My Stupid Comment Thing Won't Work

Hahhah thanks dad but that wasn't me who facepainted them. They got that done at church in the morning and they came back and I said, I could so paint you guys up much better. XD yes it is sad for everyone to leave. It is going to be really quiet without the people that are here now.
Saskia, I can so picture that beautiful dinner. And I look forward to it. Hey! I know a crap load of germans now so we can stay places for free :D No.. the Austrian man is not like Taylor. He is much cooler. :D

Here is my comment on 'I'll Miss You, Stranger' to Saskia and father, as my stupid blog thing won't let me post a comment. I am rebelling and just making it a post. :D

I'll Miss You, Stranger

So we are nearing the end of cleaning week and all the old staff and the couple of students that stayed to clean are all starting to leave. Most of them I have known for less than a week but I feel like I've known them forever! Even though I know the people who truly knew them will miss them so much more than I will, I'll still miss them anyway! New potentially awesome friends are always sad to lose. There is someone leaving everyday, except friday from today til saturday. After all that blood, sweat and tears that went into scrubbing down the all of Tauernhof, you feel somewhat bonded to the other people. It is certianly hard work and it makes you crazy tired, but if I didn't feel like I was getting a cold right now I would still feel perfectly content with it all. I could totally be a maid in a hotel after this experience. Yesterday I felt like Cinderella scrubbing the stairs on my hands and knees with a brush thing. It was awesome. I am also practicing and attempting to get good at Slack Lining (pretty much typerope walking) I got to 6 steps once! It is definately getting warmer around here. I think I got sunburned yesterday... Oh and we went out for these RIDICULOUSLY huge ice creams last night. Holy crap. I have eaten more Eis (German word for ice cream, smart I know! Just Ice. No Cream. :D) in my like week and a half here then I have eaten in the whole last 2 years at home. They really like their Eis here. We also jumped off 'The Rock' yesterday into the river of mountian water! It was so cold. Wow. But this group of older people walked by and started watching us so Anna and I put on a show for them. After the Eis the girls cut hair and the guys drank Schladmingers on top of the parking garage next to the school. Sounds dodgey. I know. Schladminger is the beer that is brewed here. After the hair cutting party the girls went up too and it was sooooo gorgeous. You could see the whole town from up there. And it was a great place to look at stars but it wasn't quite dark enough yet. OH! How could I forget, the old man that lives pretty much IN Taurenhof because he is so close told us to be quiet. Apparently he does that really often to the people who stay there. And he only knows one thing in English.. "Be quiet." Hahahah so really, why would he live there? Right next to a place that is full of loud, energetic young people. So after the parking garage.. a small group of us went over to the gondola place to check it out and we actually got to sit in one! It was awesome. And I learned that there is this place in Germany that serves you like a candle light dinner in gondola's. I know. I had a hard time grasping it as well. Well there are the extremely discompobulated accounts of my last couple of days. :D

Fill Me Up With A Cup of Love, Please

I am just so full of love right now! I love it here. I love everything about this place. I love the people and how they are all so amazing and wonderful and nice and kind and welcoming and easy to talk to. I love how beautiful it is here. I love the view out my window. I love the buildings. I love how it reminds me of an Austrian version of Eagle Bay Camp. I love the food. I love my fellow kitchen girls. I love how even though I scrubbed fly poo off the ceiling and walls of the sunroom today I still had fun. I love the squeeky bunk bed I sleep on. I love how cold it gets! I love how hot it gets. I love that it snows like 200 metres up from where I am. I love how everyone speaks German here. I love listening to German and not knowing what they are saying and trying to figure out what is going on by reading their body language. I love how full of love everyone is here. I love my favourite cup that I already have that says 'Without you everything is stupid.' 'Ohne Dich ist alles doof.' I love the cardigan I bought that is like 5 sizes too big but is just so amazing. I love how the last 2 days we woke up at 7am and didn't go to bed til 1.30am but I am not tired! I love these slippers that I found in the lost and found and adopted. I love how everyone is a family here. I love how even though I have only been here for a week it feels like I have been here for months. I love free I feel, like anything is possible. I love how it is just Sound of Music everywhere you look. I love how we had a staff movie night and watched Disturbia and everyone else was as jumpy as me, even the guys. I love how I know like 10 words in German now. I love how they make so much good food and you just want to eat it all! I love the word Schladming and how the town is called that. I love Papa Joes, the staff hangout bar in the town. I love all the Canadians that come here. I love how the town looks like Canada and New Zealand at the same time. I love how people don't mock my accent here.. (:D) I just love everything. You may never see me again. :D

The Last Goodbye

Well it has been a busy couple of days here at Tauernhof. Trying to discover the ways of the kitchen and making myself useful, while trying to get myself adjusted to actually doing something during the day and not dying from exhaustion, to attempting to learn everyone's names as I introduce myself to loads of people each day, and lastly all the students leaving tomorrow morning. Today was crazy for us kitchen dwellers. We made breakfast as per usual, then made a rather nice lunch but it was soup so there were tons of dishes as now there are bowls as well as plates to clean, then a big fancy dinner-banquet thing as the Last Supper. Plus of course beautifying yourself before the big fancy dinner but of course the sky decides it wants to rain so you have 40 girls all running around outside like chickens with their heads cut off trying not ruin their hair. Don't worry though. It wasn't like a stampede, they were all running at different times. It was such a nice dinner. The Austrian man who works in the kitchen is just the sweetest thing! His name is Lothus (Lo-ta) and he is an older generation.. to put it nicely and so his english isn't very good. But he tries to explain what he wants you to do but there will be one word that he doesn't know so he confuses himself trying to figure it out. Then he thinks of another word or you list them trying to discover what he meant. Its great. :) So tonight was the big grad night! We all went to the lecture hall and they called out people's names and we clapped and they walked up and got a paper and sat down. I love it, everyone is just one huge family and it is so nice to see and be around. As sad as it is to see the students leave I am excited at the same time to become a family with the staff members that are left behind. :) 

"It's Nice to Meet You"

Hello again. And so soon I know! Well I figured if I write tiny ones more often I won't have to right such huge ones and those take forever. Today was my first day working in the kitchen and I love it! It is so fun and such a great group of people. I woke up at 7am. and Caro and I went to a staff devotional in the morning in the amazing staff room where I met some more staff members! Which was exciting. Then I went to the kitchen, ate my breakfast and sat with some interesting lovely people and then it was off to the kitchen to do my work!
So I got huge muscles chopping up 3 huge blocks of chocolate, then I got extremely emotional while peeling and shredding the onions. I don't think I have ever felt such pain. But needless to say I entertained my fellow kitcheners. Got some more muscles chopping carrots and cucumbers, got wrinkly as fingers doing the dishes and then it was lunch time! A stampede of hungry 18-25 year olds flood into the dining hall and we eat the beautiful meal. :D then it was time to clean up! Only after each meal the students come and help in the kitchen doing the dishes. I swear it felt like there were 50 people in the tiny room doing the dishes.
So I go shown around by Katrine while everyone else did the work :) So there is this basement they call 'the deep basement'.. I know it even jsut sounds creepy. But I like could totally image like people getting smuggled or hiding illegal things down there. First off, the basement is creepy enough. You go down these concrete stairs into a concrete room where everything smells like concrete. Then you go to the far corner of the room and there are 5 more stairs leading to this wooden tiny as door and you as you enter 'the deep basement' you flick the light on that is hardly a light at all, its like this dim glow and there is a barred window and it doesn't even smell like concrete. It just smells like deep darkness. It is amazing. So that was exciting!
 Then Kendra and I went to the town market and looked around. I generally good day! Oh and referring to my blog title.. I have said "Nice to meet you" seriously 50 times today. I never want to say it again. The only reason people say it is to take some of the awkwardness after you introduce yourself to someone away. Cause really, no one is going to say, "I really hated meeting you". That is just my 2 cents for the day :) Have a good one! And thanks for reading :)

"Would You Like Anything From the Trolley Dear?"

Hello again! OLO. Hallo. Yes.. well life for Mackenzie hasn't had many big adventures lately but it is the little ones that count right? Well on Friday, while I was still in Vienna I was just completely unmotivated and felt like doing nothing. My excuse was that I had done so much magical exploring the day before that I had to process it all :D So despite the fact that I was in Vienna, Sophie and I sat around, ate chocolate and watched German tv. Well at least I attempted to. It was an amazing day though. At night we figured we should really leave the house so Sophie's sister, Valarie took us to a bar to go watch one of her boyfriend's favourite bands.
So we trained there and we get off the train, walk around a corner and go into this like falling apart doorway and down some dodgey hallway, turn the corner through some like hidden door and down some stairs and we were at a bar! It smelt like basement.. so the band was an hour and a half late.. and when they started everyone started smoking. So you are in this basement in a cloud of smoke with some tipsy Germans listening to a guy sing in German. It was amazing. Like when you picture some German bar, I would so imagine something like that. And it was true!! I really had no idea if the band was good or not. But apparently the main singer guy made some really bad jokes that weren't funny at all. I didn't even speak German and I could tell.. So after that interesting experience we trained home and they took me to get Doner or something like that. It was amazing!! It was pretty much a kebab. But way better. So the next morning I woke up and I could taste onions in my breath until midday. It was delicious...
So the next day I packed up all my crap and headed to the train station! Bought some crazy as expensive train ticket to Schladming, via Salzburg, where I had to get off in Salzburg and find another train. It wasn't too hard to find but on this train is where I took my picture. I was in a little glass cabin all to myself! I felt like I was in Harry Potter. A German lady even came and asked if I wanted anything to drink! Hence my blog title for today :) So i got here at about 6. But see, I thought I'd be all set cause cause I emailed them in the morning to ask them to pick me up. So I waited.. it go to like 6.20.. I tried calling but of course they were closed seeing as it was saturday. And after I tried calling two different phone numbers this old german couple was like "everything alright?" even though they probably couldn't even understand my reply. It was so cute :) So I walked! In the rain.. Which was an adventure.. Got lost of course but at one point when I was like dying I saw these 3 people walking towards me and two of them had 'Capernwray' sweaters on so I got all excited and asked them where it was and they pointed me in the right direction and about half way there while I was taking a break I ran into a man who actually works at Tauernhof! So he showed me the way. So I am now here and it is gorgeous! It is the last week for the students who attended Spring school, so they have all been together for 6 months at least. So feeling a bit like the new kid at school but they are all leaving in a week! So I will just start to get to know them and them bam. They are gone.
My roommate's names are Kendra and Caro. Kendra is from Arazona and was at the Capernwray in England for 9 months before she came here a week ago and Caro has been here for 10 months and is leaving to go home to Germany tomorrow! So I think we have a new roommate coming... but I am not sure. No one has told me what I am supposed to be doing. They showed me my room and that was about it! But it'll all be okay. Give me 2 weeks and I will know the place like the back of my hand :)
Oh and did I mention it is freezing here? Yea. It is pretty much New Zealand winter right now. It rained all day today. I got caught in it as I explored the little village town of Schladming. It snowed in the mountians last night. :O And I only brought one sweater.. YUP! XD Right now it is.. 16 degrees.. and its 4pm.. So much for summer! But I think it is supposed to get nicer.. And it seems that typerope walking is a popular hobby. I saw some guy trying over the huge river today.. and now there is a guy trying just over yonder. The town is so cute! It reminds me of like Whistler. But it is sunday so like everything is closed. Okay gonna go warm up! Sorry this one wasn't as exciting as the others. :) ENJOY!

I Feel Like That Guy From the Travel Agent Ad..

HOLA!! Yes I know, that is a different country but it is still fun to say! Okay.. Lets see. SOOO the past 2 days have been completely amazing. Like mind-blowing amazing. It feel so surreal. I see all these buildings that are just so beautiful and stunning that it literally makes me speechless. I find myself having to go up to them and maybe touch the wall or something just to make sure that it is not an illusion. 
So yesterday I chilled out at Sophie's house in the only item of clothing I had. For those of you who don't know Sophie is my great aunt, who lives in Canada, sister's, who lives in Vienna, family friend. :) get it?? I had the most lovely breakfast with her sister. Their bread here is so good! And I waited for her to get home from school at like 11.30! School is so short here! Then she let me wear the most amazing pair of jeans. I fell in love. And she took me shopping! Yay! The clothes here are so nice. Not cheaper. Not more expensive. But they are so nice and different. Once we got home from shopping I attempted to watch the Austrian version of Shortland Street. I actually almost even knew what was going on! Soaps are all the same. Doesn't matter what country or language. So that pretty much sums up that day. 
BUT TODAY! Holy moly. So I woke up crazy early. Had another amazing breakfast. It was this bun that is SO hard. Like if you threw it at someone it could severely injure them. But you cut it open and it is so soft and delicious! Then a great Skype with the fambam! Where me mom told me how since my luggage has been missing for more that 12 hours they will refund me up to $1000 NZD for any clothes I buy!! So I am so excited to go on a shopping spree. :D And since Sophie had homework to do I set off on the open road all on my loansome! It was amazing. And I only got lost once! Pretty much, my plan was walk.. then when you see some amazing landmark building go to it. I somehow managed to find like all the main tourist sites. This is where the 'feeling like the guy from that travel agent ad' comes in. It is that one when he goes around the world and he takes that same photo of himself with only the background changing?? Yea.. That was me. Most of them are up on Facebook so go have a look! I went to this huge cathedral looking thing first. I never did find out what it was.. Then right across from it was the Hofburg Theatre which was amazing. So then following my extremely elaborate plan, I saw the huge gorgeous uni building, walked towards that. Then I saw this huge other cathedral that had two pointy things.. what are they called?? Now this one you could actually go into and explore! So I had a good time in there. Feeling like I was in some DaVinci Code movie.. Took 5 million pictures. Sat down and decided to look at the map for once. So I make this awesome plan on the map. I walk out of the Cathedral and get immediately lost. Stupid maps. I should have just stuck with my first plan. So I was getting hungry and was freaking out a little bit thinking, okay.. how do I order any food?? I try getting a frankfurter at this stand but she just talks German at me and I am like umm..... Then I remembered this Starbucks we went to yesterday that had English speaking people. So I got all keen and decided that was my pitstop. So going with plan A again, I walked and walked and walked and ended up at the Hofburg theatre again! Excited to see something familiar I keep walking. Then get lost again. Then find myself on the map.. then get lost again. Then decide to just start walking using me gut to tell me where to go and I do and I found this stunning museum! There were like twin museums right across from each other. To my surprise I look across the street and see the Hofburg Palace from yesterday!! So I walk through it and find the shopping place and go crazy there! First off, I am still starving so I high tale it to the Starbucks where I had the best sandwich, cookie and drink EVER. Sorry NZ Starbucks. You ain't got nothing on Austrian Starbucks. While I am sitting there drinking away, getting excited b.c there is a North American sitting behind me speaking English and I can understand what he is saying, I was looking out the window and saw this, I am assuming homeless guy asking people for money. I was there for about 20 minutes and not one person gave him anything. It was sad to see. But anyway! Knowing me, I had to pee. I go to the toilet and the stalls have blacklights.. so anything white you are wearing glows!! It was interesting.. :D Next stop! The Opera House. You had to pay to go in so I just walked around it and went in the gift shop :) 
Okay. Now it is shopping spree time. Boy did I shop til I dropped! My favourite part was pretty much pretending that I spoke and understood German.. Only ever saying Hallo and Danke. :D I am such a good fake Austrian. The shop people would like rattle off this German to me and I'd just nod.. By now I'm pretty sure I couldn't feel my feet anymore so it was time to go home! Using my slightly photographic memory that I LOVE. I found my way back home. And using my guessing at what German words say.. I found a grocery store and bought my first Austrian chocolate!! I am excited to try :) (Courtney E... its Milka.. ) The til lady asked me a question and I felt like I was in the movies saying, English?? XD So I get to the house and open the front door and THERE WAS MY SUITCASE!!!! WOO!! So now I have more clothes then I know what to do with. That is a good problem. :) Until next time! Auf Wiedersehen!

The Essay About the Insane Last 40 Hours.

Hello world!! Yes I am alive! And I had the most eventful plane trip I have ever had. Like I didn't realise how much could go wrong cause all the plane trips I've had in the past go so smoothly! It's probably just b.c my mom was there to take care of the problems.. but still!! Lets see... it all started in Auckland *looks off into distance* 

So after I cried at the airport hugging the like 15 amazing people who came to say bye I go through security etc etc. Get on the plane like maybe ten minutes late thinking, all good! That's hardly late at all.. Get on the plane and sit there for 2 and a half freaking hours, without the plane moving btw. Why had we not moved? B.c there was something wrong with the engine so they had engineers on the plane fixing it. Which is always reassuring.. hoping the engine wasn't going to fall apart in the middle of the sky. So knowing that I had a 2.5 hour layover in LAX I realised that we would only just be arriving in LA when my plane for Frankfurt was leaving.. Thats fine! But the head stewardess person told us they would sort it all out when we landed and rebook flights for everyone who missed their flights. So I enjoyed my 10.5 hour flight the best I could :) I ended up sitting in a row of three, I was on the outside then an empty seat then this amazing like 10 year old little boy that was in the ice hockey team that was taking up half the plane was sitting next to the window. He talked so much! But he was just a polite little kid. I never did get his name.. oh well! Anonymous Boy is his name now :) 

So then we landed in LA. One of the grossest cities I've seen. You fly in and there is just this layer of smog floating in the air. Kicking back up there pretending to be a cloud but really its just fossil fuels! Ugh. Then there was the Americans. I think I met maybe two that I actually liked. And they were Mexican. The food lady and a baggage lady. The Americans just got so stressed out when our plane got there cause there were all these people who had missed their flights right and they got all angry and impatient and were like telling old people off for being slow. It was crazy. So after they book me new flights which now mean that I am flying through Munich instead of Frankfurt I head off to go to my gate! 5 hours early.. Which was actually so nice. Gave me time to deswell.. :D Right.. so I am looking for this departures area and I get lost. Find this old man who has one of those information i's on his shirt and he was like 'hahahah well your in the completely wrong terminal!' That's right. Make fun of the lost girl. But he pointed me in the right direction. So I get there and all it says everywhere is ARRIVALS kuuuup! So I go ask this other old info man and he completely just doesn't answer my question and like tries to sell me something. Oh he did tell me a floor to go on. But not where on the floor... So I get to level 3 walk in a giant circle, past all these food places and internet places and even though I am starving and have to email Sophie (the girl I'm staying with in Vienna) I say to myself, there will be some past security. I just want to find my gate! Finally find security and go through while there is no line. As I am walking down the long long hall way, to my horror there is no food or internet places there. There was a bar and like candy stores. So I go into the bar and buy a sandwiche, apple and drink. Costing me $17.. :O Couldn't find the internet so I decided to call the parents and just tell them to email Sophie. That was actually pretty exciting and so weird though! Then I sat and watched Vampire Diaries and it was glorious! Had the best sandwich ever.. Nom nom. 

Okay time to board! Get on board with all these insanely tall as Germans! So tall. And so many with blonde hair and blue eyes. I truly belonged! :D So I was in a row of two seats.. I got them all to myself! And it was a window seat. It was so amazing to stretch out my legs. At this point I was a bit wired from the no jet-lag pills and was pretty much having a conversation with myself in my travel journal. As you can tell from how freaking long this is I haven't talked in a long time! I have to admit that LA does look pretty at night. It looks like someone put a Christmas light blanket on it. So as we were flying over the states we flew over a lighting storm!! It was honestly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It looked like little bombs were getting dropped. Cause you look out the window to a black sky where you can just make out the clouds then there is a flash of light! So cool.. So anyway got to Munich half an hour late b.c we had to veer off course for the amazing lighting so I like ran to my terminal. It is the weirdest thing seeing all these signs and not knowing what they say. But i found it! With time to spare! Then I started thinking.. how is my luggage going to get on this plane in like half an hour?? (I had just under an hour from the time we landed til my next plane left) but i figure, they must be good at their jobs! Super speedy and all that. 

So I get on the Austria Airplane where everyone around me is speaking German and the old man next to me doesn't speak English... haha so at one point when they are coming around with drinks, they ask if I want a drink in German of course and I go.. 'ummm can I please have a diet coke?' and they gave me that fizzy water stuff? That you mix with other things? yum.... at this point I feel like I have been on a plane my whole life! But this plane ride is nice and short! Only about an hour. So I get there and go to the luggage carousel and stand there for 45 minutes.. saying to myself, this is so not happening right now. And Sophie and her mum have been waiting out the securitz doors for 45 minutes as well and I feel so bad! So I start freaking out a little and go find the people so I can get it sent to me. Sigh. So I am living off of one outfit. Which are pretty much pajamas for the next 3 days. They said it should be here in 3 days though so before I go to Salzburg I should have it. Plus I got one of those like here is some toothpaste and a giant tshirt kits they give you. Until then I suppose I will just have to go SHOPPING!! 

Driving back from the airport was so amazing. They have the oldest buildings here that are so beautiful! And two castles and a parliament building that looks like the White House on steroids. And a building that Hitler was in and is where he told the Austrians that they are Germans now! So much awesomeness. Their town hall looks like a cathedral. And Sophie's apartment is so lovely and old! So I cannot wait to go explore up close tomorrow! 5 million photos here I come!

The Worst Part About Going Somewhere...

I really do hate packing. As you can see in this picture it is messy and annoying and you never know what to bring! You always think you are forgetting something as well. I got some amazing advice though saying that you should stick everything possible into your shoes. You never think of all that empty space that is inside those shoes sitting at the bottom of you suitcase until someone points it out. To be honest, I am not finished packing.. This time tomorrow I won't even be in this country.. but I still am not packed. That's last minute for you! Just one of those lovely personality traits for you. And I always hate when you pack an item of clothing and while you are packing you are all like, I am SO gonna wear this ALL the time! But you don't even wear it once and it just ends up taking up that valuable space. Okay well here goes finishing packing.. wish me luck!