Hello from Vienna!!

Wow, I cannot believe that we are actually here! We arrived safely with all of our luggage. We had to literally run through the airport in Munich to make our flight to Vienna. It was a long run and interesting. Kind of like surprises around each corner! I never knew what to expect next.

We are just finishing our week of Vienna orientation. It works! I am confident about getting around Vienna, but I still need a bit of encouragment to order or buy anything. I kind of freeze when German comes out of their mouths and then I cannot remember what to say. I even ordered a sandwich at Spar (a grocery store) using a combination of German and Spanish. The lady looked at me a bit funny, but she understood what I said!! For that I was thankful! It is funny to me how I know I cannot use English so my back up language is Spanish and then I feel that Sign Language will come out.

Our apartment is nice. We love it and feel extremely safe here. We just purchased our beds yesterday and set them up today. It is wonderful to be able to say I have a bed and am not sleeping on the floor anymore. Our house is now starting to look like a home. We have a couch, table and chairs, beds, and shrunks (kind of like wardrobes).

We have our Austrian bank accounts, our cell phones (called a handy here), we've signed our rental contracts, we've registered our presence with the Austrian government, and registered our presence with the American Embassy in Vienna. That is a lot to get done but I am happy to get it all done. We still need to have the phone installed, internet hooked up, and get a yearly transportation pass. These things shouldn't take very long, but here in Austria things close early and are not open on Sundays so this hinders our process here a bit. I enjoyed having absolutely nothing to do after church on Sunday. It is a new concept to me that nothing is open on Sunday but I like it.

We've been walking everywhere. We anticipated this fact; however, our feet still hurt. Carrie's been wearing a pedometer the last few days, and for the last three days we walked over 18,000 steps. 10,000 per day is what is typically recommended, and is equal to roughly 5 miles. So, this means that we've been walking at least 9 miles each day. That's a lot, no wonder we're tired!

We will post interesting pictures soon. We forgot the camera! Sorry. Something to look forward to, I guess! Love you!