Psych

The weather had started exhibiting more spring-like attributes, but then it decided it wanted to play a trick. Psych! It is still winter. It snowed today with a fury! The wind was fierce, and the flakes were gigantic. I think I'm going to call it Indian Winter, like Indian Summer in the Midwest.

Mmm...what else have I been up to lately? 

Cerca...end of February- Noa, the first friend from my Vienna crew to come visit me in Hollabruun, and I went walking in the forest. One of the paths leads out to this point; she stopped to take a picture, so I did too. 

And I guess since it just snowed again today, it still looks like this, if not with even more snow cover...

Classic night at Da Vinci's with Mikal. Alm Weiss and Nimm2's and cards :)

At least we filled it with something... ha.

A couple of weeks ago Mikal and I had fun in the kitchen...

Stuffed Pizza Rolls (thank you Pinterest)

Lookin' good!

I was busy with these sweet little lemon cream cheese cookies. It was my first time making them, and they turned out great. Perfect lemon biscuit to have with tea ;)

These were absolute heaven.

The more recent past:

This past weekend I stayed overnight in Vienna, which I haven't done for quite sometime. The past month or so my weekend routine has been such: finish work around six on Friday and then watch the Freitags Film (Friday movie) with my family, then go to bed early-ish. Chill Saturday and hangout with Mikal in the evening. Chill Sunday and then go into Vienna for church and then home again in the evening. Such is life; I have quite enjoyed this new-ish routine. I feel as though it balances out my time here with all the people that I want to spend it with. For the past couple months though now, I've noticed my attachments here starting to deepen. When I go to Vienna, even if just for church on Sunday afternoon, I feel the desire to be in Hollabrunn spending time with my great Austrian family. And then sometimes when I'm in Hollabrunn, I feel the desire to be in Vienna with the friends I've come to know and admire so much and who also feel like a family. I do not think a single trip to Vienna goes by without me or one of my friends making a statement to the tune of, "Why does Hollabrunn have to be so far from Vienna?!?!" And even if no one says it, I know at least I think it. Balance. So simple, but yet so complex. I will say this though, it is nice to know that I feel comfortable and at home in  two different cities with two different families in this beautiful country.

On Saturday, I met with a few friends in Vienna, and we went to and Charlie P's Irish Pub in (preliminary) honor of St. Patrick's day. It was brilliant and I was a ball of pure contentment and satisfaction. My Irish burger with jalapenos and chips and Magner's Cider tasted precisely like home. After we left the pub, we went to Noa's to help her move her start moving her stuff from her current au pair job to her next one!!! Exciting times!!!

Liz, Ben, Noa, and my foot!

For once I am NOT the one with a cumbersome load. I was helping though- I carried a really lightweight duffel bag ;)

From there we headed to the Haus der Musik (House of Music) where we heard the lovely gospel choir from Lubbock Christian University perform. It was a small audience in an small intimate space, but it was great. They sang beautifully; I knew I would have shivers during most of the performance because they opened with a song that I sang back in my choir days. As soon as they started singing, it was all I could do not to sing along. The program was split up into psalms, hymns, and spirituals, several of which I had also sung before or at least recognized. I think I have resolved to join some sort of choir when I get home. I miss it so sooo much!! 

After the concert, we went to iCafe, which is a cafe that is set up and run by a couple of local churches in the effort to reach Uni Wien's international students. The YAG helps out with it, and this past Saturday was my first time attending. Oh my word, it was so awesome! There was a worship band playing for most of the night, there was amazing (free!) food and drinks, and then someone got up and gave a brief testimony and prompted a good topic of discussion. Just a quick note about the food- there was this great chili con carne with two huge bowls of shredded cheddar cheese sitting next to it. Just in case I haven't mentioned it before, cheddar cheese is not as popular here, and when Liz and I saw the bowl of orangey goodness, we couldn't help but embrace over it- the first and perhaps not the last hug over the sight of cheddar cheese. I met a few new people from the other church, and I cannot wait to go again and hopefully get to chat with a few more international students attending the university. When I first heard that YAG was going to play a significant part in getting it going every weekend, I got really excited and sort of emotional as well. Thinking about international students and remembering the time in Dundee when I was one...well, let's just say it brought back a lot of great and unforgettable times. Naturally I wanted to help out and be a part of this as much as possible, and so for that reason I'm sort of annoyed at myself for not being there to help out sooner... Alas, now I know what I had missed, and so now I hope it will take more to keep me from going again :)

Well, that's all I really feel like saying for now. Something else pretty cool happened on Sunday too, but my  and my eyeballs need a break from this screen. 

Until the next time, which will be soon, I hope.

~Sarah

Mission Accomplished

Well, I finished the novel, so here are the rest of the quotations that happened to catch my mind's eye. The last one hundred pages are rather a bit sad and keep the reader hoping; like in so many stories, everything becomes clear, characters are finally honest with each other and themselves, even when they didn't know dishonesty and half truths hung so heavily in the air.

"There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness."
"Bodily activity will sometimes take the sting out of anxiety as completely as assurance itself."
"On ordinary occasions she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine."
" 'Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.' "
"The season was that period in autumn when the foliage alone of an ordinary plantation is rich enough in hues to exhaust the chromatic combinations of an artist's palette."
"It was pleasant to realize the implicit trust she placed in him, and to think of the charming innocence of one who could sink to sleep in so simple and unceremonious a manner."
"Shallowness has this advantage, that you can't be drowned there."
Thomas Hardy in A Pair of Blue Eyes

Now I get to start a new book...

Maybe it's a Movie

Sometimes you read something or hear something that just sticks with you. Maybe it's because it holds resounding truth and applies to circumstances previously experienced or currently proceeding.  Maybe it is that those precise words strung together paint a picture in your mind that so clearly portrays an emotion you cannot help but smile at. Maybe you smile because you have already experienced the emotion. Or maybe because it is one that you have yet to know but would like to someday.

Words are rich; they are powerful. I long to have a better mastery over them, but thankfully I'm still learning.
The expression, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," is a complete and utter lie.

After I heard this particular line in one of my newly discovered addictions that is a television show, I decided then and there that I would start keeping track of phrases or passages that happen to strike a chord in me, whether it be for one of the reasons I mentioned previously or whether it is merely because I thought it a neat and intelligent thing to say. So, here we go.
"Maybe that's it, maybe life's not a picture. Maybe it's a movie. And I for one am curious to see how this one ends." George Tucker in Hart of Dixie.

[[I happen to be reading a love story at the moment, so that is perhaps a theme in some of these next few. However, I find them pointed and interesting. I do not think I have read an author who goes into these seemingly minute but in reality quite decisive and necessary details in quite some time. When I came across these lines in the book, I said either in my head, or many times out loud, "Woah, that was really cool."]]
"They entered, each with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that reciprocal love was their dominant chord."
"For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease."
"Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction."
"Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under awkward conditions."
"Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success."
"Circumstance, as usual, did it all."
"It is more vexing to be misunderstood than to be misrepresented; and he misunderstands me. I cannot be easy whilst a person goes to rest night after night attributing to me intentions I never had."
"Anybody's life may be just as romantic and strange and interesting if he or she fails as if he or she succeed. All the difference is, that the last chapter is wanting in the story. If a man or power tries to do a great deed, and just falls short of it by an accident not his fault, up to that time his history had as much in it as that of a great man who has done his great deed."
"It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully' a great one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff."
"Nature seems to have moods in other than a poetical sense: predilections for certain deeds at certain times, without any apparent law to govern or season to account for them. She is read as a person with a curious temper; as one who does not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially, and in order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice. Man's case is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the miser's pensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing the victim."
"We colour according to our moods the objects we survey. The sea would have been a deep neutral blue had happier auspices attended the gazer: it was now no otherwise than distinctly black to his vision."
"Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will rootlessly live on."
Thomas Hardy in A Pair of Blue Eyes

As it is so now, I am not yet finished with the book. To be fair to the quotations that equally deserve such a publication that I have not yet reached, there may be another post of this nature. I was trying to finish the book and put all of them in one post, but other things have since acted as a road block to that feat. Also I thought it time that there was another post.

Spring is coming!!!!!! Happy March :)

Cheers!

~Sarah