First Day of Classes

Thursday, February 11th. Today was the first day of classes. It was very structured and we were busy most of the day. The first class, statistics, starts at 8:30am. All of the student made it to class which is pretty easy because it is just right down the hall. I’m not really thrilled with being up that early, but the trade off is we will have most afternoons free to get the most out of the city and trip. Carl described it as being “afternoon people.” Not everyone is taking Stats so it also allows some people to get a head start on the showers. I have to say they are awesome; the hot water turns right on and the water pressure is better than Franklin Pierce and my house, even though we are on the American 5th flight in the building. The next class started at 10, which was History of Math. It is usually a two hour long class, but it was cut short today so we could go on an 11:15am tour with Herr Fritz. We got to learn a lot of the history behind where we are staying and the art in the building. We are all very fortunate to have an opportunity to be staying in a place like this. We were able to have more of a grasp of where everything is after the tour. Herr Fritz showed us some normally locked rooms, too. They were the most interesting. He showed us the school’s old library. It looked like a scene from the movies of Harry Potter. As we were leaving the library, we went over to an encasement with a cover over it. He told us a story about how the school was given a gift from Egypt and pulled up the cloth covering one of them. There were two mummies lying there. One even had a pet crocodile mummified with him! Next came lunch. I can’t remember what we had, but I do know we are all trying to smile and be nice to the cafeteria ladies so with hopes in the next meals there may be a little extra on our plates. Between 2-4 we had our final class (thank goodness) of the day, Vienna Through the Ages with Heinz Kröll. He is a very smart man and knows a lot about Austria. We learned a little bit about the evolution of modern-day Austria. One word that might describe this class was: Maps. We were all pretty worn out by this time and were struggling to be attentive to all of the slides he was showing. After napping or going to the grocery store we had dinner. A meeting to just touch base with everyone occurred, and then we were off on our own for the night. As was mentioned in the first post, the boy from Texas, “Brother Billingsley” invited Ally and Chrissy to a café with his parent to keep the “family” connection going. They got some of the scoop on the town and had a great time. Others chose to go to a local establishment for some karaoke and the rest hit the books or just relaxed. I’d say it was a very interesting day, and I can’t wait to experience more of what Vienna has to offer.

PHOTOS