Poland

On Thursday night, everyone loaded on to three buses and we took off on a ten hour (doesn’t that sound pleasant, John?) bus trip to Czestochowa. 

It was rainy and pretty gloomy when we arrived around 5:30, and we ran on over to the chapel quickly to make it in time for the unveiling of the Black Madonna. We had to get in there as soon as possible, because there is always a big crowd that comes every day for the unveiling.

It was interesting, because when they told us beforehand about “unveiling”, I was thinking curtains being pulled back. In reality, the image was covered by a gold door that slowly slid up as trumpets played in the background. It was really interesting (as I said before) and neat.

After Mass, we all walked over back to the hotel drop off place, and ate breakfast. Krista and I were lucky to get there quickly, because the line took FOREVER. It was around breakfast when I realized I was sick.

Again.

We had Mass after breakfast, but we had a little bit of kill time in between. The church itself has a really neat style, but I didn’t take any pictures because you can look it up and find better pictures than the ones I could take.

Anyways, during the kill time, I heard the Credo being sung, so I hurried on over the side chapel where I heard the music coming from, and lo and behold! A Novus Ordo Mass in Latin! YES! It was awesome! Right after that Mass, we had “our” Mass, offered by the Franciscan priest that came with us (I actually forgot his name…oops)

Communion time was interesting, because the chapel only had seats for about forty people max, so everyone else was kneeling/sitting outside of the grated area. When the priests came out to distribute Communion, everyone was scattered about and had to scurry around on knees to receive the Host.

We basically looked like a bunch of little birds waiting for the parent bird to feed us. It was really funny, but also really cool, as it was such a real image of God feeding us with Himself.  

After Mass, we had about two hours of free time. Krista and I first headed back to the hotel to pull some Zloty (Polish currency) out of an ATM. The ATM was in the mini casino the hotel had in the basement - it was kinda sketch, and stinking of cigarette smoke.

It felt SO weird pulling Zloty out, because the exchange rate is about three zloty to one US dollar, so I pulled out 300 zloty and I felt like I was really killing the bank, when it was actually about $85.

We ran into a couple other FUS students, ended up walking around with one girl, Leslie, who is really nice, and stopped in at a pastry shop.

This brings me to one of my favorite things about Poland – delicious and cheap pastries everywhere!!

 

Once free time was finished up, we got bussed to Auschwitz and then Berkenau, the Nazi concentration camps where most of the millions of executions took place.

I don’t know if I could communicate verbally about that experience, so I’m not going to try to communicate it on “paper”, aside from saying it was awesome (in the old sense of the word) to see the cell that St. Maximilian Kolbe died in.

Then we were bussed back to another hotel in Cracow, where we had dinner in and spent the next two nights in. It was about eight when dinner finished up, but it felt ridiculously late. A lot of people went out and did a bit of exploring in Cracow, but I was way too tired, so I ended up playing cards with two friends, John and Ariana.

John is super quiet and reminds me a lot of Louise – he seems to always be thinking deep, interesting thoughts, and he’s really nice. Ariana is…hard to describe. She’s very independent, and fun to talk to. I feel pretty comfortable around her when we’re in small groups together – I met her in my philosophy class.

The next morning, we had breakfast (the hotel made AMAZING little pastries) and then got a tour of Cracow. The tour guide mostly talked about the Cathedral though - I'll have to write another post with all the little tidbits she gave us. 

Pretty Polish streets.

Then we had a couple hours free time of Cracow, which was super fun. For some reason, everything is cheaper in Poland, so I got a LOT of Christmas shopping done. Now I'm just worried about how I'm gonna get everything back...
Anyways, on the weekends, Cracow has this huge market thing, with people and stand EVERYWHERE. It was so fun exploring! They also had this one building with a ton of stalls inside.

The Divine Mercy shrine was…interesting. The old chapel was beautiful and we got to see one of the original Divine Mercy paintings (THIS one). We prayed the chaplet in there with the sisters, and the chapel was prayed alternately in English and Polish and maybe another language. After the chaplet, we walked on over to the new part of the shrine, and Sister Maria Vianneya gave us a beautiful talk. She had a large picture of the Divine Mercy image on the stage with her, facing us, and she showed us the smaller copy she had on her little stand, facing her.

Honestly, I don’t remember most of the talk, but I keep remembering how while she talked, she was constantly looking at and pointing to Jesus, and whenever she mentioned him, you could tell she was talking about the person she loved the most, HER spouse. It was really beautiful.

She told us one story I remember; she was walking around the chapel grounds one day, and she told Jesus “You are my spouse. Now show me you love me.” A few minutes later, she walked into three Hungarian singers, and they asked her if they could sing to her. She said the singing was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever heard, and afterwards (this is her reenacting the scene) she looked up to the heavens, smiled and said “thank you.”

After she finished her talk, we had a little over an hour to wander around, and I spent most of that time waiting to talk with/talking with Sister. Then we had Mass in the old church, and headed back to the hotel.

Now, the new shrine….it is quite…interesting. Here’s a picture (not mine)

Basically it reminded me of the U.S.S. Immaculate Conception. Some of the kids made some really funny remarks about it looking like a spaceship, but I can’t remember any aside from Krista’s “Hail Mary full of grace, let us go to outer space” and “the spirit was willing, but the architect was crap.”

Anyways, Saturday night, Krista and I decided to go back to the Center and see if any of the shops were open. We walked in the wrong direction for quite a while, backtracked a bit until we found some students walking around and then asked them for directions.

We took some more wrong turns after that, but we eventually made our way to the market.

Most of the stalls were closed, but we enjoyed some yummy Polish street food (much better than the Viennese street food, and cheaper too!). We got a kebab (different than the Gaming kebab), and then some super delicioso perogies. I also found some bowties/cenci, and it was so nice! I don’t remember what its Polish name is, and I thought it was an Italian pastry, so I’m a little confused.

The kebab - David, you would have LOVED this!

We stopped in at a tiny grocery store on our way back, where the employees looked at me really suspiciously. I got some Milka chocolate milk mix though (I’m super excited to try it!) and this yummy treat…

It tasted like a graham cracker wafer thing topped with chocolate and a touch of honey.

That night was a rather uncomfortable night, as the kebab food didn’t sit well with me.

The next morning, we went to Mass in the Cathedral that we visited the day before. It was another Latin Novus Ordo Mass, but since the altar was in the middle of the church and we could only see the back of it, Mass was a little confusing. Still, it was glorious to be singing the Latin Gloria, Credo, etc.

After Mass, we had over three hours of free time. Krista and I walked off with a large group, including the Student Life director Mr. Pipp, and one of the RA’s, Sarah, but we eventually ended up walking around by ourselves. I got some cool gifts and a nice bag, but after a while, I got really homesick and sick of people and tired and I just wanted to be home, but Krista was very patient with my being a baby and an unpleasant traveling companion, so she probably gained a lot of graces during that.

A little bit before we walked/ran back to the bus, Krista and I watched three break dancers that had a big crowd watching them in the middle of the square. Whenever Krista has enough internet to upload it, I'll link it – it was super random and funny and made me think of Vincent break dancing at Chuckie and Katie’s wedding.

When our free time was up, we were bussed over to the hometown of JPII, Wasovic. It was actually a really nice little town, and I swung on one of the playgrounds until someone passing by mentioned that Sarah said we shouldn’t swing. Oops.

The church itself was nice, but confusing for me. I liked how much light the church had, but the altars and the placement of the various articles/relics made my already scattered brain more confuzzled. I did a Holy Hour there, which helped SO. MUCH.

After the Holy Hour, we only had about half hour to piddle around. Mr. Pipp told us about pope cake, a certain type of cake that JPII always requested whenever he stayed in Poland, so it came to be known as pope cake. He said it was overpriced and overrated, but Krista and I found a really nice little bakery that had it super cheap, and it was DELICIOUS. I had about 1.53 zl left, and since you can’t exchange coins, I spend it on a bag of pink fluffy little macaroon things. They tasted kinda like airy dried cotton candy. Pretty yummy, but at that point, my sore throat was begging for something that did NOT involve sugar.

No idea what this is, but it was super yummy

No idea what this is either, but also yummy and EXTREMELY sugary.

We left Wasovic, stopped at a hotel for an authentic Polish meal of fries and fried chicken, then made our way back to Gaming, where we arrived at 2:40 in the morning. I actually slept pretty solidly most of the trip, which made getting up for Mass the next morning much easier. 

And that's Poland in a nutshell, ladies and gents!

Random Notes: Volume 1, Issue 2

I'm finally getting better, which means...I can eat chocolate!!! I'm already 2/3 of the way through my Dessert Au Chocolat (don't that sound fancy?) Milka bar, and I opened it up five minutes ago.

By the by, Milka chocolate is basically the European equivalent of Hershey's chocolate from what I understand. And speaking of Hershey's, I got some M&M's at the train station yesterday, and though they were overpriced, the fact I was eating AMERICAN candy made me really giddy!

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I like how they do bed covers here.

Instead of a sheet on top of the mattress, and then a cover over that, they simply slip the sheet over the cover (like a pillow)

It's really comfortable, and you don't have to worry about dirtying the comforter/cover thing. It makes me think of a two-for-the-price-of-one thing, for some reason.

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Krista and I had a child this weekend. Her name is Gwendolyn. More on that later, but isn't Gwendolyn such a beauteous name?

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I had my first midterm today. It went fairly well - it was mostly essays and ID's, and I don't know how Dr. Hass grades them.

I decided to have a little fun with myself for one of the ID's, where he gives you a keyword, and you give some information bullet points on that keyword.
The ID was for the 30 Years War, and for the background, I wrote a bit about the Second Defenestration of Prague.

Here's Wikipedia's version: "....Soon after, the two Regents were thrown out of the third floor window along with the Regents' secretary, Philipus Fabricius, but survived after falling 70 feet."

And here is my version; "Protestant rebels were gathering in Prague, 1618. Catholic king sends messengers to break it up. Messengers promptly tossed out a window."

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

...just another blog post! I like to keep everyone on their toes about when I'll post. ;)

The morning got off to a nice start with 7:30 Mass by the bishops. A lot of bishops and priests came in a couple weeks back for a short LCI program to help them learn better English, and they've been offering Mass at 7:30 consistently, which has been AWESOME. However, now they're all going back to their parishes, which makes this morning probably the last Mass of theirs I'll have attended.
Major bummer.
After Mass, I talked with Mrs. Newton, because I was scheduled to do Ministry to Mom's today, but I was (still am) getting over the sore throat thing and didn't want to infect the girls. Mrs. Newton was really funny, and told me I was still quite welcome to come (she seemed especially eager), because the girls being around sick people "toughens them up".

We had our Medieval History small group discussion session today, which was interesting enough. I wrote a letter to Polly Wolly the first half of it, and asked lots and lots of super intelligent questions during the second half!

Then we had Christian Marriage, and John, I didn't play any games on the computer! Instead, when I got bored because someone got Cassidy off topic, I tried drawing him. Because he wouldn't stay still, I drew my reflection from the laptop screen, which sounds rather egotistical, but it was actually kinda interesting - I've never tried drawing my most loverly face before.

I regret to inform you that despite my great drawing skills, I was not able to catch all the refined and elegant features my face possesses.

Once class was over, I piddled around till the Mensa opened (half hour later), ate lunch, then went back to the room and, you guessed it, NAPPED!

After my short but lovely nap, I walked over to the Newton's. Mrs. Newton was pretty much running out the door when I arrived, and managed to give me some rushed instructions on what to do with Allie (the youngest), as all the other girls were gone and she had somewhere to go.

I spent the next hour and a half reading to Allie - I'm really surprised I didn't lose my voice.
Some of those stories we read were kinda strange - one was about a soldier cuts off the head of an apparently harmless old witch so he can get her tinder box, and eventually uses this tinderbox to buy himself a lot of stuff, fake friends and eventually the prettiest princess ever. And apparently that's totally fine in this magical world.

Anyways, after dragging Allie off the couch to play outside with the next girl who came in for MM's, I sent some letters, and began working on my philosophy paper.

Ugh.

Writing papers is agony enough as it's torture having to organize my jumbled thoughts and put them on paper. But writing about philosophy? Way worse. My thoughts are ten times more jumbled when it comes to philosophy, so we'll see how this comes along.
I have so many papers to write this semester. It's so sad. I miss my Comm. classes where I just made stuff.

Then I had a dinner by myself, because Krista didn't need supper, and I'm sick and don't feel very peopley.

When I finished eating, I started having a mini panic attack about my first midterm, choosing my history paper topics, and my philosophy paper, so I stopped in at the church to calm down.

I don't know if this is a regular thing they do (if it is, I wish I had learned about it earlier!), but the bishops and priests were having Rosary and then Benediction. I only got in for the tail end of it, but it was really nice.

After that, I decided to begin the inevitable, and study for my history midterm. I went to this spot (I'll add a picture later) near the Bibliotek.
It's my favorite studying spot so far because it's not too far away from the room so that it takes too long to get to, but it's also not too close to people. As Goldilocks would say, "it's jussstttt right!"

After that nice study session, I went to the laundry room to put my clothes in the dryer.
At first, I was the only person in there, but by the time I had pulled out a shirt, smelled it, and remarked "ew, this does NOT smell good", another person had entered and started their laundry. I look over, and there was my philosophy teacher, smiling;
"Hi Clare."
I just have impeccable timing.

Anyways, I asked him what he was doing in the dorm laundry room, to which he responded he doesn't have a maid to do his laundry, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he doesn't have a washing machine in his apartment or wherever he lives. That seems kinda weird since he's a professor, but still, it was funny seeing him NOT in a suit.
His version of dressing comfortable was a nice t-shirt, nice pants and nice shoes.
Sheesh, Europeans - they can't even relax without being fashionable.

I put the clothes through another cycle with lots of nice smelling stuff and when I checked on the load fifteen minutes ago, it smelled deeeeelightful!
Tomorrow, assuming I'm not sick, I go on the Mariazell hike. It's about seven hours of hiking, all which I will walk in flip flops because, yep, I forgot sneakers.

It's either going to be a really painful day or a really fun day.

Random Pictures: Volume I, Issue I

Guess what I have? A sore throat! Hahahahahahahaha, didn't see that one coming, did ya?! Yeah, me either!

a farm/house near the Kartuase

Numnum! Authentic Austrian food!

Sass Master

Arianna is the girl on my left

Presenting Gaming, Austria!

Krista took this when I wasn't looking, so now she must suffer the consequences

Relaxing Weekend

Krista has been getting on my case for not writing a blog post in a while, so here I am!
I can't really remember a lot of the little things that have happened recently, and I definitely can't recall (or recollect them...) in a cohesive manner, so I won't try.

Yesterday Krista and I spent almost two hours in the Bibliotek with the swanky grand piano. Rosie, you would LOVE this piano. It was so relaxing to listen to that beautiful instrument played by a beautiful person. ;)

Friday and Saturday this week have been very nice, despite not going "anywhere"- most of the students are gone, so the few students that are here are more relaxed and open to having small chats.

Today was an eventfulish day.

The Gaming campus hosted a symposium today, so in the morning, I watched the three youngest Newtons so that Mrs. Newton could attend one of talks.
It was super fun - Allie (the youngest) has the most adorable stammer, but man, she can get addicted to messing with my phone fast! All of the girls particularly love the videos with Pip and Bro in them, but Allie really gets into it, so I probably won't bring my phone over anymore.
I'll detail the Newton's later, but for this post's purpose, I spent about three hours playing with them, and then we went to the noon Byzantine Mass.

That was quite interesting - I liked it, but I like "my" Latin Mass better. ;)

Afterwards, I walked/talked/ate with Kristin, who had come over with some other ITI students for the symposium. It was SO nice to see her - it was actually only the third time we've met up ever (and that includes the thirty second subway meeting), but it was so natural to just pick up where we had left off. We've made some sketchy plans for meeting up in the future, but it's definitely happening.

After lunch at the Keller (the restaurant that's part of the Kartuase), we went to another of the symposium talks, given by Dr. Newton. I really like Dr. Newton, but I didn't know much of the context of what he was talking about, plus I missed half the talk, but everyone else thought it was quite an inspiring talk.

After that, they had a small coffee break, and when it was time for the last talk, I left to go study while Kristin stayed for the talk.

I ended up sleeping.

Once the last talk finished, most of the attendees went over to the Kartuase church for Vespers, which was nice.

I took Kristin to the upstairs chapel (I'll have to detail that later to) when we finished , and we sung rounds and church songs until Kristin had to leave. The acoustics made everything sound so dang nice, and Kristin can harmonize really well.

I walked down to a little pizza/kebap restaurant afterwards, and ate a yummy kebap (I'll detail this as well in a food post) with Christine, Jessica and another girl I just met there.

The symposium was also hosting a concert after the talks/dinner (for the fancy people), so we walked to the Bibliotek (where it was being held) and apparently we got the schedule wrong, because the musicians didn't start officially playing until an hour after we arrived. We had to receptionize until they started (I made up the word; the students that arrived early were sitting in the chairs listening to the musicians practice, when some fancy people came in and the lady in charge said "The reception is first!" - I don't know why they had it before the music, but whatever)

But play those musicians did!
There was a pianist and a violinist, and they were SO GOOD.

The pianist was a smaller, quieter man that didn't know much English, but he was super sweet and nice when I asked him about one of the pieces (he didn't quite understand and gave me the wrong piece, but THIS was the first piece)
The violinist was a younger man, and very dramatic with the violin so that it was almost funny (okay, it WAS funny) but in a good way, because he was so good.

When the concert finished, Christine, Jessica, Jenny, Iryna and I went to the chapel and prayed the Rosary. Iryna doesn't know the Our Father in English, so she said her decade in her language (Bosnian/Russian) while we replied in English. It was really pretty.

After that, I eventually bumbled my way back to the room - Ethel and Myrtle are SUPER tired tonight, so with that, adieu! 

First Free Weekend

And Krista and I are going...NOWHERE.

Whoopeeee!!!

There were a couple factors motivating this decision

1. Unsurety about traveling with just the two of us on our first weekend
2. Unsurety about what/where we're even going
3. The ITI students (Kristin!) are coming in on Saturday for the JPII symposium thing that's going on this weekend.
4. A boatload of school work. 

And yes, also, a bit of laziness on my part, but I was already planning on staying back a weekend or two anyways (a lot of students recommended this)

Random Notes: Volume I, Issue I

The birds here are really annoying.
This is their "song"

BLAH.

BLAH.

BLAH.

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There are rather creepy cameras in my Medieval World classroom.
The cameras are for broadcasting other classes to main campus,
But sometimes during Medieval World class, although it's not supposed to broadcasted, the cameras start swirling around.
The first time I noticed was particularly creepy, because the first time I saw one of them moving out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head to double check and the camera immediately stopped moving.
It did that a couple times, before I got a good look.
I imagine that there were some techies on main campus who saw me getting a little disturbed, and decided to play with my mind.
Hopefully they had fun.

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European toilets are weird.
It's kinda cool that you can regulate how much water you use by first pushing one side of the button down for the water to start, and then pushing the other side down when things look...cleaned up.
But seriously, the placement of the hole in the toilet is just weird - it's on the opposite side of an American toilet.
Think about that carefully, and you'll eventually understand why that can be reallllllly nasty.

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I'm getting really good at planning social things with people.
Like, uncannily good.

Yesterday, as a girl I've talked to a couple times in Philosophy of the Human Person class was walking out of the lobby entrance, I stopped her as I was going in and asked her if she'd want to play some volleyball if I got some people together, to which she heartily consented to.

Man, I was so smooth - it was slicker than snot.

Vienna

Early Friday morning, we left for the university sponsored excursion to Vienna, and a lot of interesting things happened that would take FOREVER to write about, so I will refer you to Krista's blog for most of the first day.

After morning Mass, we were led on a tour - I won't be able to tell you very many interesting facts about Vienna though, since I couldn't hear most of what was being said. 

This was the big difference between Vienna and Salzburg for me - Salzburg is, in a way, more interesting for me since I know "a lot" about it, but Vienna was more...immersion (I guess you could call it)

Anyways, for the first bunch of pictures, refer to Krista's blog if you want to know the general overview.

Veronica and Monika

Taking a picture of someone taking a picture of someone taking a picture of someone taking a picture. There were lots of these. 

St. Stephan's!

It has a cool tiled roof.

The other tower - basically the builders got bored and tired of Gothic architecture by the time they came around to finishing this tower, so they just stuck a dome on top and called it a day. 

The Most Expensive Street in Vienna...I think.

We gave up trying to figure out what the tour guide was saying, and instead took some more statue selfies! 

I took this picture for the guys ;)

First part of lunch - a super yummy soup that we also had in Salzburg. Someone told me the name, but I forget, and I still don't know what those noodles were made out of! 

We were walking through a random private apartment thing when we saw this.

Now on to the palace grounds...

The palace gardens!

I told her to make an interesting pose.

Cool gardens I wanted to explore

Creeping on a random citizen

Creeping on the group

Ooolala! Even Google+ noticed and decided to automatically edit it as such

D'awwwww, young love!

Upper thingy in the gardens - I was the only one who walked up all the way

Vienna! The palace looks "small" from here, but it has around 3300 rooms!!

Krista saw her doppelganger at the palace!

Some weird street food composed of spicy-ish chicken stuff, rice, onions, tomatoes and chopped up lettuce.

So, the funny story behind my supper Friday night; the whole group was really hungry after walking around the palace grounds and so we walked to a street with a lot of food places, but no one could agree on where to eat. We eventually decided that each person should just go where they wanted, and then meet back at the designated area.
A couple people got some Chinese food, some had a sandwich already packed, and some went to the Spar. I got some chocolate milk at the Spar, but for my supper, I wanted to get "authentic" Viennese food, so of course, I went over to one of the street vendors and ordered some food. I don't remember what it was called (Humerbox or something) but it was interesting.

Anyways, after I paid for the Humerbox thing on one side, the guy told me to go to the other side for the food. I walked over to the other side and watched another, younger Turkish looking dude prepare the meal, and I ended up talking a bit with him.
Because it would be difficult to communicate all the little expressions and misunderstandings very well, I won't even try, and I'll just give you the story in short; he asked me my name, told me his, then asked me where I was from, then asked me if I had a boyfriend (when I told him "no", he gave me a big smile and two thumbs up), then asked me for my number (I don't know what the number of my temporary phone is yet, so I told him no, to which he frowned), then asked me something else which I couldn't understand, and by that time, he had already handed me my box, so I told him I had to go back to my friends and I split.
It was quite an interesting conversation - so basically the first person to ask me out on a date wasn't American and spoke hardly any English at all.
On another semi-related note, when the FUS crowd was taking the subway to the hostel Friday afternoon, I ended up briefly talking with an older man on the subway. Everyone was super crammed in the sub, and a minute or two before we got off, the man standing next to me made a comment to me.
I didn't understand it, so I just smiled, but then he said something in the form of a question. I looked at him confused, and then he repeated himself, and upon more confused looks, said a couple other things to explain the question.
I still didn't understand him, and by that time, he was getting really confused with my confusion, so I finally just said "American", to which he laughed a little and nodded. He said his English wasn't very good, and he said something else that I couldn't understand, because it was loud in the subway car, and, as he said, his English wasn't very good.
Right before our stop, he asked me nicely what my name was, so I told him, than asked for his name (Rami), then we all flooded out of the car and that was that.
Sorta.
I was laughing about it and telling Krista about it as we were coming up the escalator to the exit, when out of nowhere, I hear someone say "CLARE PREZZIA!!" and rush at me!
It was super surprising but SUPER funny - Kristin and I were in the middle of a big rush of people heading to the exit, just hugging each other. I'm still really confused at what happened since it happened so fast, but Kristin told me to get back with my group and ran off - I didn't see her in Vienna after that, but it was still hilarious. Apparently a lot of the FUS students walking by were really confused/amused - Krista overheard one guy saying "Are they playing or are they for real?!" (I don't really know what that means either)
So basically the first day was quite eventful.

Louise!

Now for the second day.
We went to Mass at a nice Gothic church - I like Gothic okay, but I mostly just like churches with really pretty windows (which this church didn't have).

Afterwards, I walked to St. Stephan's with Krista, David, Kakha, and Maria. We ran into one of the RD's, Scott, on the way, and he took us into a nice adoration chapel in St. Stephan's. I ended up asking him if I could tag along with him for the day, because David runs his "tours" at a super fast pace, which I wasn't up for. Also, the other LCI girls weren't with the group (they were meeting up with Iryna's cousin); Kakha doesn't know much English, Krista would end up talking to David most of the time, and Maria is super nice, but very chattery and I was too tired from the night before.

So Scott and I did a holy hour, then I wandered around the church for a little bit while he went to confession. When he finished, we walked to a little cafe next to a church he really liked, and had some streduel. He got apple strudel - I know no apple strudel can beat Grandma Prezzia's, so I got "curd" strudel (tastes like cream cheese) and it was pretty tasty. Scott was really nice and paid for us both.

After we finished eating, we went to the church - I don't have the little card that I picked up from it, so I don't actually know what church is was. It was really pretty though, and there is a Servant of God resting there. I don't remember his name either, but when the Soviets were occupying Vienna, he went on the Marizell pilgrimage (more on that next week) and apparently had a vision. Mary told him to pray the Rosary a lot, and so he got the Rosary Crusade started. Some time (and TONS of Rosaries prayed) later, the Soviets left Vienna, and this is attributed to the Rosary Crusade he started.

Anyways, after that, Scott told me that he was meeting up with the other RD, Sarah, and Professor McNamara, to go to some Viennese food/flea market thing. 

Vienna is apparently some big shopping place for neighboring countries, and has a TON of stores, so the faculty peeps decided  to meet at some store called McNeals. 

And there, I spent a good hour and a half of my time in Vienna.

It was a blast.

I mean, honestly, one of my favorite things in the world is watching 30-something-year-olds try on really nice clothes. I just love it.

But for reals, aside from being very boring, it wasn't too bad - I just pulled out my homework once I realized that Scott and Professor McNamara were going to be shopping for a while. 

Finally, we left, and strolled leisurely along one of Vienna's "most expensive" streets, till we got to the market. 

The market was actually pretty interesting - I would have liked to pick up some of the cool spice/wine things for Mom and Dad, except I didn't know what most of the things were, plus I only had about two euro in cash.

I got this really tasty bread that was wrapped in bacon with cheese toasted on top - it was SO good, even though it didn't look terribly appetizing at first. 

We got through the food section and briefly browsed through the flea market section - beside not having anything really interesting, everything was SUPER overpriced, so we ditched it and started walking back to the meeting place, eventually meeting up with my history teacher, Dr. Hass. 

I kinda felt weird walking around with the faculty, but it was interesting enough (outside of the men's clothing store)

Scott is a really cool guy, but super A.D.D - it was only at the end of the day, when I was discussing the Latin Mass with Dr. Hass that he really focused and seemed interested. I don't quite understand Scott, but it was nice of him to put up with me and let me tag along. 

Professor McNamara was really nice, but honestly, I was a bit disappointed that he didn't know many Irish songs. He's really smart, so I felt pretty dumb talking to him, though he wasn't trying to make me feel dumb. 

I talked to Sarah for a while too, and she actually knows some St. Greg's guys, as she graduated from Ave Maria. She liked them, and thought the video of the guys juggling in our basement was cool.

Though he was with our group the shortest amount of time, I actually had the most fun with Dr. Hass. He's very opinionated, blunt, and kinda awkward, but funny if you're in the mood for his humor. 

We started off by talking about how he got into history, made our way to his previous job at Ave Maria, then I asked him if he knew about the St. Greg's guys too. He'd had a decent amount in his class, and his opinion of them was that he thought they were really smart and interesting, but too close-minded about his class. He taught Western Civilization, and apparently the students he had didn't like him spending much time on non-Church related history. However, he still really liked his students - his favorite St. Greg's student was a Daniel Schiller (?) and that guy's sister was one of his favorite students ever. He also went to Jeremy Gay's wedding...? 

Anyways, that was fun talking about that, but it got more interesting when we started talking about the Latin Mass - apparently one of the few times he went left a "bitter taste" in his mouth, because while the music was phenomenal (one of his favorite Mass's), he didn't like how the priest didn't inflect the Latin properly and thought the rubrics were too stiff. I thought this was interesting coming from a history professor that specializes in medieval history. 

It was when we were talking about this that Scott perked up a bit and started talking too. He really likes the Latin Mass, but also really likes a reverent Novus Ordo Mass, and told me that I should talk to Dr. Cassidy (my Christian Marriage teacher), since he really loves the Latin Mass. Now I'm excited to talk to Dr. Cassidy and see if I can get a ride with him to a Latin Mass sometime this semester.