were waiting for it to open though, there was this ceremony that was going on at the church across the street which was really beautiful with all of the people dressed in special clothes. More gelato for dessert! And home again. We met with a German couple who were also looking for our campsite so we helped them to find it! The only problem was that I was using the towels for a blanket and they were all still wet when we got back! It was a little colder that night to sleep!

The castle on the hill

Teddy and the most delicious canolli ever!

Home Again:

Finally today we came home and we took a scenic route to get here. We had this wonderful breakfast at the campsite with croissants that were amazing! We also had a German morning where we tried to only speak in German. (Well the other girls only spoke in German, I was the one trying) It was absolutely beautiful. The only trouble was that my camera had died, so I don’t have any pictures but I will steal some from my friends and post them! We got to see some of the alps and once again we drove through three countries, only this time it only took a few hours to do! It’s back to reality now, school starts tomorrow and I have to see if I actually made it into all of the courses that I signed up for. Teddy says he is tired and that he hopes that next time is just as much fun!


Tired but still loving it here,

Tiny