Austria Journal 9-Vienna pt 2

Note from the Author: This post will be short and sweet so we can move on to more recent trips. I had to post it though, because I'm sure you were all dying to know how the rest of the Vienna excursion went. Actually, the slight streak of OCD in me is simply suffering and demands that I make sure these entries are complete...even if it takes me the next 3 years to finish. 

The second day in Vienna, we attended mass at the Minoritenkirche, a beautiful church not far from the Habsburg Palace. Afterwards, Mark and I had to go to the Kunsthistoriches (Vienna Art Museum) with our Art Class to do an independent study project. The museum was fascinating. It’s funny, I used to hate museums, particularly art museums, but I’ve since come to really appreciate them, and this one proved to be no exception. From Roman sculptures to Renoir, the museum was filled to the bursting with treasures. We spent several hours wandering around, snapping pictures and studying particular works for our independent studies (or in my case, falling asleep in front of our work…the couches were too comfortable). I analyzed a work entitled ‘Madonna of the Rosary,’ by an Italian painter named Caravaggio, in which the Blessed Mother is depicted bestowing the rosary on St. Dominic, who in turn, gives it to the people. It was a beautiful piece and if you would like to know more, you can read my paper. :P

Our Lady of the Rosary

Impressive sculpture of the battle between the centaurs and Lapiths

          So engrossing was the art museum, that we quickly lost track of time, not emerging until around lunchtime. Mark and I and a few friends discovered a small festival on the green across from the Habsburg Palace. We got tasty traditional German food and decided to go see the Schonbrunn Palace next. Located a little outside the city, this palace was the Hapsburg family's summer residence and, according to our fellow students that had visited the day before, it had beautiful gardens. Alas, we only experienced about 2 minutes within those gardens, as the trip to the palace took a lot longer than expected and we realized along the way that we had forgotten to buy our vorteil cards (passes that make all trains in Austria half price) that we needed to purchase at a specific train station in Vienna. Because of this, we hurried back to the metro after snapping a few pictures.Ah well, another day, Vienna.

Schonbrunn Palace

 The last hour of our trip was a little stressful as we rushed round via metro trying to get our vorteils, stop at a grocery store for food, and make it to the bus on time. We weaved through throngs of people gathered to see or participate in a Muslim protest march (that was interesting) but finally made it safely back to the bus where we exchanged stories and pictures with our other friends. Among these was Alex, who had gone to see the Royal treasury and glowed with details of her fun day in the city. The drive home was uneventful and relatively restful. Vienna was over. The school had successfully prepared us to travel overnight and now the next weekend was up to us.

Schonbrunn Gardens

Gazebo in the gardens

Stay tuned for "The First Free Weekend" to hear about our journey back to Vienna and somewhere else exciting!

          

I'm sorry...

...for neglecting you so horribly. But I've just been so busy lately! I won't list my schedule because it really isn't that interesting..only painfully full. Happy Veteran's Day! (late..) It was nice to have the day off...

Actually, our school doesn't give us Veteran's day off (unfortunately), but I took it off anyway, to get sleep and try and get rid of this accursed cold/hacking cough/sore throat thing. It's still hanging around, but I'm not miserable, only slightly annoyed, because I have a concert on Sunday. So, yes, I played hooky (sp??) and have since decided that it really doesn't pay. I had to run through school on Wednesday, trying to find my teachers and ask about hw and turn stuff in. Technically I have until next Tuesday to get the stuff turned in, but I felt like making their jobs easier and turning in stuff so they could grade it over the weekend. Anyway, I couldn't find one of the teachers, so I put my hw in her almost completely full mail box. I kind of doubt that she'll even find it. ;-)

I know I've already warned you all to avoid AP history..well...yes, it's true, but at least Mrs. Mac (despite her love of crushing us with excessive hw) tries to make it interesting. Yesterday Mrs. Leckleider (sp?) , one of the math teachers, held a Japanese tea ceremony in class (she's a missionary to Japan). It was really fascinating! I have no idea how they sit on their ankles for hours at a time. It's pretty painful, so we cheated and crossed our legs about half-way through the class.

I have to go now, I've got a lot to do, but I promised not to give my schedule..so I won't tell you exactly what it is I'm going to do..just think along the lines of Latin hw and grammar and chemistry tests......

Oh, one more thing...I've made it through the first quarter of school! I got my report card the other day..It's really quite exciting to get a report card..esp because it was so encouraging to know that all this homework nonsense has paid off.

My results were:
Grammar 97%
Composition 95%
Literature 95%
History 89%

overall a 4.25 average...which is weird..because I thought you really couldn't go above a 4. lol It must be the AP history.. I'm kind of shocked that grammar is 97% because I think it's one of my more challenging classes. I've never liked grammar..it all seems a bit pointless. I'm glad this is my last year. Also, for chemistry I don't know what my average is, but I'm sure it's going to go down after I take this test....ugh..I really don't like moles..so confusing!

Hopefully, I'll be able to post again soon. I want to make one of those video things about our trip to Pike Lake...

But goodbye for now! May your grammar grades flourish, may your history teacher assign small amounts of homework, and always remember to balance your equations!

Just so you know...I'm not dead

yet.

Never let Mrs. Mc (or any other teacher for that matter) convince you that AP History is good.

It's evil! REALLY evil!

And the amount of homework between Monday and Wednesday (which also happen to be the days I'm stuck trying to finish Chemistry homework that's due Wednesday) classes is absurd! We've already had like 3 quizzes and a test!

On the bright side though..Honors Lit is super easy. Why even call it honors?

First day..ok week...ok...more like first few weeks at school

Here's me (on the left) and Valya (she was insane enough to get up when I did even though she didn't have to!) on the first day of school. This pic was taken at no later than 7:15am!!! I'm SO proud of myself! I got up at 6:30! Anyway, it's still pretty easy to wake up for school because it's all so new and exciting, but I'm sure that will wear off soon. :-/

P.S. The homework stinks. Never let your teacher convince you that you're smart enough to take an AP class. She's not the one taking the test.

School, sleepovers, and skinny jeans

I can't believe school is about to start! It's ridiculous! I mean..I haven't even finished last year's work! Latin started last week, so I've been busy trying to remember how to decline nouns. grr. School starts this Tuesday, and we went to orientation last Monday. It was a lot of fun! I got my uniforms!!! (I need to stop using exclamation marks..I think I'm just a little too excited about starting school)

Anyway, after orientation..I went to a good friend's house for our 1st annual 'BM back to school bash'. (BM stands for Best Mate..unless you're a member and you know the secret meaning) We made t-shirts and died...no...dyed our hair with kool aid. It was fun..even if I had to sleep with tin foil in my hair all night..and even though I had to wash my hair right away the next morning because it was so sticky and greasy from the conditioner/kool aid mixture. Maybe next year we'll use real hair dye..but a week before school starts is not a good time to streak your hair red when the dress code says "No unnatural hair colors". We felt safer using kool aid, after being assured by several friends and cousins that it would rinse out on the first try. (and the BM budget couldn't afford real hair dye) Anyways, the only place it really showed up was my freakishly blond streak in the front..left over from my blond days (when I was little..).

And you might be wondering why the title contains 'skinny jeans'..some of you may remember, and I confess that I have been heard to say "I hate skinny jeans", "I'll never wear those", and even"We should start a flare rebellion against skinny jeans and wear flares even when they go out of style, which will hopefully be never!". *sigh* Yes, I did, in fact, say all of those things. And I'm paying for it now. I've been teased, tormented, and stared at (ok..maybe not the last two). But, while I was in VA..I broke down..and...and...and...I got a pair of skinny jeans. And the worst part is..I LIKE THEM! Anyways..you'll probably see pictures of me in them later, but I'm not a model (despite all my self pics in costumes) and I refuse to post pics of me in them specifically for the purpose of showing off my skinny jeans. HA. (if you look carefully in the upcoming "zoo" post, you'll see me wearing them.

So, now I'm off to keep writing up new posts (I got over a blogger's block all of a sudden and have about 50 posts planned for the next few days before school starts..oh....I guess that'd be only a day. *sigh*), but not before I post a few pics of the BM t-shirt I made. (pics of my uniform will appear sporadically throughout the year, I'm sure)

Rome Commercial

I made this for Latin class last fall. I never actually got it on youtube in time for the class and sent it to the teacher on cd. But now that it's summer and I have more time to waste......




The sound isn't all that great..but I did FINALLY get on the internet!

Yip Yip Yippeeeeeeee!!!

I just finished my Science exam!!!! (literally like 30sec ago) It took exactly 1 hour, 39 minutes, and 20.21 seconds (but I wouldn't have been counting the seconds down until it was over if I hadn't had a 2 hour time limit) WAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!! SCHOOL is OUTTTTTT!!!!!!!

.......................Ok, except for Religion, History, Health, and Math which I have to finish over the summer, but we all know that those are EASY subjects..and they don't have exams! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!

The Lit exam yesterday was ok, actually it was pretty decent as far as exams go. No full essays! Just 10 short ones, but they didn't require a ton of research, because he gave us passages from random works similar to the ones we'd read this year (but not from stuff we had read), and we had to try to figure out what it was from..approx..that was kind of fun. WAY more fun than all the research I did for my Science essays! Ok..actually I put off all studying for the Science essay until about ummmm *steels self for shocked outcry of shock from mother when she reads this* about 9pm last night. Yup...9pm..and I took it 25 hours later..at 10pm tonight. If I get an A, I think that I should have some kind of a record for the craziest amount of time cramming ever! Because it wasn't like I was studying all of those 25 hours... I went to Aunt Kiki's and went swimming for a few hours..not to mention sleeping last night (well..most of last night...) I really need to work on my study technique.

It went something like this: Find out there's going to be an exam about 3 weeks before I get it by email. Put it out of my head for 3 weeks. Get the exam by email with a weeks time limit to complete it in approx. 1 1/2 -2 1/2 hours (depending on the exam). Put of studying....put of studying some more....put off stu....WAIT!!! It's the DAY before the exam!!! EEEGADDDSS!!!! Grab the laptop and frantically think about making a study plan. Take a break to eat and come back..get distracted by something and spend about an hour doing something other that studying. At midnight the night before the deadline day for the exam, break down in tears and sob out my woes, apologize, and promise to reform my sinful studying ways to a somewhat sympathetic mother who listens, remonstrates, spends a few minutes criticizing the class, then calmly takes the computer to check the email while I pull my hair out, desperately trying to think of a way to write the essay plan I was supposed to write weeks ago. She then tells me that I'm not going to Aunt Kiki's tomorrow and that I'm going to go to bed right now, study all day tomorrow, and do my best on the test tomorrow night. Pull myself together, close the laptop, go to sleep and dream of textbooks chasing me around a calendar marked with exam deadlines (ok... so the dream part was made up...but it totally fit). Wake up with the resolve to go to Aunt Kiki's. Frantically grab the laptop, hurriedly finish the last of the Science study outlines, send them to the other computer, print them out, paperclip them together and grab a Science encyclopedia. Announce that I'm going to Aunt Kiki's. Memorize the timeline on the hour drive there. Get there, eat lunch, go swimming, guiltily get out the history part of the exam study outline, memorize the people and their accomplishments. On the drive home, go through about a third of the actual Science stuff I was supposed to study. Memorize my essay outlines and the main points in them very very fast. Take the exam at 10pm. Finish it half an hour earlier than I needed to. And yeah..that's how this exam went. I doubt I'll be proud enough of the results to post them, but we'll see. ;-)

I don't recommend this way of studying..it's hard on the nerves.

And yes, most of my exams do go like this. :-O