An Austrian Christmas and a side of a ski holiday

Hello!!! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas/holiday and is ready for another amazing year to come! Christmas in Austria was hard with out my (American/British) family but also was one of the best times of my life! In Austria we open presents on the 24th in the evening with the family after going to church. This was also my first Christmas with out snow- a bit of a change from Colorado. One of the amazing things that Austrians/ my host family does is decorate the Christmas tree with sweets and chocolate.

Decorating the Christmas tree on the 23rd

Getting dinner ready..in austria they dont have giant pot roasts, we had bread!!

Christmas tree with all the presents

Part of the family is over to open presents,minus Sebastian taking the photo

Host parents with their presents.

After we open all our presents, we move into the dining room to eat lots of food and play games late into the night. 

Before we began

About 10-15 minutes later :0

a fun night of games

packages from home came

After Christmas Eve, on Christmas day, we traveled to more of the family ate food and talked and laughed. ON the 26th my host family and I headed on ski holiday for 4 days!!!! This was an amazing time and I can't wait till semester break!

Day 1

The ski run

taken from the bottom

Amazing

view from Gasthaus that we stayed in

looking down the run

early morning 

host brother and i going down an icy slope ( not really, but id like to say we are) 

After a few days of skiing in Maria Alm, and Hoch König, we spent a day in Saalbach, Austrias largest ski area!!!!

Im silently crying and praying for snow

Sooooo

Im moving.....good bye America

Not the best photo but we are on skis

Thanks for an amazing Christmas and one of the best ski trips of my life-host family and Austria.

Salzburg Weekend

This past weekend we, as in the exchange students, had a Rotary meeting. It was full of ups and downs, seeing everyone and exploring a new city was fantastic, but it was also our last weekend with the oldies. "The Oldies" are the exchange students from New Zealand, Australia, a few from Argentina and Brazil, they came last January and will be leaving with in the first week of January. It was amazing to meet them all but saying Bye will be one of the hardest parts of my exchange.

 

Salzburg at evening

We all arrived on Friday evening, had a German test-yikes, and then a little free time and it was lights out for tomorrow. On Saturday we had a city tour led by our amazing youth coordinators. There is a castle at the top of the hill that we hiked up to and were able to go through.

Hiking up to the castle, Salzburgs city line

View at the top. I am in love

Being a castle it needed protection, this is a view from looking down a cannon barrel into Salzburg

Christmas Market in the castle grounds

Quick sword fight between our oldie and newbie. Please note they are fake swords, made out of wood and no one was injured!!

A real Christmas Market.

Quick Translation of the sign: Mozarts birthhouse. 

In this house Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 27th of January 1756 was born. 

Lock bridge in the distance

Hanging in the city with my best friends, Maria and Milena. 

Hugging my oldie Kat 

My best friends

Saying bye to the oldies :( there are two missing, Jack and Julia from Brazil. 

I wont ever forget them or this weekend!!! I will miss them so much and know we will meet in the future. On a happy note this weekend we also met with the exchange students from Croatia and the short term exchangers here from South Africa!!

Bye oldies, miss you and love you!!

Merry Christmas 

and

Happy New Years

A weekend in Innsbruck

HI! This past weekend, the 5th and 6th I spent in Innsbruck with my host mum, host aunt, host cousin and host grandmother! -I have the best host family!!- This is one of the most beautiful cities I have been to in Austria! A few photos from the weekend!

The post card photo!

Christmas Market and Glühwein

Innsbruck at night

Lit up crystals

Christmas tree

Elves being sold in the Market

Fairy Tale street!! This street has fairly tale creatures all over!

Ski jumping Arena

Can I just say Im moving here

In front of the Olympic Rings!!

This was amazing and I cant wait to go back!!!

Bis bald-Till soon

Thanksgiving Weekend!

Hello! I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving- I know I did! Since Austria does not celebrate Thanksgiving I met with a group of exchange students and we had our own Thanksgiving dinner in Vienna!! This was one of the most amazing things ever!! We had lots of fun cooking and attempting to make our own Thanksgiving dinner without parent's there, helping us! It was a very Viennese Thanksgiving!

The entire group of us!! and 2 Canadians and the host siblings!

That turkey looks good!

We think its done but....

Watching football-like any good American 

First Snow!

Advent Wreath  

  

Advent Calender-with REALLY good chocolate. 

Also a few days before the Vienna Thanksgiving, was my friends Conner's birthday so we just added that into the celebrations!

Happy Birthday and nice hat!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Until next time..