Ball and Sunshine

Hello Alllll

Many greeting from a lovely and sunny Salzburg!  It has been unbelievably warm and beautiful the past three days, and I couldn't be happier about it!  Last week's rain and general terribleness made the week almost unbearable, so it is good to be past that point.  On Friday though, I decided to join up with a few of the other assistants to go to Keri's school's ball (it's called the HAK, and the theme was originally named, "Hak me- I'm famous"), and goodness gracious, it was quite the experience.  In fact, being around 3000 teenagers is the first experience, being around 3000 drinking and chain smoking teenagers was even weirder.  The Ball itself was held in a HUGE events complex, and we had to take a 15 minute bus ride to get out of town to get there.  Unfortunately, they expected you to want to party till the wee hours of the morning, so the buses there ran until 10:30 and stopped running until 1:30 when you were allowed to go home.  Buuuuh, I am getting to old for these things!

In any case, the complex had 3 dance floors on the bottom level (accompanied by DJs) and 1 upstairs with a live band (which was the most entertaining). and there was food and bars everywhere.  The giant dance room downstairs was packed when we were dancing our hearts out, but we had to leave before we could not breathe anymore (due to the disgusting amount of chain smokers and a SMOKE machine), and decided to check out the band upstairs.  The band was fun, and around midnight there was some sort of giant spectacle but due to massive feet pains and a general lack of enthusiasm to beat the 16-19 year olds out of the way to see, we all sat and chatted during the show.  Luckily, there was not too much time left to have to check out and grab the first bus home, which is exactly what we did, and made sure to grab a würstl from the stand right downtown.  MMMMMM Würstl.

Saturday we had a little party at one of the teacher's houses (Sally Salzburg!) who made us delicious sandwiches, glühwein and punsch!  It was so fun, and it is great to have a group who gets along very well, and we even got to play Mafia.  Delightful.

This week, I am starting to think about next year...where I am going to be off to next, and about my up and coming vacations.  We have a week on in February, and since I don't know how much money I have to put into this vacation (I'm trying to save it for a bigger vacation in April to either Portugal or England. Hopefully Portugal), so I am thinking about going to Ljubljana (in Slovenia) and possibly to Trieste (on the Adriatic coast), money permitting.  I'm hoping to also go to Vienna next week, although that might be difficult seeing as though it is easy for funds to run low...

in any case, really looking forward to this week!  I hope to hear from one of the places I applied in SF this week....fingers crossed :)

Hope you're well!