Carnival and thoughts

This past Friday we didn’t do much since we had to be up at 4:45 in the morning to get on a bus and head to Venice, Italy for Carnival!! I have never been to Venice, so I was extra excited to take part. I’ve experienced Carnival season in Belgium but never in Italy. Venice has an infamous Carnival experience with extravagant masks and crazy parades! Not only was I going to be going to Italy for the Carnival but one of my good friends from the University of Arkansas was going to be there at the same time as me! So random that I even thought to message her! She is studying abroad just a few hours north of Rome for the semester and we had always talked about meeting up and this trip was it! We had planned to meet at 10am at this famous square right in town off this major canal. We didn’t end up getting to Venice until 12! I was so upset and then it started to rain. You almost had to laugh at the idea of this city that is already flooding with canals and sinking into itself was now being hit by a monsoon exactly on the same day we were to be there for just 10 hours! It was hilarious and cold. I kept my head high as my friends and I battled through the umbrellas to find this square, despite how late we were. I had given up hope and then I heard a faint – MAL! – and I knew that it was her! We screamed and hugged like the loud American girls we were and it was perfect. We parted ways, her lending me her Italian phone, and promised to meet up later. I got lunch with the friends I came with and lost half of them on this massive bridge in the storm of umbrellas and ponchos. The whole town had people down every nook and cranny you can imagine and we lost half of our friends and couldn’t contact them since the phone provider we have doesn’t work outside of Austria. So the girl I was with, Gina, from Kansas City at school in Little Rock AR (small world right?!) and I set out to find my friend and we had so much fun when we found her! We bought masks and drank hot wine from street venders! We had more wine when we went to hide from the monsoon running into more friends. It legit was the best day ever despite the downpour and not even really seeing a parade. We made the most of the weather and promised Venice we would come back to see her soon in all her glory. We got back on the bus, I can’t even tell you how Gina and I managed to find this bus in the rain, the dark, and with both of us lacking in quickness of picking up on directions. It still makes me laugh thinking about how we were prepared to sleep in the streets of Venice with buckets of water pouring on us. But we made it! And our friends we had lost made it too and all was good as we slumbered the night away and got back into Graz at 4 in the morning. A good, quick trip J 

                Tuesday was a big parade in town at noon and everybody pretty much had the day off to enjoy themselves! The entire town dressed up it seemed - even old and teenagers! It was like Halloween - which is my absolute favorite! Then my good friend and I went out at night to where the youngins call "Bermuda Triangle" because you its these three squares all by each other and they are just bars pretty much and they joke that once you go in you never come out! All three squares were packed with kids all dressed up with DJs. It was beyond fun and we danced away Mardi Gras - Fasching in German :) Even though it rained all day for this carnival event as well! Oh, Europe you make me laugh.

    This past week was the first week of school! Ah! Everyone’s main reason for stress and anxiety over credits transferring properly and scheduling problems had finally arrived. It was all very exciting and I signed up for more classes than my University called for because of my fear of something just not working out correctly – mainly my own dysfunction in looking at details. But everything seemed to work out fine! Well – as far as I think! 

I really like the European system for university studies. While in the US, you take 15 credit hours which is the equivalent of 5 classes which meet 2 or 3 times a week. In Europe, you take more classes (perhaps with fewer credit hours) but which meet only once a week, maybe every other week, or even sometimes just 3 times over the course of the semester. It is all very different depending on the course and your studies. Also, in Europe if you study math, you only take math courses. If you study law,  you only take the law courses. International Relations is not a thing! Since this does not exist I am now registered as majoring in Sociology, History, Law, Economics and German Studies at Karl-Franzens. Which is just absurd for any actual European to be enrolled in all of these! It is humorous. The idea of taking Science and Math classes and “pre-requisites” doesn’t quite exist over here nor does International Relations. I would find it hard to narrow my passions down to just one! I’m glad this area of study does exist and I am thankful for the “pre-requisites” I was obliged to take at the University of Arkansas. I think it makes one more rounded academically, but who knows which system is better. I’m just glad everything worked out and I look so much more prestigious on paper here! Ha!

Post on Belgium soon to follow!