First off, I am a guy who is used to wing 2A in corrado hall. We are up until the fat lady sings...which happens usually around 2 or 3 am on any given day. Here, the night seems to creep up on you and tell you to go to bed right around 9:30 or 10. I'm positive this is a result two things. First, it is custom here to shut up around 8pm every night, and the neighbors aren't afraid to tell the police how loud the Americans are being. And second, its much easier to get exhausted here. Between walking everywhere, traveling, learning, cooking, and "celebrating" :) its easy to get tried as hell, and just want to go to sleep, all the time. I guess this will be good habit forming for the rest of summer.
Our rooms are quite nice. My bed is almost as comfortable as the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in (Will's guest bed in his room at home). It has made me realize I like firm beds. So when I get back to P-town, with my current bed fiasco, I'll keep that in mind. Our desks are great, and there is more than enough room for everything we brought. I am trying desperately to prevent myself from associating hw with my bedroom. Thanks to my psych teacher, Dr. Bailey, from last semester, I realized doing hw in my room all year probably contributed to my lack of sleep abilities. So my room here is for relaxing activities only. The showers and bathroom, one in each room, are nice as well. The rooms really feel like hotel rooms. We have one small table at the center, and a balcony with a glass door opening out to it. Nick and I are on the third floor so we have a great view of our courtyard and basketball court. I have enjoyed multiple warm nights out there, either skyping with Whit:), reading, or just enjoying where I am.
That's a good segway into my main topic: down time. I have really noticed this week that we really don't experience much of it, at least so far. Currently, my conclusion is that I have not gotten past the mental status that I am here on a temporary vacation. And thus I have a tendency to want to cram in everything I can while I am here. Unfortunately, you can't go non-stop for two full weeks without feeling depleted, let alone 8. So I am going to try to come to the realization that I am LIVING here for 5 1/2 more weeks as part of my (temporarily) permanent life. Maybe that will help me pace things, and not feel so rushed. I have always been a bit of a rushed guy in general, so I have going against me. Hopefully I can start to settle down and relax just as I would at home during the summer....
But that brings up another thing. I really miss the people closest to me. This last weekend in Budapest for one reason or another the homesickness set in. My guess is that its because I have started to reach that maximum time I can go on max speed and I start to want some comfort from them. So I'm hoping my attitude change will heal a bit of it. Me being the optimist, I also started looking at it in a brighter light. This trip has really made me appreciate things like mom's absolutely fantastic cooking. I have never had so many Nutela sandwiches in my life, and I love that stuff. I think I am doing an okay job of cooking. We don't really go out to eat. In fact, I have not been out to eat once on this trip other than when its paid for on our class trips, or on this last trip to Budapest when we didn't really have a choice. During the week here nobody goes out to eat. Guess that's good for a money standpoint. Still, I have found a bunch of really cool restaurants and cafe's on a few of my runs, and want to eventually have a bit there before the trip is over.
Once again, that leads to the next thing: runs. Coach Conner put a pretty concrete milage schedule on us before we left. Lets just say I haven't quite lived up to that. However, I do think I am doing much better than I thought for this trip. The altitude is a bit higher, so its difficult to go farther and faster. Plus the exhaustion I mentioned earlier makes it hard as well. But I have been regularly going on runs every other day, about 50 min on average. That may be a good amount for most, but realistically I should be at about 60 miles a week by now, which is about 8 miles a day, everyday. Hopefully I'll continue to work up from where I am at. As the sun comes out more I'm sure that'll help.
SUN! We have only seen three days of sun since landing in Salzburg. Now those three days were phenomenal. They keep saying its going to get better.... I am sketpical....but hopeful. One of those three days I went on an exploratory run (all of my runs have been pure exploring runs, with lots of turn-arounds and discoveries), and discovered a perfectly picturesque field on a high hill that wound around to a view that took my breath away...not good on a run, lol. I have been aiming for hills I can see from the center on all my runs. If I can reach them I get three good things from them. 1) A hill workout 2) An incredible view of Salzburg and the Alps 3) Visual orientation to find my way back to where I came from (this also has really helped general orientation for the city as we walk around).
This next thing has to do with last week, I forgot to mention it in my last blog. However, I am not sure how I did because the Brussel's Symphony is one of the highlights of this trip so far. Now you all know I am a band geek, and a general music buff of all kinds of music. And I have listened to quite a bit of classical and symphonic music. After all, a third of my iTunes is easily symphonic music. So I have alot to compare to. But this talented group of music God's from Belgium blew me away. I have never in my life heard such a beautiful sound come from a group this size. Yes the technical skill was there, but the intonation among every player in the ensemble was so pure, so perfect, I thought I was back at home listening to a movie score through my noise canceling headphones. The sound filled the room from the bottom up. It was absolutely amazing, it was pure grace. I was in heaven for two hours in a 1000 year old concert hall in downtown Salzburg. They featured a pianist in their first piece, which lasted 45 minutes. He played the entirely of this song with his left hand. His right fell down at his side, neglected as if he forgot he had it. Then, after the intermission, as if he had discovered it, what he did to that piano was unbelievable. I instantly thought of the movie August Rush when the little boy discovers his hidden talent for guitar. The speed at which he played those notes, without sounding scattered or "too much", resembled dominos at first. Then it wasn't in any order. It was more like a circus, his fingers, moving around, over lapping each other, all while his head stayed still (unless he slightly stood up sometime, kind of like Ray Charles' signature move). The way he moved reminded me a little of a hurdler. His limbs moved with skill and speed, while the rest of his body was constant. Amazing. I was in awe when we left.
I am taking two classes right now, Engineering Statistics, and History of the Cold War in Europe. History is by far my favorite of the two. I really enjoyed studying the cold war in high school, and much of what we are learning now over laps with what I did then. My favorite book of all time is 1984, and we watched the movie and discussed it in class. Dr. Eifler is the most amazing lecturer I have ever had. His presentations, although fast paced, are extremely fluid and intriguing, almost a little dramatic. The power points must have taken weeks to make haha. Statistics is less than exciting... Dr. Kennedy is an interesting guy. He is probably the best guy for the program director job. He'll down a full liter with us any time of day and plays foosball regularly. But statistics is a hard class to make exciting. I am learning, but history just over shadows a bit. We have regular and heavy hw for both classes, which is difficult to complete between travel. But we manage. The first exams are next, and I still don't feel like I am in student mode yet. We'll see how it goes.
So that just about covers my life here so far. This wed we are going, as class, to a concentration camp in Germany, then to a lake country afterwards, probably to get rid of some of the dismay I imagine we will be left in after the camp. Then this weekend the plan for Nick, Rachel, Erin, and I is to go to Switzerland and spend the weekend hiking at the base of the Eiger. This is where I'll get my pictures to make Chase jealous haha. I have been looking forward to this alps trip since we left, so I hope it works out well. We'll take a cable car to about 5 thousand feet, then hike another 2 thousand to base camp. I am STOKED!
Until next time.
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