Misc.

I feel as though there have been a lot of little things I've wanted to talk about, but I can't figure out how to group them. So here they are in the Misc. group! A couple of random events:

1. The other afternoon, Brent, Lama, Koon, Mike, 2 other girls and I went to Prater park for lunch. It was a wonderful afternoon to be outdoors! Later after class, we decided to hang closer to the institute, so we bought a bottle of cheap wine and did our homework at the Mozart park behind our building. Lots of fun!

Prater Park.

Celebrating their engagement with a bottle of wine at the park!

2. Wednesday night, Dr. Reisinger had a concert to organize and needed help with publicity. Koon and I (among others) told him we would help him pass out flyers on the streets, and he offered to pay us each 15 Euro! Yay money! It was well worth it, even though lots of Austrians stared at us. :)

The concert that we passed out flyers for (St. Peter's Cathedral). 

3. After Dr. Reisinger's concert, a bunch of people went to a place called the Sunken City. Basically, it's just a bunch of bars along the river. We brought the party though--everyone wanted to hang out by the American kids! It was definitely an adventure!

Some of our group dancing at the Sunken City.

4. Tonight (Thursday), we had our annual Vienna Summer School music concert. All of our host families were invited to listen to students play/sing, and then to a reception afterwards. Dr. Reisinger played a couple pieces on the organ, a girl named Emily played the violin, and three girls sang....including me! I got roped into it by both Dr. Reisinger and Doc. It was fine though, I sang "Du bist wie eine Blume", a piece from my Jr. Recital. It was a cool experience to be able to sing in a big church, I'm glad I did it. 

What was really cool though was Dr. Reisinger's improvisation. Earlier in the day, he had asked us to sing him our alma mater. We did, and he notated it on the spot. Then at the concert, he did a 10 minute improvisation on our alma mater, adding in aaaallllll the bells and whistles. It was probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Wow. I have a video of it, I'll try to upload it.

After the concert, I saw Dr. Reisinger through a window, and I mouthed "thank you" to him for accompanying me. He put his hands together and bowed, as if I was the amazing one. Ha! What a joke. He asked me if he could give me a couple voice lessons to improve my vibrato while I'm here. At first I was skeptical, but then I realized that I should take it as a compliment that he wants to work with me. Woohoo! I'm kind of nervous, but also excited to see what he has to say.

The church where the concert was held.

The girls with Edith and Helmut!

5. Tonight, Lama, Liz and I went to a heuligen with Helmut and Edith. They bought us strawberry wine, which was really good! The Hartmanns are great, I'm glad we got to hang out with them tonight. 

Our strawberry wine!

Beautiful view!

This weekend is Prague...I'll write about it on Monday!