I Don’t Know What to Call This

This is the first time I’ve blogged about a day on that day. I’m proud of myself.
I got up and went to the Church. I’m starting to get back into a good prayer schedule, and, as always, I’m seriously regretting ever falling out of it. When we get lazy, we aren’t happy. End of story.

After morning prayers I grabbed some breakfast and headed to the Audi-min for the morning praise and worship. It was lovely, and when it ended my friend Mary Rose, who was leading, asked me if I wanted to take over leadership for the rest of the semester. I’ve been feeling called to step out musically lately, so I said yes.

Then we had Christian Spirituality. My notes are filled with things like “Oh. My. Goodness.” and “Flippin Pancakes this is incredible…”

Some quotes from class:

“First, we must understand that the spiritual life of a Christian believer is a work of God. It is something that God is doing. The activity of God always comes first. The spiritual life is a kind of fruit of God's initiative. As a work of God, the spiritual life shares attributes of God because all of God's work reflect Him. As such, the spiritual life will be a thing of power and majesty, beauty, wisdom, mystery, and above all, love. The spiritual life is God loving the believer and the believer returning that love. As in all Christian theology, the culmination is the Person of Jesus Christ Himself.”

“We also want to make the point that the spiritual life represents and corresponds to the basic human condition. How we exist is intimately bound to the fact that God has created us. What we do is a matter of responding to what God has done. To be human is to be loved by God and to be able to love Him in return. This is the basic definition of what gives us human dignity. We have been loved into existence by God and have the ability to love in return.”

“Do not be frightened by the many things that you need to consider in order to begin the journey to heaven, a great treasure is gained by traveling this road. No wonder we have to pay what seems to us to be a high price. But in time you will come to understand how little everything is next to the reward you are given.” - St. Theresa of Avila

This is going to be a life-changing class.

After class I chilled in the apartment with Mary for a bit, then we headed to Mass. It was lovely. Afterwards I played with some of the kids from here and we had a massive snowball fight. I took one to the face, with my eyes and mouth open. It even got in my nose. These kids are intense. I had so much fun. Everyone thought I was upset though, because I had tears pouring from my face. Then it was bad food for lunch, attempts at homework, a long nap, and really bad food for dinner. We just got done planning our trip to Vienna. Well, everyone else did a lot more planning than I did.

Oh! And it’s FREEZING. It started getting cold a few days ago, and then it started snowing. It has continued snowing. My coat and boots have held up well. Really well. I’m warm and my ankles are doing ok. It’s a good time. It is gorgeous. I’ll take pictures from around campus soon. We’re going to Vienna tomorrow, so expect lots of awesome pictures and details. It’ll be great. (:

Classes!!!

Wednesday I turned my alarm off and slept in, which was a fail. Then We grabbed breakfast and headed to the Audi-max for another orientation meeting. It was the longest and most boring, by far. The president of the program is a good guy, but he says “Fair enough? Fabulous.” approximately every other sentence. It was uber-distracting. Then we were given our travel mugs, text books, and laundry baskets. Woo laundry baskets!!! Woo mugs for tea!!! Then there was an optional tour of Gaming, but it was raining and gross and I was exhausted, so I opted for a three hour long nap. I got up just in time to head down to the town church (different than the church in the Kartause complex, the Maria Thron). I stayed in the church for a long time, just praying and letting God talk to my heart. It was lovely. I said a rosary too, so I got to love on Mama Mary. (:
Then it was back to campus for dinner and a meeting with all the music ministers. It was fun. We learned how to sing the Sanctus (aka Holy Holy, the Mass part right before we start kneeling for the Consecration of the Eucharist) in German, and it was so awesome. The music ministry team (so basically the people on campus who can/love to sing) got to sing together. We busted out harmonies and it was fabulous. I’ll get a picture soon of my team, so you can see who I’ll be talking about.
Thursday (yesterday! I’m getting caught up!)
We started classes! I woke up early and headed to Maria Thron to pray. I’m working on starting my day the right way (:
I missed breakfast because I lost track of time, and headed directly to class.
We’re doing things on a block schedule, which means that instead of classes being assigned to days they are assigned to schedule blocks. Yesterday was a B block, and for the most part  Mon./Wed. will be A block Tue./Thur.
A Block:
8:40am – 10:10am – Christian Spirituality with Dr. Asci (pronounced Ashy)

B Block:
8:40am – 10:10am Christian Marriage with Dr. Asci
10:20am – 11:50am – Sacraments with Dr. Newton

1:45pm – 3:15pm – Theology of the Church with Dr. Cassidy
Dr. Asci is an amazing man of God. He sounds a little German. Or Spanish. Or something. Honestly, no one can figure it out, but he’s American. He is passionately in love with God and our Church and he lets it shine in his classes. Discussing the sanctity of marriage is kind of one of my passions, so I’m looking forward to learning more about it from someone as knowledgeable as he is. Then this morning (Friday, not Thursday), we had Christian Spirituality. Basically, it’s a class on how to pursue holiness. How to pursue God’s heart and allow Him to work in your life. How to let Him love you and how to love Him in return. Yeah. I know. Epic.

Dr. Newton is British and he has an accent. Therefore he is innately awesome. However, deeper than that, we opened with a discussion of Thomistic philosophy and theology (as in from St. Thomas Aquinas), so I’m thinking it’s going to be a pretty kickin class.

I still haven’t had Dr. Cassidy because up until yesterday I wasn’t technically in his class. I had Spanish in that time slot, but when I realized it was going to be like every other Spanish class of my life, I decided to drop it. Everyone I know came back from Cassidy’s class with their brain cells fried by the particular level of awesome that they found there. Apparently he’s the greatest thing ever. Oh, and he has a Scottish accent. I can’t wait.
Greg (the leader of our worship group) and I got together to practice songs. It went well and I’m excited to see where God takes it. Then it was dinner and chill time until 9pm when we had a meeting for everyone interested in FOP team (Festival of Praise). I went, and we did p&w, and then prayed and discussed who we thought should hold the three leadership positions within the team. Then it was bed time.

And Then It Was Tuesday

Tuesday was considerably less exciting. I’m getting the feeling that posts are going to continue to shorten in length and the depth of how interesting they are. Well, posts from days that we don’t travel anyways.

Tuesday I woke up and went to breakfast. I’ve still eaten yogurt/granola with every single meal. That means I’ve eaten yogurt with eleven meals, and odds are the trend will continue. After short talk where they introduced the various religious sisters on campus and their ministries, then we went on an RA guided tour. It was pretty funny, because our guide skipped the parts he didn’t think were important and made sarcastic jokes about the parts he did talk about. As soon as the tour ended I booked it back to our room/apartment/place of residence and grabbed my guitar. Then I headed to Maria Thron for practice. I helped Sister John Paule lead worship for Mass. Then she had me audition for music ministry. The next day I got an email telling me which group I’m in. We’ll be leading worship on Mondays (:
After Mass I chilled in the Church with Jesus for awhile and did some praise and worship with the epic acoustics that are in there. It’s awesome. Then I grabbed some lunch, followed by guided tours of the whole Kartause complex. These are the pics:

Maria Thron:

                  

                     

Old Baroque Library (usually not accessible to students):

 

The ceiling of Maria Thron is actually a newer ceiling. The monks who lived there kept getting sick because the original ceiling was so high and drafty, and they had no heat, so they added a newer one in the Baroque style. We still have access to the older ceiling, and these are the pictures of us walking across the newer one, under the old. There is a small walkway between the old and new tower, and we went around that. The cool pics of the town are from the windows there, and the looking down into the Church are too.

Bell Tower (Old. Dark. Unstable. Fun :)

 

Then, that night, we had a (sort of) surprise birthday party for Emily. They got me grapes so I could eat something while they were eating cake, haha (:
I love my friends.

  

Then I got together with Mel McChesney, Emily Dunphey, and Katie Erskine (Regina Angelorum intents) so we could go through our household box. It’s a tradition for household brothers or sisters to leave useful/funny things behind for future Austria-visiting household members. It was fun. There is also a book filled with advice written by the household sisters who have been here. It’s really awesome the way we are all so connected. I love my household. God is so good to me. (:

Machines, Maria Taferl, and Melk

This is what I did Monday. (That was for my benefit, not yours.)

I used my cool Austrian alarm clock to wake up. I’m not sure if it’s going to survive this semester, because I’m used to my quiet little phone vibrating, and I don’t react well to blaring buzzing in my ear. I hit it pretty hard. Oops ;)

After a shower (I figured out the shower, no probs. Win!) I headed down to the Menza for breakfast, where I learned that with Austrian Coffee machines (which also dispense hot water for tea) you have to hit a stop button to keep it from overflowing. Then I stopped in Maria Thron (Mary Throne), our Church here at the Kartause (pronounced Cart-ow-za, something I failed to mention earlier), to pray. I love that Church.

After the Church we had another talk, slightly less boring than the others. It was given by Professor Franz Schneider. He’s the German professor. He’s kinda awesome.

Then we got on a bus and headed out to Maria Taferl for our first FUS-planned/paid for trip. I almost cried it was so beautiful. For the record, I’m usually not a fan of Baroque architecture, by any means. However, this Church had so much… love. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was holy ground. So many people have given God their everything there in that building. So, so beautiful. Below are the pictures.

 

After exploring/praying/nearly having my heart explode from joy we went to dinner at a fancy Austrian restaurant, paid for by the school. I didn’t think to take pictures until dessert, which I couldn’t eat anyways, haha. This is what was for dessert:

These are the reviews of the the dessert:
Emily: Love on a plate.
Helen: Very dead and bloody smiley face. (she made a smiley with the cherry sauce. She’s not really as creepy as she sounds.)
Storm: The chicken nugget part was strange; the other part was cherries. (looked like chicken nuggets, was not actually.)
Matt: As not being a very high fan of cherries, it wasn’t bad.
Mary: it was like a giant donut hole covered in powdered sugar covered in cherries and cherry syrup.

After Maria Taferl we got back on the buses and drove to Melk, where we visited and toured the Church and the surrounding area. I took some pictures, but my pathetic camera can’t even begin to capture how ornate everything was, so you can find some more here. The best of mine are below.

Gerda, our tour guide, and a stairwell with a mirror at the bottom so it looks huge.

This was the tiny, simple Eucharistic Chapel in the Melk Abbey. It was, without a doubt, my favorite part. It was beautiful.

My Britni being gorgeous, and Matt. I took the picture through two bus windows.

Melk was much more ornate than Maria Taferl. It was bigger, and had a long history of being passed from various secular and religious leaders. It was very impressive, but for some reason I didn’t get the same sense of wonder that I did in Maria Taferl. I’ve actually thought about it a lot, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Maria Taferl simply spoke to me on a deeper level. Even before I really realized that it had been a site for pilgrims for centuries, that people had literally died trying to get there, I felt that it was sacred. It’s incredible how much God can fill a building with His grace. He is so good to us to meet us in such a way.

We were very, very late coming back from Melk, which is rare, because Austrians are super big on being punctual and proper. When we got back we ate dinner right away, and then chilled for a bit until we got to go to a talk about drinking! Oh joy. (sarcasm there. lots of it.) It was good to be made aware of the differences between European and American alcohol though, because drinks here usually have a higher alcohol content than back home. Then we got our Austrian cell phones. Here is mine:

Yeah. It’s a beast. I know. It has the Snake game though! I think I will become great friends with it. It doesn’t have a setting where it only vibrates though, so it beeps at me! Ugh. We also got a chance to sign up for student work jobs here. Pray for me! I didn’t sign up for a cleaning position, because honestly I’m a little tired of custodial work. I’ll do it if that’s all they have though. Hopefully I’ll get one of the few secretarial jobs though. That’d be great. (:

THEN, I got to talk to Hannah!!! So much happiness. Then bed. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk about Tuesday tonight as well.