Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day. I had my first Intensive German class, which went really well. I'm the only American in in a class of people from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, Scotland, France, etc. Luckily, I feel like all my classmates and I are all at the same level. Our teacher, Karin, is 26 and really cute. She's a great teacher (although she's no Oudekerk or Gulielmetti ;)

I sort of have two sets of friends right now. One is a group of girls from my language class (a girl from Scotland, one from Denmark, and two from Poland). We all went out for drinks last night with some other girls from an upper-level language course. Some of them were hardcore and wanted us to speak in German the whole time, which turned out to be ridiculously fun. I think we were a little obnoxious to the tables around us at times (for instance, when we were trying to figure out what the word for "gay" in German is and were spelling it out a little too loudly). Oh well, so it goes. It was so interesting to make jokes that transcended the language barriers and laugh about the words that got lost in translation as well.

I have also become friends with a couple of other American exchange students. One girl, Jen, is from the University of New Mexico, and the other one, Tom, is from some school outside of Seattle. They're both funny and very easy to get along with. Yesterday we went to the Stadtpark (city park) to play frisbee and a couple of Austrian hippies joined in on the fun.

I'm desperately in need of a nap to re-energize before I tackle the massive amount of homework I have to do tonight. So, I'll leave you with a few photos.

















German scrabble! I caught my flatemate Gertrud playing it by herself in the kitchen the other night. I introduced her to Boggle....maybe I'll get up enough confidence one day to challenge her to German Boggle.

















My first day of school! My parents have always taken a picture of me on the first day of school (yes, even in high school) so I decided to take one for them. I'm squatting because I had to use the timer on my camera and wasn't sure whether or not I would be too tall to fit. Look at the pretty necklace my sister made for me.

















Die Hauptgebaeude (main building) of the university. Beautiful.

















Uni Graz! The word "University" is often just shortened to "Uni" in German. Once again, notice the Austrian architecture identity crisis.

Frisbee spielen im Stadtpark! Just some photos I took while we were frolicking in the park.