Hey, this is a new experiment...

Vienna... Vienna... Vienna...

It's so hard to believe we have one week left in this city. I feel like I say that every week, but it's true! Lillian is leaving on Thursday to go to her summer program in Tübingen, and I won't see her again till the breakfast on the day before she goes into the MTC. Things in our classes are winding down with some big projects... Monday we had a paper to finish up for Patrick, so Tasha and I went to buy a ton of chocolate for our study party, which we spent analyzing the post modern family. The chocolate was excellent, and I think my paper was alright. We were kind of tired the next morning though; Lil and I bought a loaf of amazing bread for lunch that day - beautifully dark and moist with plenty of carrots and seeds in it. We enjoyed it in the shade of the Musikverein, and after lunch we ambled across the street to join our group at the Museum Wien. It was air conditioned, which was a big deal. It helped me to focus on the art. This time my favorite painting wasn't on the list of ones we were studying for class. It was a Waldmüller painting of a family, entitled "Congradulating Grandfather on his Birthday." The expressions on each of the children's faces were precious. Each was off in his or her own little experience of childhood bliss. The twinkle in the Grandfather's eye beamed out at one of the little shy children, approaching his grandfather timidly to wish him happy birthday. I wish my picture did it justice...

The other cool part of the museum was their collection of old clothing/dresses, some of which belonged to the Empress Sisi herself. In one part they showed how unhealthy corsets were.... they actually prevented the full development of the rib cage, scarred liver tissue and were just really unhealthy in general. I used to wish I could fit into all of those incredibly tiny dresses, but no more!

Later that evening Lil, Tasha and I went with Phil and Oliver to see the new Harry Potter in German. It was a really nice theater, and the movie wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I admit I'm excited to see it in English, since the dubbing always seems to lose some of the excitement/experience...

Wednesday our art class went to the Leopold museum, which had mainly more modern paintings by Schiele and Klimt on display. I liked the feel of the museum, and it wasn't just because it was air conditioned (although that did augment my good opinion quite a bit) - the colors of the walls, and the spacial set up just helped us all flow effortlessly from one room to another. The only thing it was missing were big, velvet-covered exercise balls to roll around on to enjoy the art with (yes, they had those in the Belvedere). After that excursion, Tasha, Lil and I went on an adventure to find the perfect apfel Strudel... Chelsea and Megan had claimed they had found it. It was a long, hot trek, but thoroughly rewarding. This strudel was truly amazing, with it's mouth-watering vanilla sauce and beautiful presentation:

We had two tests this week as well... one on Zwillingsformel, which are special kinds of idioms in the German language, and the other one was an art quiz. I think I did well on both of them, but don't have my results back yet. The weather while we were taking those tests was at a record high, 100 degrees with lots of humidity. Luckily it cooled down a bit this weekend.

This weekend I spent working on my last couple of projects (art, lyrical, and research) and visiting the museum of natural history in Vienna, right across from the art history museum. Chelsea, Tasha and I especially enjoyed the live fish, and the butterfly collection (the butterflies were all dead sadly). There are still a couple of other museums I have to see before we leave... so much to do and so little time!

I hope this week is wonderful for all of you!!

Love,

Margaret

Sunrise, Sunset, Rain, Art and Gulasch

The Belvedere

This week I worked really hard on "being a good girl", a phrase I remember vividly from my readings in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. The disadvantage of this behavior is that there isn't much exciting adventure to tell, so it remains to me to write you about the beautiful mundane moments of the week (as mundane as they come here in Vienna lol).

The weather has been almost unbearably hot and sticky, unbearable because there is hardly any air conditioning in Europe, so I've enjoyed swimming in the pool (yes, we have a small pool in our front yard) twice this week. I went jogging a couple of times at sundown, and have found the perfect running stretch along a little stream that creates the perfect thinking atmosphere.

Wednesday night I was walking home from institue in a light rain shower, and my flip flops were giving me a blister. Finally I couldn't bear it any longer, kicked my silly shoes off, and walked home in the rain splashing through puddles as I went. It felt so satisfying to feel the rough texture of the ground under my feet... it made me feel alive... young... joyful... connected. I would reccomend it to all of you as something to do in the near future.

I finally made the aquaintance of the turtle that lives right outside of our window. I had dragged a chair next to the window sill to set some chocolate milk on for me to enjoy while I was doing some research. I kept hearing slight rustling noises from the bushes, and got nervous. My imagination jumped right to a snake, and as soon as it did I climed through the window back into the apartment. A few minutes later I peeped out and found Pünktchen crawling out of obscurity. She is a big and beautiful turtle to behold. She crawled away the other day, escaping her little compound, but Assini luckily found her nestled in the bushes.

Tuesday morning I got up around 5am, and after a shower I left the house for a quick run to see the beautiful sunrise. Even though all of our man-made architecture and art is beautiful and inspiring, I have yet to find something that makes me love life more than a sunrise.

Even so, the Art history museum here in Vienna never ceases to facinate me. This week our assigment was to pick three pieces to do three different assignments on. One of the assignments was to spend at least 15 min. in front of a painting writing about someone in it from first person perspective. I chose a painting of David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio, and amazed myself

with my own discoveries as I sat, looked at and really pondered the painting. David's face isn't full of triumph at his conquest. His mouth is set, his eyes turned away from the gruesome head he holds as far away from himself as he possibly can. His eyes look upward, above the darkness he is surrounded with. Light almost seems to eminate from him. The two other pieces I selected were Bruegel's Tower of Babel, which I tried to examine in detail, "reading" it from left to right, asking questions and answering them, and then Rafael's Madonna of the Meadow that I mentioned in my last letter for a formalist analysis.

The other art museum we saw this week was the Belvedere, which has a collection of the beginnings of modern art. Our focus group was Schiele, Klimt and Kokoschka with a smattering of the impressionists. I think I had one of my first aesthetic experiences with art when I saw The Kiss by Klimt. this picture that I got from online conveys only the merest shadow of the beauty of this paiting. The texture gets lost in the photograph, and it is precisely the texture that gives the painting life when you look at it.

I spent most of the weekend alone doing research since Chelsea lives in Justin land, Lillian lives in Lloyd land, and Tasha was in another part of Austria visiting relatives. It felt good to know that I've made some more progress on that. I watched a couple of episodes of sesame street in French, to help me remember some of it for the coming semester. Saturday evening Charles (one of the other study abroad people) and I went to Pizza Bizi for a delicious slice of Italian amazingness, sprinted to Sanoni & Sanoni for some ice cream and barely made it to the Minoritenkirche for a free concert by a youth orchestra from Texas. They were amazing, and the accoustics of the church made it an unforgettable experience. Phil called when I got back to Alterlaa and invited me to go to a movie night at McKay's house, so we took the U-bahn there to see the last little bit of Kung Fu Panda, which I had never seen before. I really enjoyed it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Tuesday night our whole study abroad group went to the Gulasch (German word for stew) museum. I got a turkey gulash, and was transported into a world of delicious wonderfulness I had no idea existed. The chocolate gulasch that followed was also delicious, a little too rich, but it had an interesting kick of pepper in it that I might try adding to some of my chocolatey recipes in the near future...

I can't believe how fast this is all winding down. Just a few more weeks of amazingness... till the new adventure begins!

Love and miss you all!

Margaret

Just contented :)

It has been a relatively peaceful week. How strange does that sound??? I guess Europe has changed my perspective on what being busy means...

Classes are still going well. We had two German classes that are worth mentioning, and they both happened on the same day. In Patrick's class we're talking about traffic. This time we got split into groups to represent different interest groups fighting for funding for different safety enhancement projects. Patrick asked if someone would be the moderator, and I volunteered. While the other groups were figuring out their arguments, he explained my job and told me to really get into my role. I enjoy acting and putting on a narrator voice, but I hadn't done it for a while. Sitting at the head of a table full of people to start a type of talk-show was cool... I remembered how much I missed acting. I enjoyed asking critical questions in a cool emotionless voice to get people to argue with me. I'm such a nerd!

In Peter's class we never got around to economics. Chelsea was talking about Justin, her fiance, just like she always does, and Peter asked her when she was getting married. It sparked a discussion that lasted for the entire class period on families... their roll in society, the divorce rate, gay marriage, everything. It was really interesting to hear an Austrian's perspective on it all, and it was so neat that he allowed us to use our class time to talk about something that was really important to us instead of sticking stubbornly to the topic. I want to teach like that too, and be flexible enough to deviate from the plan sometimes to just go where discussion takes us.

That same day (this was all on Thursday) our art class finally finished the theory for the baroque/renaissance period, and we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum to put our new knowledge into practice. The interior is spectacular, and the paintings are even more so. My favorites were Madonna of the Meadow by Rafael and Bildniss eines jungen Kaufmanns by Holbein and Brustbild einer jungen Venezianerin von Dürer. I love that I'm finally figuring art out what art means, now that I feel like I've begun to understand literature and architecture. I love seeing the things we learn about in theory. I'm beginning to see my reactions to art as reflections of my identity. One of our assignments was to analyze ourselves and try to figure out weather we were more sophic or mantic and then how that would affect our reactions to art. I think I'm a pretty thorough sophist - I tend to rely on logic/reason/my brain to make decisions as opposed to my feelings.

I discovered my new favorite portable lunch this week... they have palat-schinken (just like crepes except a little bit thicker) in packs of 5 at Billa (the grocery store), and I brought a small jar of nutella with me from home, and heated the crepes up in the microwave at the institute... man they were soooooo good!

Lillian and Tasha went to Prague this weekend, and I decided not to go so I could get some research done. In addition to reading all about Elisa von der Recke, I went to the outreach center for movie night on Friday, then on Saturday morning I helped with a move and went shopping for a gift for my host mom since it was her birthday today. I wrote another article for the BYU life sciences magazine about hypertension in rats. I've missed talking to my family who is out in the wilderness just now... but they're getting back tomorrow!

Lillian just got back and it's getting late! Love and miss you all!

Margaret

Summer Semester, Apple Pie, Bratislava

Weeks fly by incredibly fast when you're having fun/have tons to do...

We started German classes this week for summer semester, and it looks like we lucked out when it comes to teachers. Both of them, Patrick and Peter, are doing unit studies, which is really good since I'm actually getting some more challenging technical terms to learn that will broaden my vocabulary. Class starts earlier now, so that instead of having to be in city center at 1:30pm, we now have to be at class at 9:30am, which is a change for the better in my opinion. The one drawback is spending two hours in the unconditioned upper floor of the institute. It's been pretty hot and humid lately, and I miss air conditioning.

We have one other new class on art that replaced our architecture class (we finished that up on Tuesday). It's with Professor Isaac, a BYU professor who arrived in Austria with her family a few days ago who seems really cool/knowledgeable. Her goal is to help all of us have aesthetic experiences with the amazing art here in Vienna. "I'm not naive enough to believe that it will happen to all of you" she told us, "but I want to give you all the tools and opportunities I can to do it." What is an aesthetic experience? A brush with art/music/literature/a play etc. that inspires you and engulfs you so that you loose all track of time. It strikes you to the very core. Needless to say, I'm quite excited to oblige her and have one of those experiences asap!

Let's see... other fun things that happened this week...
Wednesday Lillian and I went on splits with the sisters again. It's such good experience, especially since I've been getting excited about serving a mission lately. Sister Frier and I went to visit a woman who had accepted a Book of Mormon. She said she couldn't invite us in just then, but she wanted the sisters to come back and give her son a Book of Mormon as well. Next we went to visit Billiana who wasn't home yet when we got there, so we talked with her grandmother who happened to be there and set up an appointment for next time. Saturday I joined the sisters again to go visit Billiana and we had a really good visit. She came to church today, which I was really happy about. We'll see what happens!

Thursday we decided to celebrate Phil's b-day with some apple pie. The people at the outreach center were kind enough to let us use their kitchen, and I made one of the biggest apple pies in the history of mankind and it tasted amazing! We actually ended up using only one pie, so we took the other one home to give to our host family. That half made up for the lack of apple pie on the fourth of July (I still missed it).

Instead of enjoying apple pie together, our whole study abroad group went out to lunch at an old famous restaurant where they served big roasted pork shanks accompanied by potato and cabbage salad and french fries. Needless to say it was DELICIOUS!! Later that night I heard fireworks going on, which naturally surprised me. Grabbing my camera I sped outside to find out what was really going on. I started filming the fireworks, and then I just couldn't help myself... I started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" as loudly as I could manage. It was so exhilarating... patriotism filled my soul and resonated in every note. On the last line I noticed some dark figures leaning out of windows and over balconies, and realized I wasn't alone. I finished the last line, and was shocked with applause from both sides of the street. Laughing in awe and disbelief I ran back to the gate, let Tasha in, and enjoyed an evening with her doing homework and watching "Our Mutual Friend", which is officially one of my favorite movies of all time.

Friday the fabulous four (Lillian, Chelsea, Tasha and I) took a train to Bratislava to hang out for the day. The heat/humidity were kind of hard to handle, and I had a really bad soar throat alll day, but aside from that our walk through the city was fun. Lunch was interesting... I ordered what the waitress suggested, which was some kind of pork schnitzel with cheese and ham, but when it arrived it was still raw in spots. Not especially appetizing. I sent it back to have it cooked some more, but somehow had trouble enjoying it after I had seen the pink flesh. We saw a couple of cool churches, explored their crypts/treasure chambers and made our way to the fortress on the top of the hill overlooking the entire city to enjoy the view. Meandering down we saw a few more churches, explored the market place, saw the changing of the guards at the ?presidential/parliamentary? palace, and headed back to Vienna in time to go to the activity at the outreach center that night.

I'm kind of sick just now... the soar throat I had on Friday sadly got worse, and I've got a full on cold now that is exceedingly bothersome, but I'm still doing alright and enjoying myself.

Hope you are all doing well too, and to hear from you soon!!!

Love,

Margaret