Final 10 Days

Hello everybody, I can't believe I only have ten more days left in Austria. This "trip" has absolutely flown by. The past 5 days the weather has been perfect. Very clear blue skies and daytime temps in the 50's.

I left off my last blog talking about going to school on Friday afternoon to help out with the Cambridge Certificate students. That went well and afterward I had a nice dinner by myself at a nice restaurant on the square in Freistadt. Outside the door they were advertising a gnocchi special and for those of you who don't know gnocchi is my favorite pasta. So I had to give it a go. When I sat down and the waitress came over she said they were out of the gnocchi special, my luck. She translated the menu for me, and did quite a good job at it too. I decided to go with the Cordon Bleu with Pomme Frites (french fries). Cordon Bleu obviously means with ham and cheese. So in Austria when you see Cordon Bleu on a menu it means a Weinerschnitzel has ham and cheese inside it. It was soooo good. After dinner I went to McDonalds to hang out (and to eat a piece of Tiramasu from McCafe) until I met some friends later that night. We went out to Latino and Acanto. We had some trouble getting a taxi to take us home but I made it home eventually.

During the day on Saturday was pretty quiet and Saturday night I went out with Gerlinde and some of her classmates to Linz. They wanted more experience talking with a native speaker. We first went to a bar called Cubus. It is on the top floor of the Ars Electronica Center (sorta like a science center). This building is right on the Danube so we had some really nice views. After a drink we went to eat at a place called the Yellow Crocodile (that is what it is called in English). It was very good there as well. I ordered the tortellini. After dinner we went home.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday wasn't that exciting. I don't think I did anything blog worthy.

Today (Wednesday) Ingrid came over for lunch at around 11:00. She was working on the farm in the morning and I asked if she needed help after lunch and she eagerly accepted. So Michael and I went back with her to help her on the farm. My first task was to feed the cows. I had a pitchfork and I had to bring the hay to the cows. It was pretty easy, I think I did a decent job. After that task Ingrid and I had to load a trailer with rocks that were laying in the front of the house and move them to the back of the house. They were mostly pretty small rocks but they had some big ones as well. This took a long time cause there so many rocks. After we loaded and unloaded rocks my next task was to bring firewood from the barn into the house so she could warm the house. After that we trimmed a tree. Before Ingrid took us back home she cut a small patch of grass, with a reaper. Maybe I should start to do that when I get home on my small lawn. I think it would be pretty funny.

Tomorrow I am off to visit a new school because they heard I have some awesome English speaking abilities. I am not sure how many classes I am visiting tomorrow, it might just be one. And then tomorrow night I need to pack my bags for Budapest!!!!

Yup I decided to spend my last weekend in Budapest and I am going all by myself. I am leaving Friday morning and returning Sunday afternoon. I will take the bus from Freistadt to Linz then the train from Linz to Vienna then the train from Vienna to Budapest. Even though I had a good experience staying at a hostel in Prague I decided to go with a regular hotel. It's supposed to be a good one, it was ranked 4th (out of 5, just kidding out of 325) from Tripadvisor.