Österreich!!!!

I made it alive, there is snow in the mountains. More to come later!

VA to NC, to NH and Beyond

The last couple weeks have been awesome! I have gotten to spend time with my mom's side of the family, many of whom I haven't seen since I was 18 or even 12! Craziness! I have heard some great stories about my mom when she was a kid and my Opa and Oma (grandpa and grandma) growing up in Germany, making sauerkraut, and escaping into West Germany from Poland after WWII. After hanging out in Virginia for a few days, my Tante (aunt) Bernie and I drove down to North Carolina for 5 days of hiking, rafting, and mountain biking. It was awesome. Even though they don't have Cascade style mountains over here, they still know how to have fun outside! They also know how to "arger". That's German for joke, frustrate, annoy... it doesn't quite translate. One instance of argering on this trip involved Tante Bernie setting me up on a date with our raft guide. That made for a lot of good jokes. I'm not sure if their fun was diminished or enhanced my my willingness to joke along with them.

It was really interesting being in the Bible belt. It didn't really occur to me until I saw what looked like the ten commandments on the wall at an Arby's. I thought it was probably the ten commandments for superior burger cooking or something like that (seriously), but upon further investigation, I realized it really was the ten commandments. You wouldn't see that in Bellingham or Seattle. I wish I had more time to write some more thoughts on that. Maybe later.

After all of that fun, I flew to New Hampshire and have spent the week helping my hilariously wonderful friend, Kristin get ready for her wedding which was this morning at 10 am. I was the dishonorable maid of honor and was chosen, we joked, purely for my organizational and anal tendencies. Fortunately she paid me with coffee every day, so I was good. Even though there was tons to do, we had a lot of fun catching up.

I am on a super slow Internet connection so I will put up pictures after I get to Austria probably. I will catch a bus to Boston on Monday afternoon and fly out at 10pm to end up in Innsbruck at 2 pm on Tuesday (local time). Holy cow, it is getting close now! For real! I haven't really had time to think about it, with all the activities and wedding coordinating I've been doing the last couple weeks. This will probably be my last post until I get Internet in my apartment which might be a few weeks. Hopefully not too long. I know that you are all just on the edge of your seats, waiting to hear about me picking my nose, or whatever this stuff is that I write.