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My study abroad program has assigned me to keep a journal, so this is now counting for that as well as my own goodtimes. Ja!

So I will talk about my today, at least.
• Morgenklasse - in my classes, I am becoming more and more confident because I realized that I really know all the stuff we're doing with grammar and I can put it together into sentences (in relatively low-stress situations). It makes me feel much better about this whole thing. I hope class speeds up soon though, because I don't want the Cultura Wien thing to just be a repeat of the last half of Deutsch 101. Which is what we're doing now. There is definitely a different approach to answering Evita's exercises (especially speaking) between the Americans and the Europeans in my class. I won't go too far into it, but we definitely apologize more for our shortcomings, zum Beispiel, wir (sie) sprechen und fragen in Englisch oft. I try not to do this as much and just get corrected when I'm wrong because I think it's annoying when other people do it. Sorry guys.
• Freizeit - I walked a little up Bauerngasse and found einen kleinen Bäckerie mit einen Tisch draußen. I sat there and ate an apfelstrudel and drew my first piece for the independent study. I showed it to the other VCU people and now they know that I Can Draw.
• Tour - Renate, the director of Cultura Wien, gave us a tour in Deutsch of some notable places in the Inner Stadt. I realized many of the things I researched or saw on the internet before coming here are mere blocks away from the school. It was gratifying to be able to understand what she was talking about, although I know she was really slowing it down for us.
• Abendklasse - Nothing very notable. Steffi war Krank (I thought the professor said "Steffi ist Drunk" for a very confused second). I hope we don't continue to relearn the Akkusative und Dativ cases in the next classes because I really want to spend time on New Stuff.
• Nach klasse - On the U-Bahn to class, I was talking to Spencer a little bit and learned that he likes the band I was vaguely thinking of seeing tonight (Battles!) in the 3. Bezirk. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to go, but his interest gave me some wild intertia so we decided to check it out after class. Nick attached to our group somewhere along the line. Unfortunately, we walked around and around Erdgasse but could not find anything on the directions I wrote down, and the three people Spencer asked (in Deutsch, natürlich) told us three different things. We never found the Arena Wien and gave up around 9:45. Alas. It was an adventure, though. So far it's been at least one Adventure every day here, mostly because of getting slightly lost constantly.

So far, my interactions with Real Austrians have been have been very short but very stressful. Most of what I've said to them have been ordering essen/kaffee, "danke schön", "bitte", greetings/departings, "alles bitte", "ich spreche Deutsch nicht gut", and "es tut mir leid". Every time a Real Austrian asks me a question or says something my mind goes into PANIC and I understand nothing because I'm too busy thinking about how I can tell them I don't understand. I became upset last night about this. I asked for some falafel in an Imbiss in the Spittelau U-Bahnhof. The guy asked me if I wanted the lettuce/tzatzki/whatevers in the pita, which of course I only understood through his gestures after he repeated himself a few times. Then as I was putting my euros away some teenagers came in and started asking about the food with the Imbissherr. Hearing them speak so effortlessly made me upset about things being so stressful here, such as figuring out how to order a pita falafel. Then I walked outside and stared at the Hundertwasser factory and got a truly impressive amount of tzatzki on my face and hands but couldn't ask for more napkins because I don't know the word for napkin.

HOWEVER, I do forget this is only the 4th day of really learning Deutsch here, and I've only had 4 months of the language total. I took Spanish for four years in high school, but I never could understand native Spanish speakers. But when I'm part of the extreme minority of not being able to communicate, i.e. in Wien, it's a lot more uncomfortable. However, I can tell that I am getting better much faster than I would be at VCU, since I practice in some way any time I go outside of the dorm.

I'm down to the last of my raisins. I hate having to buy more and more stuff, but not having anything I want to eat besides that VERY DELICIOUS Milchkäse and also very delicious cold cuts (i.e. fat fat fat mmmm) makes me sad.