Sick

            This week I was sick, and it was not too much fun. Babsi (my host mom) picked me up from school on Tuesday morning and from then until Thursday night I spent most of my time lying in bed. I was fascinated by the several remedies I was offered, including a never ending supply of tea, nose drops, ear drops, 3 different kinds of throat lozenges, a silk scarf that I HAD to wear around my neck at all times, special socks, Asprin vitamin C that dissolved in my water (kind of like Emergen-C but not so tasty), and warm milk with honey. Needless to say I was well taken care of. But the whole experience was not a very fun one. Not only was I feeling awful, but I had a lot of time to sit around and think, check up on my friends, and ultimately become a little homesick. Exchange is full of new experiences and adaptations. Observing how your host family conducts breakfast in the morning. And then learning to follow suit. Watching how a classroom environment interacts, and trying to fit in. So 8 weeks in to my journey, I figured these moments of observation and adaptation are becoming rarer. But being sick happened to be one of those instances and I had to figure out how it works in my household. I love being an exchange student and I am totally up to accepting the challenge of adaptation, but being sick, it was really the last thing I wanted to do. So I was a little grouchy and tried to sleep as much as possible to avoid social interaction, but in the end, everything was fine. Now I just had to shrug off that homesickness…

            I finally went back to school on Friday, and it was nice to see all my classmates again. I can finally have short conversations with most of them, and at the end of the day I got a kiss on the cheek (this is a common greeting and departure sign of friendship in Austria) so I pretty much let that signify that I have friends! Later that night I went out with Lauren, another exchange student in Vienna, and we went to the movies. Since it was our first German movie, we decided to make it easy on ourselves and watch Step Up, a dancing movie. It was perfect because there wasn’t a complicated plot for us to follow and half the time there was dancing rather than dialog. We had a great time and felt pretty accomplished afterwards.

Lauren and I rocking some super classy 3D glasses

 

 

           We finished the night with pizza and sitting on our usual fountain doing a little tourist watching on a Friday night. As I was walking home I looked up at the sky and saw the beautiful full moon. It hit me in that moment that even though some days can be hard, this journey is totally 100% worth all of the bad times. Because here I was, sitting in Austria, looking at the full moon, and feeling proud that I had made it through 8 weeks here, and excited for the many more to come! I know it’s the hard days that make me grow and I know I just have to embrace them as they come! So I’m planning on enjoying every second I can, and love the little moments that truly make my experience abroad so wonderful!