Österreich

Darlings all,

Here from the castle I write you now. I realized it has been a while since I polluted the Blogging enviroment with my garbage, so I will now, in a last ditch effort to entertain myself on a slow Sunday afternoon.

Where to start. My castle is cute. It is not huge and sprawling, but it is amazing nonetheless. I love it. My room is large, 50 meteres square. It has a kitchen in it. I have my own little fridge that I can fill by asking Anita to buy food for me "Whatever you want, I don't know what you like, so just ask, I will get it next time I am shopping.". Lovely. I cook myself chicken all the time, chicken is my favourite. Okay, this is garbage. Who writes crap like this...me I guess...
My castle is cool, I will post pictures soon.

Erm, first I suppose I ought to post pictures of Elsinore. I have kind of been slacking in this department for a reason. This computer is crazy. I will try to though, after I get this lame message out.

Alright, let us do this again, I feel a strange surge of Bloggers' Block coming at me, so I will just spew garbage until things get running fine.
I have to make a general statement that after reading Liam's Blog turned My Life is Hell Journal, I will never work at a YMCA Pool. Ever.
Here is my situation. I live in this really amazing home. It is cool. The family is a sort of celebrity family in the area, everyone knows about the castle and people come by just to look at it through the gates. Which is fine. But the REASON that everyone knows about the castle and the family is because WE are what is going on within a 30km radius. There is NOTHING around me. There are little 2,000 pop. villages scattered around, but no actual people it seems. I have seen no one but the Stare-Master groundskeeper that is remotely close to my age bracket. I am desperately craving some social activity, and this is never good. That is when I start hanging out with losers who are not worth my time.
Oh, something worth noting. I may be helping at a theatre in Lambach(one of those 2,000 pop. villages). After that amazing afternoon in Germany watching that theatre group getting their junk together, I decided to not let anything or anyone get inbetween me and theatre again. So, I asked Toni and Anita the evening I arrived if they knew of any theatres in the general area. They said the whole 'community theatre' scene was not really alive as much in Austria as North America, but they did know a guy who is part of the theatre (I forget how) in Lambach. So they called him and told him I was interested in getting involved. He is calling me when is back from his vacations, which I believe are finished the end of this month! He said I might be helping with costumes, or I may even get a small role. Clearly the idea of being onstage excites me more than the idea of working with sweaty costumes, but either way I will be happy. I looked the theatre on the internet with not much success, though I wasn't trying TOO hard, but what I did find out was, the theatre is "Austria's only surviving monastic theater; its opening performance was in front of Queen Marie Antoinette." Yay!
So that looks promising at least, and then I can meet people who love what I love and speak German. My other social opportunity is my German lessons that also start in September. But this involves a lot of other people who speak German as a second language and I want friends who speak German! Ha ha, well, whatever, I will take what I can get at this point, as long as they are worthy to be my friends of course.
That is my general life. Oh! Ha ha, the kids. The girls, Emma and Flora are sweeties! They fell in love with me right away, which is great. I really like them and it is so fun playing with them, but for small amounts at a time, seriously, kids...I am having second thoughts on the whole being a mother thing. They often fight over who gets my attention, they make messes all the time, they are sometimes sooo bratty to their mom, especially Emma, who is 4 and apparently queen of her own little universe. She barks instructions at little Flora like she is in the army. BUT, I really do adore them. They are good most of the time and I love it when they laugh. Emma and I are teaching eachother about our languages and she already seems to have made some progress.
I am studying my German, the au pairs before me left books behind, I have so many different 'how to learn German' books now, but I finally found one that works. I am taking notes from it like crazy and adding it to the "German for Jennifer" folder that Susan prepared for me. Life is great.

Well lovelies, I am off to do some dishes and watch some movies...fun fun life.

Love you all, miss you all!!

Jenni