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!

Always Read the Label

I was thinking of calling this one Laundry #5 but that’s too many in a row. I am doing the laundry I mentioned in my last post and also trying to get a start on my papers. Not fun. But that is not the point of this post, oh no. As I may have mentioned before I finished all of my presentations on Tuesday and now that I no longer need to look presentable I figured I should change something. After discussion with N we both thought that hanging our hairdos was the best idea (not too permanent but still makes an impact). So what did I decide to do?

Easy, of course I wanted to dye my hair partially purple!! (Is there any other colour?) So on Wednesday that is what I did. With some help I managed to buy the dye, and get it all put in my hair and it looks totally awesome! (See the pics below).  The only problem about buying some sort of hair care product in a foreign country is that the instructions and labels are all in a different language (no duh right) well you should always look up the words 'washable' and 'permanent' before you buy, and even more importantly before you have the cool tin foil look going on. So I now have this awesome hair colour until it grows out! Not that I am complaining it is amazing! Teddy thinks that I should keep my hair like this forever, and I think I agree! But let this be a lesson to all of you, Always Read the Label!

Tiny

The unread box, why didn't Teddy tell
me what the instructions said

Waiting for the dye to set

This is how M says I should always wear my hair!

The final result (I'll have more pics with
this colour, so dont worry if it's not
too clear)

Laundry #4

So I’m not actually doing laundry today, I am just thinking about doing laundry, I probably should, but it’s not that I have a lot of clothes to do, it’s just that some of them smell kind of smoky (but that is kind of normal here, thus the dilemma, to do laundry or not to do laundry). But it is still time for a post! Yesterday was a pretty awesome day; I finished my final presentation (yay!) I made myself a hot chocolate and it actually tasted like a hot chocolate (not like just warmed up milk), and we came in 12^th place in pub quiz (two rounds with 9/10, yeah, we rock like that!)! J

This morning though, not too much has happened. I heard the alarm go off, but didn’t get out of bed for another hour. (I don’t have classes, the alarm was  for M) Then I sort of slowly got ready for the day (and by slowly I mean in a half an hour, it really doesn’t take me that long), and I went to go get on my bike. Note I need to find something to put over the seat so that when it is cold like this my butt doesn’t get wet from the frost on the seat. And then I came home to write up this post. ;)
Now I bet you are wondering what exactly happened in between those two things. Well, let me give you a link to a former post: http://tinyandteddyseetheworld.blogspot.com/2011/10/rainy-days-and-residence-permits.html

And now let me tell you that after a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy I am LEGALLY A RESIDENT OF AUSTRIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Please excuse the exclamation marks, they are needed to express the complete joy I am experiencing!!) Here are some photos of Teddy with the card, I’m not sure how much I can legally show, so I just have my picture.

In other awesomeness, a big Happy Birthday to my Grandpa!! I hope it is a good one and that you get some yummy cake. Mmm cake, now I’m hungry!

A Hungry Austrian Resident,
Tiny (and yes I went over my word limit, I don’t really care today!) J

Teddy with the Permit!

More pictures! (Teddy is such a great sport!)

Goose and Spa

This weekend has been pretty awesome. Friday E and P invited us over for supper. It was a celebrating of Martinigansl (please excuse my misspelling). Anyway, we went over and were fed goose. Coming from Canada you would think that goose is something I have tried, I hadn’t before, and it was sooooooo tasty! They also had stuffing, salad and other sides and wonderful tiramisu.  We then watched Quest for the Holy Grail, I think I may have watched it a few to many times, lol J. It was a great evening!

Saturday I went on a trip through the ESN. First we went to the Hundertwasser Church. If you want to know more history of Hundertwasser check out this link, but I’m not going to go too far into that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

Anyway it was a beautiful place, with amazing colours and no straight lines (he didn’t like those) even the ground around the church was uneven. He also had monuments built for all of the other religions around the church so that people wouldn’t forget that theirs is not the only belief.

We also went to see the Lippizaner horse farm. Did you know that they don’t turn white until they are like 4-5years old? Most of the horses we saw weren’t that old yet, so they aren’t the white colour that you would expect. We had  a lovely tour and I got to pet the horses!

The last stop on our tour was the spa!!!! It was wonderful, although at first it was a little bit scary. Now I know that a spa sounds like the least scary place to be but the claim of this spa was that they had Finnish Style Saunas, I’ll let you look up how they work. After a while though you get used to it. We had a great time and felt so relaxed by the end of it that when I came home, I crashed into bed and didn’t get up till morning!

Well that was my weekend (minus all the homework I’ve been doing).

Miss everyone back home,

Tiny       

P with the Goose

All of us around the table (E & P's siblings were there)

In honour of my being Canadian I got the Pier 21 cup
and the Timmy's tea!

The goose with all the trimmings!

The typical Hundertwasser Church picture,
Notice all the round edges. 

He even painted stones on to avoid straight lines

Teddy did come with, it was just too cold for him outside!

See what I mean about the colour of the horses!

Rollercoaster

This week has felt rather like a rollercoaster. If you read Monday’s post you know that I was on a rather awesome high of the ride. Tuesday wasn’t bad, just really tiring. Wednesday was not fun. I went back to bed in the hopes of waking up on the right side of the bed, and thankfully my roommate and P were great on making it better. (Tangled is very good medicine for a bad mood). Then today was just kinda blah. Yup, rollercoaster. So I am going to write a little bit about the awesome little things that happened so that I can see this week in a good light! I hope you enjoy, these are in no particular order, by the way!

1.       I knew more than one answer at pub quiz.

2.       I have learned how to roast and grill food in the microwave thingy (Cheeseburgers here I come)

3.       The sun was shining almost every time I had to go outside.

4.       Brownies!

5.       Listened to some rocking music.

6.       I finished two of the three presentations that I had to do for school! (and they went well!)

7.       Hugs from friends!!

8.       Planning the adventures for the weekend.

9.       Finding out that P doesn’t know what sugar cookies are so I can see his face when he tastes one for the first time.

10.   Shipping small things home in a week isn’t too expensive.

11.   My cousin is a crazy Harry Potter fan, and that makes me happy.

12.   I’ve added new quotes to the wall, which is almost finished! (Maybe)

13.   There’s someone in Calgary who I am able to help with their exchange.

14.   Kebabs make things better!

15.   I have awesome friends! J

See I knew that would work. If anyone back at home is feeling down, I recommend doing something like this (it is really hard, you want to write down some negative stuff, DON’T)

And the picture this week is just one example of how Awesome my roommate is, she made me a Nutella piece of bread and look what she did with it!

A much happier,

Tiny

PS As I was posting this I came up with more things to add to the list. Family is one of them!

Teddy with the Awesome Roommates
hard work!

A close up of the A

See I told you I had learned to roast chicken!!
It has Tomato sauce and Cheese on it!

I feel like a post

Today was the first of my presentations, and I was freaking out the whole day (cause of course it was in my afternoon class!) It was AWESOME. The comments the girls made were so funny. One girl said that if there had been a deaf person in the class they would have understood cause I talk so much with my hands too! That's a total family trait! Then when I was shopping for groceries I found a chicken breast with the skin on it that looked like the kind that my Auntie B makes, so I thought "Strange oven thingy, you will work for me so that I can make Barefoot Contessa Chicken tonight." And I bought it. It turned out wonderfully!! I pretty much devoured the whole thing on my own, but M made me share! And now I am heading out to choir practice which I love!! So from a not so great morning to an amazing night, I love this exchange some days! Oh and for those of you following, the paperwork is well on its way to being fixed too, life is just awesome!! (And to my little brother, yes I am doing better than Captain Awesome at this moment!)

Also, I've been listening to Montgomery Gentry, for no real reason other than I thought of them the other day and this has become my theme song for the Month! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJppi_wtgAc&ob=av2e (and young is totally relative!! You'll understand if you watch it!)

Love,
Tiny

Oh and for my random picture (cause I like them so much) another thing that a friend posted on Facebook this morning!

PS while I was writing this M tried to salvage some week old bread so we could have some with supper. It was sooooooo funny!

Sweet Weekend

And yes the pun in the title is totally intended! You'll see soon! Anyway, here in Styria (the province that Graz is in) there is this most amazing chocolate factory. Think Willy Wonka’s only real, and we have been told that you can’t be living in Graz without going to the factory. We were going to go with a group of other international students, but E and P had other plans for us. They planned out an entire weekend around the factory.

So yesterday we left Graz and went to Burg Riedersburg (pronounced Reedersberg). It is this beautiful castle, and if I understood correctly one of the few places that wasn’t ever taken over by the Turkish. And this really isn’t surprising it’s on the top of this really steep mountain. We went with E and P and E’s sister K. We had a great time, the rooms were beautiful and there was so much history about the people and about the witch trials! Very awesome. We had lunch there, but not too much cause right afterwards we went to the chocolate factory. It is owned by a man named Zotter, and it is incredible. You go from room to room and try all the different types of chocolate, from straight cocoa beans all the way to hot chocolate (I had hazelnut chocolate in mine, M had caramel). And in every room there are lots of different types of chocolate! It was sooo tasty, except the first one which was just ground cocoa beans with no sugar that hadn’t really had anything done to it yet. Once done we walked around what looked like a petting zoo but it wasn’t, no touching the animals. It was a good walk cause we were all a little hyper from soooo much sugar!

Then we went to the spa! It was incredible, it is a natural spa where they bring the water up into pools and there are different temperatures and lots of jets and stuff! We stayed in the water for a long time, which was nice and very de-stressing. From there we went to P’s parent’s house and stayed the night. They fed us the best Breakfast this morning; it was similar to a Canadian breakfast with eggs and sausages.

I’ve gone way over my word limit but I’ll say one last thing. Teddy wants to thank E & P cause he hasn’t been out of the house in a while, and I want to thank them too, for organizing this wonderful trip and all of the treats (both edible and not) that happened this weekend!


Anyone else want chocolate?

Tiny

Teddy was ready to go!

See how steep it is, I wouldn't attack it either!

The Entrance to the Castle

Teddy said that he could live there.

All of us with the Castle in the background.

Waiting for the car to head to the chocolate factory!

This was the part where the chocolate
started tasting like chocolate!

Making the hot chocolate (it was sooo good!)

Did I mention that we met the guy who made the place?
Well we did and here's the picture with him!

My University

For the first time, since the first week I was in Graz, I have had my camera on campus while the sun was shining! This is awesome because I now have some completely beautiful pictures of the University. I wanted everyone back home to get a feeling for where it is that I am studying. I feel like I dont give the vibe that I am doing work here, just having fun, so here if proof that I do darken the doorways of a classroom. I really do love the place, there are almost always people walking, or biking, around and there are so many activities going on, there are almost always people dressed to the nines getting pictures taken out side the main building. So I thought I should get some pictures too! They aren't of me persay but they are of the buildings, so it'll give you an idea about where it is that I am studying and what the ride to/from school looks like!
Enjoy,
Tiny

My Bike (at the Uni) the colour makes it easy to find!

One of my classrooms.

These signs are everywhere, with maps on them!

The main building on campus

My building (and no we dont have classes
under the tree, it would be cool though)

I'm in the Insitut fur Anglistik (English)

Part of the path for the bike ride home!