Springbreak and more cool stuff

So, since so many of my fans have complained about me not writing a post in such long time, here I am again!

Yeah, you heard right. The wait is finally over! 

So, Alrighty. Let's start. 

What happened since my last blogpost? A lot of cool stuff! What is worthy to mention in a blogpost? 

Well there's one thing that is for sure worth mentioning:
A couple weeks ago I went to my first Sabbath dinner! It was really cool. AFS organizes this kind of event every year for the exchange students. What basically happens, is that jewish families invite AFS exchange students to their place for an evening. 

It was really interesting, and my hosts, the Mueller-Hammers, were really nice and welcoming! 

We had a great time, a great dinner, and we played a little bit of Cluedo afterwards which was a lot of fun. Before the dinner, the family spoke a little blessing for the house, another for their son, and finally one for me and JJ, the exchange student from Thailand that was there with me. 

We ate some bread and drank some "Wine" (grape juice). I really liked having this little insight into this whole other religion I never knew a whole lot about.
I might not know that much more now, but I definitely know a little more, and that was totally worth it.
It was also nice, because the father Marc used to live in Vienna 20 years ago, and I enjoyed talking to him about it a lot. It felt great to finally talk to someone about it again, who knows it and loves it just as I do! (Even though sometimes he did seem to know more about it than I did) 

Sadly the picture of all of us didn't turn out in too great quality, but I like it anyways.


Another thing that I have to mention, but would rather not, is that I got interviewed for Diversity Week at my high school.
Diversity week is a really cool thing my school hosts. Is just a week of appreciating the diversity at Blue Valley High School, but also in general.
I especially appreciated that, because there's really not a whole lot of diversity at my school, and to be honest there isn't even that much diversity in all of Austria sometimes.
Well, besides just appreciating diversity, Blue Valley High also did stuff. There were 4 panels for all the students. One was about Religion, one was about body types, one was about sexual orientation and gender, and one was about ethnicity, race, etc.
The last one included an interview with all the exchange students at the school: Jamal from Pakistan, Anel from Kazakhstan and me, Anna from Austria.
"Sadly" I can't manage to find the video of it, but that's okay, because it really is a little bit embarrassing. In my defense though: I was still kinda sick when they filmed it, and I bet I could have done a better job, had I felt any better.


Something else pretty cool and pretty worth mentioning happened:
Last week was spring break and I went to Philadelphia and New York City!
From Friday to Saturday I was living with my friend Katie from Summer Camp in Philadelphia, and she and her mom took me to New York City for two days, and I spent an afternoon in New Jersey at Katie's College which is right next to Princeton University.
It was honestly such a great time!
First of all, I got to see the other people from the delegation from back then again! Jack, Molly, Sam, Katie, and me had an awesome time, and it was so good to see them again, after such a long time! It was especially cool to see, how we still got along so well, after 2 1/2 years of almost no contact. It made me really happy and also reminded me of why I love CISV (the organization through which we met) so much!
I also had my first Shamrock Shake with them, and I honestly didn't think I would, but I thought it was really delicious!
The other days went to Philly and I saw Love Park and I met a couple of Katie's friends who were all super nice and friendly and bright young women. We went to a thrift store and a really cool book store and they just showed me Philly. And I ate a Philly Cheese Steak, which was delicious!
In New York I got to see Central Park (which was probably my favorite part) and we went to MoMA, museum of modern art, (which was probably my second favorite part) and we stayed in a hotel right by Times Square and we did a lot of exploring and I met with Angelica, who'll be going to the same Seminar Camp as me this summer in Rome, which was also really exciting!
I just had a really great time this spring break. And I honestly can say I don't know if I could have spent it any better!
Plus, Katie has two super cute dogs, Scout and Atticus.

my first shamrock shake, and on the right is our little reunion. We had a great time, even if we all have a pretty fake smile on the picture. 

 This was on St. Patrick's Day, which we spent with Casey and Dana, and for a little while with Katie's friend Ethan too.
It was really fun, and it was really great getting to know Casey and Dana a little more.
We stayed at home the whole night but we still had a great time. We didn't do anything typically Irish, but we ate some kind of typically Irish cake that Katie's mom Laura made for an Irish dinner she had with a friend of her's and her parents.
It was delicious!

This was in Philly, on South Street. That was the day we went to that Thrift Store and the Book Store, I believe. It was really nice out, the sun was shining bright, and I had an awesome time.
I also took a couple more pictures with my film camera, but I haven't developed the film yet. I might post some of them later...
I was obviously not the one taking this picture, so all credits go to Casey. Thanks btw. I really like this picture.

This picture is also from Philly. It is (obviously) the famous Love Sign in Love Park. I kinda thought the sign and also the park would be bigger to be honest. But it was still really cool! Also, since it was kind of cold, there weren't too many people there, which was good for us! There was just a couple of skaters who always managed to be in my picture!

This picture is only a screenshot from a video that I took, but sadly it turned out to be really poor quality. It was this band we saw at Suburban Station though, and they were really good! Just three men singing some awesome songs...  One of them was "ain't no sunshine", and before I left the guy that sang smiled an pointed at me. Great moment.
We also left them some change, because they were that good. And when I took the video, the guy on the drums posed really funny with his daughter (in the stroller right next to him...)




This was on our second Day in Philly, when Katie and me went to go eat Dim Sum. the food was really good, and it was also really beautiful on that day! Some weird strangers talked to us on the street though, but I guess that's just city life, which I'm not really used to any more.
Still, being in a city again and not in a Suburb was awesome. It's not that I don't enjoy being in the Suburbs, it's just that I'm so used to being in the city, and the way the city works. I also do really miss public transportation and certain specifically Viennese things like our awesome Cafes, and "Burggarten", and Akakiko, and so on.

And now to the pictures of NYC: 

On the first day we spent in NYC I found the Austrian flag on our way to the St. Patrick's Cathedral. As you can see, I was very excited.
(Also don't worry everyone, this is not disrespectful in Austria. I know I shouldn't do this with the US flag, and I don't, but it's okay in Austria (: so no worries)
It was on that square with the ice skating thing and the big statue of neptune (?) and there were a lot of flags there!

 This was on our first evening in NYC, or rather my first evening. Katie and me spent the time after dinner before going to bed with annoying tourists and being stupid on the red stairs on Times Square. It was a great time, and some people might have been a little annoyed by us, but I think most of them loved us!
It was also kind of chilly but we just put on what ever we had brought and made it the best we could!

 This was our view from the Hotel window. Even though you can't really tell, because it was on the 33rd floor or something, that is right above Times Square! It was a really nice room too.

 

We took these picture at "the VU" this kind of bar in a hotel right across from the Empire State Building. We drank (alcohol free) Mojitos and enjoyed the view and took selfies and it was awesome. And yes, the reflection you can see on that table is the Empire State building. It was an awesome view! 

All of those picture are from MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art. It was sooo great to see all of those pieces in real life! Some of my favorite Artists (Klimt, Van Gogh, Magritte, Dali, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat, Andy Warhol...) had something displayed there, and I was really amazed. I also took a lot of pictures with my film camera in there, but since it sadly wasn't that good of a camera, a lot of them will probably turn out bad. Anyways, Katie took a picture of me taking a picture with my film camera of the skyline, and can we just take a second to appreciate my dedication? Thanks.

 This was after MoMA at UNIQLO, a store that sells Shirts with some awesome MoMA art on them! I bought a shirt with Basquiat Design on it, and I love it to death! It looks really cool, I swear!

After UNIQLO we went to Sarandipity (I think that's how you spell it), this really cool Cafe! The only bad thing was that I ordered Dim Sum and it turned out to have Shrimp in it, which I hate, but I also got a really good frozen drink with lemon and pineapple. It was reallllllllyyyyyy delicious! Just look at it. 

 This is (obviously?) Central Park. This is also probably one of my favorite memories from New York City.
We (Laura Katie and me) went all the way down 5th Avenue and alongside Central Park, where they were already preparing for the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Katie and me then sat down on those big rocks in central park and it was really nice and sunny but not too hot or anything. We had a great talk about the world and life and stuff and then we took some goofy picture. It might not sound that great but it was a really nice time!

And I saved the best pictures for last: 

Atticus! Sadly I didn't take any (good) pictures of scout, Katie's other dog, but to be honest, I liked Atticus a little bit better anyways. (I love Scout too so don't tell her)