Austrain Internship: Day 20

Well.  I spent an hour expanding this post and then my phone crashed and I lost it all.  And I'm typing on my phone because the internet won't work on my stupid laptop.  So here.  Have my notes.  I'll expand it tomorrow.  :p

Now it's tomorrow!  I'm sitting in the kitchen drinking a Radler (super great...wish they had them in the US), enjoying a few hours off before we go to the continuation of the festival I'll describe below.

I woke up often during the night (mosquitoes have a bad habit of buzzing my ear at night) but I ended up sleeping until my alarm, which is a first since I've been in Europe.  These 12 hours shifts and 6am mornings have begun to get me to drink my coffee black.  Now I only just use 1 "zucker."

My two new colleagues in the Granny care apparently have lots of faith in me, as they left to go on a smoke break shortly after I showed up, and quickly told me several German phrases to use for when people arrive.  I started by asking if they wanted things in simple German: coffee with sugar milk, bread with butter or jelly.  I've improved a ton since I've been here, considering I knew *nothing* of German when I got here.

Three ladies showed up by 7:30 and were all very talkative and happy when I tried to speak to them in German, especially when they found out I'm an "English."  They would prattle off to me about something and I'd just have to laugh and agree with a few words in German.  Hope it was something to agree to.  ;)  Today everyone is SO talkative compared to yesterday.  Eventually there were six ladies here and one man...poor guy can't get a word in edgewise.  Our activities for today included playing ball again (except this time we had to think of a German word that begins with the same letter that the last word ended with...I was at a disadvantage...), and we sang traditional songs together.  Well, I kinda hummed the melody when I caught it, but that pleased the socks off a few of them.

I got to help Markus cook lunch again today, and after we ate, all the lads did first aid review, and I went too as I wasn't needed in the Granny Care.  After that we all got so bored that we played Fuseball in the ambulance garage...And I learned several great new words from Marco (my surprise roommate I wrote about in Day 16), like Schlechter spieler - which means "bad player," and is now Sasha's name.  ;)

I went to a festival tonight with Susan, the secretary, and her family, in celebration of 350 years of the Austrians defeating the Turkish in battle.  There was a reading from Rilke, who is my favorite poet of all time, (they read "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke"), and playing of traditional Turkish music.  It was amazing for me to hear Rilke's poetry as he intended it to sound in the original German, especially since I couldn't understand the meaning.  I could focus only on the sound of the words.

Finally get to sleep tomorrow!  Then Chris and I are going rock climbing up the cliff face that leads to Riegersborg Castle.  I'm super excited.