january

Hellooo :) well its almost the end of january and if you all love me enough then you will know what that means! and if you dont know then.. MY BIRTHDAY! :) i am excited.
so far this year has gotten off to a great start. there has been so many balls and parties and other random fun things going on. so i think its safe to say this has been my favorite month! buuut things are only going to get better from here. in february we have a week off school for semester break and then the first three days of school when we get back my class will be in prague! then when we get back a week later my class and the g class are going to ireland! so im really excited about that.
other than that im still playing basketball, which is the highlight of my weeks.
well i do have some cool news. a while ago Mackenzie, an old friend from seattle, contacted me saying that she was doing foreign exchange in Spain. and just the other day she asked me if i wanted to join her in making a youtube project. were getting together with another old friend from seattle who is in Hong Kong and someone else.. that i dont know haha. but we will just make a channel about how cool foreign exchange students are (because we really are) and it will kind of be like a video blog but you will be able to see a variety of places. so it should be really cool. and we are hoping to get a video up soon :) once it gets posted i will be sure to post the link on here so you can watch it :)
well i will be sure to take many pictures and post them online. i love and miss you all :)

happy new year!!!

i'm currently sitting with my best friend sophie and were just hanging out gossiping and drinking tea for a while because unfortunately we will not be together this evening for Silvester. aka new years eve. and we would like to wish everyone a happy new year!
gutes neues jahr!!!
that was from sophie :) anyyyways
i thought as a tribute for the last day of 2009 that i would add this video to my blog. its really cool and i hope you all enjoy!

christmas and goodbyes.

christmas in austria is really different from home. first, its celebrated on the 24th. all the present opening and all that is during the evening. everyone goes to church on this day. there are two services you can go to. one at 3 (typically for children) and one at midnight. my family went at 3 because teresa was singing in the choir. plus no one really wants to go to church at midnight..
then after church we went home and we sat at the table and prayed for a while. then we went around the house and blessed all the rooms. my host dad carried this thing around that had a piece of coal that was burning in it and it gave off the weirdest smell. and then regina and i were holding these leaf like things that we dipped into water that johanna was carrying and we would shake them in every room. we did this in EVERY room. so that includes the garage. then the bell rang from the living room (where no one was allowed in until the bell rang) and we all went in. then we saw the tree for the first time with the presents underneath. then we sang a song and FINALLY sat down for dinner. i guess on this day your not supposed to eat anything until dinner. but we had a soup for lunch :)
but that didnt fill me up nearly enough. so at dinner i ate soo much! we had a ton of food. and everyone ate and ate and ate until everything was gone. i had a serious food baby after. i ate so much that my stomach hurt. when i said this my host mom made a little joke. riley you have had a stomach ache all day! first from not eating enough then from eating too much! that was so true. but the dinner was well worth the wait. so then after we cleaned everything up we sat down and opened our presents. i got some really nice things from my parents, two really cool shirts that johanna printed herself, some jewelry, and last but far from least a waffle maker and nutella. so i think its safe to say that this christmas was a good one :) i will definitely miss all the christmas cookies. they are really delicious.
Then on the 25th there was a christmas party for everyone in st.valentin. it was really fun! there was a good band and lots of dancing. This break has been so nice so far. lots of relaxing. although not as much relazing as my real family! who are currently lounging on the sunny beaches of hawaii. im so jealous. we were going to go to venice for a week but our plans got cancelled. so we stayed here :( oh well. my host mom said we could try to go again later. so i look forward to that! and the dates for my classes trip to ireland were set! i will be in dublin from the 8th of march until the 14th! im sooooo excited! its going to be so much fun.
lets see.. other news...
OH! sam is goooone :( she is now back in australia. i will miss her dearly but i know that we will be seeing each other in the future:)
well new years is soon! here they call it silvester. im looking forward to the new year. im betting it will be a good one :)
other than that im still just playing basketball.. i look forward to hearing about how the teams do back home. good luck south!!!


this is my class (minus clemens and rene) on sams last day. we will miss you!

Christmas time :)

Alright so looks like i have alot to catch you guys up on. sorry i got lazy :)
Christmas time here is amazing. There are Christkindlmarkts everywhere. They are so cool. They are big christmas markets where they sell punsch, food, and gifts of all kinds. There are rides and you can ride ponies and of course a ton of people. they are really cool. Ive gone to a few of them now and they are just great to go and hangout with friends.
Buying gifts is a problem though.. i have no idea what to get anyone! so you should email me and let me know what you want :) it would help a lot. But im still looking! In my class we have secret santas and i have noooo idea what to get for my person. its difficult! so i hope they like candy :)
The best news is that i have been able to play basketball. twice a week :) i love playing with all the guys. i definitely think it will make me better. and it will for sure keep me in shape. i work out 4 times a week. so i no longer have to worry about gaining a bunch of weight from all the delicious food ive been eating :) and this saturday the team has a christmas party!
So my plans for the weekend are going to my classes punsch stand and the g classes waffle stand for a while and then going to sophies house with sam for a movie night! then on saturday im making oreo shakes with my friend richi. he goes to a tourism school and one day they had the recipe for them and he remembered that i love them so were going to make them! then saturday night is the basketball teams christmas party. Sunday i will try and go to a christmas market to get candy.
Christmas music is starting to play everywhere. I like it very much :) Today i serenaded Judith with All I Want For Christmas Is You. Lunch time can be very funny.
So everything has been going really well here. I still fit in great with my host family and my friends are amazing. but dont get me wrong. i miss everyone at home very much! and i love hearing about whats going on with everyone! i guess my parents are in california right now for a marathon. or were? so i hope that went well!
OH and i cant forget the bath hall my host mom took johanna, teresa, and i too! it was sooo cool! There were pools inside and outside, saunas, steam rooms, hot tubs, and heated chairs. In the outdoor pool there was a massage place. they had about 10 places to lie down and water would shoot up and massage you. and then in the inside pool you could sit and have the same thing. It felt so good. So that was really nice.
Well happy holidays everybody!




and in that one you can see how the pool goes outside.



just ignore the two people in the front. if you look at what the people in the back are doing you can see the massage thing.



again ignore the people. those bubbles coming up are the sit down massage things.



and heres me and sam on a ride at the Chriskindlmarkt in Linz :)

basketball! and sickness:(

school last week was fine but everyone was really just looking forward to the ball we had on saturday.
on thursday i got to play basketball! that was really fun. one of the english teachers at the school told me about a team i could go practice with. i went and ended up being the only girl. there are girls that play but they are all like 14.. so they are letting me play with the guys which included a 15 year old all the way to like a 30 year old. it was really great. it felt good to play basketball again.
so then on saturday was our schools matura ball. and i think everyone in enns went. there were so many people. the ball was really funny. and i had a good time. clemens tried to teach me how to dance but i just couldnt haha. i think it was cha-cha-cha. but it was still fun. then after the ball i slept over at katja's house.
the only bad news was sunday night i got sick :( i had a fever and a terrible cough. i also had it again today so i didnt get to go to school :( i actually wanted to go. weird.. so i really hope tomorrow morning i feel better. i dont want to miss two days of school in a row. and i want to go to the basketball practice tomorrow! but by the looks of it thats not going to happen :(

flowers from strangers

alright im really sorry. my blogging has been slacking. but i will update you on everything!
on thursday after school sam and i went to get something to eat and then on my way back to the train station i saw ines and sophie and other people outside and so i decided to hangout with them until they had gym and then go home. it was funny :)
then on friday after school sam and i went to get some tea and then went home. that night we met up with everyone at the poststuberl. it was a very very funny night.
on saturday i went with my host family to vienna. it was really cool! first we walked down the main shopping street. which is a reeeaaallly long street. i tried on an awesome outfit at american apparel. if it hadnt have costed 53 euros i would have got it. i liked it. but not THAT much. then we found a playstation bus. it was so cool! you could play all the games there for free. it was awesome. then we went and had lunch with my host dads brother and his wife. it was at an asian styled restaurant and the food was so good! i ate so much i had a food baby after. attractive i know. then i went to linz to meet up with some other exchange students because flavio and manon leave soon!!! its so sad :( so we hungout around linz. and manon and i each got a rose. we were standing in line at the bankomat so she could get money and they guy infront of us was going to the ball that was in linz that night and he had a bouquet of roses and we were talking to him and he gave us one. it was very nice. so that was really fun.
today there was nothing really going on. but tomorrow i have music class! so i look forward to that :)
but since i didnt get to talk to my family tonight i will just say that i miss and love you! i hope everything is going well :)

basketball news :)

so today was pretty fun. i got to play basketball! we ended up having class with like the second class because our class got moved up. the first hour was dumb because we just ran around the gym. but then for the second hour they split the gym in half and so they put all the little kids on one side and they let the five of us take the other side. kati, allessa and judith played volleyball, sam did yoga, and i took on herr professor Kaiser in basketball. i lost. he owned me. but the plus side is my free throws are looking good. he told me that if i came to the conference room tomorrow during the big break that we could talk to another professor that knew more about the basketball teams here and that he could help me find a team to play with. so thats good :)
hmm other than that nothing else is really going on. i have a lot going on this weekend though so im really excited for that!
so ill let you know how tomorrow goes :)