Herbst

Matura

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of partaking in my school’s Matura Ball. This is like Prom/Grad for them and happens in October so they can focus on studying for  their exams at the end of the year. To begin the evening the Maturants (and exchange students) have to promenade out onto the dance floor in their white dresses and tuxes. Since our theme was time the ties and corsages where purple. Then the Head Director (principal) says a few words and the Maturants perform the choreographed dance they’ve been practicing for two weeks. Ours began with this medieval sort of thing then went into the Black Eyed Peas version of “I’ve had the time of my life.” The dancing was not the best; mostly it was just walking to the rhythm of the music. When the embarrassment was over and the pictures were taken I scurried off to change into my grad dress that I wore for my grad. (This inspired a very White Swan/Black Swan moment for me... however no blood was shed.) The rest of the night was a big party in the school with teachers and parents serving alcohol to the students and the school being trashed. The Maturants wear their dresses until breakfast the next day and acquire about two inches of mud on the hem. It was very well put together (the Maturants have been working on the decorations for two months) and more personal then our grad was in Canada. I appreciate the thought and the work put in by the whole school to make it happen. 

Me, Tuuli, Noelia, Veronica
Canada, Finland, Argentina, Itay

Desi, Me, Angie, Noelia

Konni, Tuuli, Me

White Swan/Black Swan


Herbstfarben
This week has been a regular one besides that. I had Wednesday off for some sort of holiday and took the opportunity to go biking and photograph some fall colours of the country side.

Rosa

Yesterday was the celebration for breast cancer by the local Soroptimist club (female Rotary). I went after school with two friends Desi (in my class) and Tuuli (another exchange student from Finland) for lunch at Habe D’Ere (authentic Austrian restaurant). After we went to check out the festivities and buy some NachSpeise (desert). My host mom is on the club and partook in modeling a fashion show in the Hauptplatz (town centre). She had told me at the beginning of the week that she put my name in the raffle. She had said there were mostly only prizes for old people anyways. Well here comes the draw and I had just finished telling my friend Desi (from school) that I never win anything, but that bag doesn’t look too bad (in German of course). Well my name was called for the bag. With much confusion from the announcer as to where “Paul” was, (my name is very confusing to most Austrians, they think my first name is Paul and last Tess).

After we were handed out 168 pink air balloons for the 168 people with cancer in Burgenland. It was like a movie when we let them go, really cute.

The Bag I won is real Leather and turned out to be worth 139.99 Euros. Whoa.

Today I made Pancakes. With Maple Syrup form Canada!