A packed weekend

I had a really good weekend! Friday night I went out for delicious sushi with Becky, a British assistant that I've become pretty good friends with over the last six weeks or so. Afterward we met my friend Gareth and his visitors for a drink at a pub. The guys went out dancing afterward but I didn't accompany them...I was wearing tennis shoes and would never have gotten in the door, plus I wasn't so keen on paying 10 EUR to get it.

Saturday I went with Becky and some others to Amstetten, where Jung lives (you'll remember him from the post about the ball) and watched him play American football with a local team. Random right? Why are the Austrians playing American football anyway? The strangest part about it was that the referees made all their calls in English! The first time there was a flag and the ref spoke English, I had to do a double take. It was great weather, so we sat out on the red track in the sun and drank our cold beers and pretended we were in high school again. Well, except for the beer. That evening we went to a "Tent Festival" which was literally that...a gigantic tent in the middle of some field behind a shed next to the railroad tracks, which we walked along to get there. It was totally Arlington Days times 10...there were probably 500 or more people in the tent at any given time. A surprisingly good cover band was playing crowd pleasers, so we danced and mixed with the locals. I got to eat one half of a rotisserie chicken, done just how I like it. We went back to Amstetten around 2am and I went to bed while the others went out. I was sober and just couldn't do it anymore! Plus I had to get up the next day and go to lunch at a teacher's house on the other side of Vienna, which turned out to be a really good time as well! This teacher, Andrea, had invited Elodie, the French assistant, and me to come out for dinner and it turned out that we were sort of crashing their family Easter dinner, which they had postponed by a week so that everyone could be there. It was really sweet of Andrea to invite me at all because we don't actually teach any lessons together--she only teaches French and we all know I wouldn't be of any use in there! When we got there we hunted eggs with their three sons and their girlfriends...both Elodie and I had a "nest" with our names on them! We got chocolates and gift certificates. Sweet huh? Then we ate a fantastic meal and chatted with the family, after which we headed out into the surrounding hills and hiked around as a big group. It had stormed just after we finished our egg hunt (with lightning and thunder, which doesn't happen very often in Austria, so I was excited), but then cleared up again just as we wanted to go walking around. So the lot of us traipsed through the surrounding fields and up hills, where we got a decent view of the surrounding area. We were only 20 kilometers outside Vienna but you'd have never know it...there was no sign of the city anywhere, which was refreshing. Afterward we went back to their place and joined the enormous bees on the terrace and had some wine. We have plans to go on another "family" outing with them at the end of May. Next time we'll go to a giant lake south of Vienna and rent bikes to ride around the thing, stopping in the traditional wine taverns along the route. Should be good!

The Barcelona report hasn't been written yet. Sorry I'm taking so long about it...I'll try to get it up here by the end of the week, hopefully with more pictures!