Fast Train and Our Trip Back to the USA

Ukulele in D.C.!

8/19/2011

The last few months of our spring in Vienna went by pretty quickly. The weather was not very good considering how great it was during the earlier part of spring. Once we had finished our online classes, the first classes we are taking for our master's program in international education, Laina decided to go and visit two farms in Upper Austria before we left Austria for the summer.

The first farm was an organic tree nursery with sheep, cows, and ducks. I went up to visit her for a long weekend, and had a fantastic time. Life on the farm is slow, working during the day, and then ending early to drink mint tea and eat fresh arugula salad picked straight from the greenhouse. The country side of Austria is beautiful, and actually comprises of most of the country (which I have seen). Her second farm was a giant garden which people visit with their families. Here she got to help buy pigs, herd the cows, and plant vegetables.

I spent the last month working at both of my jobs, and rounding out the semester. I was excited to head back to the US after 6 months of living abroad. Once I had finished my classes, I did some partying here in Vienna, packed my bags, met up with Laina, and got ready to fly to Washington D.C.

We went back to the US to take classes at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. We are enrolled in the Fast-Train International Education Master's Degree and Liscensure. In this program we can live overseas, while taking classes and being enrolled at a university in the United States.

Landing at Dulles International, cousin Timmy picked us up, and let us crash at his house for the first night. We had much catching up to do, and delivery Chinese was perfect for sharing all of our stories. The next day we headed over to Fairfax, and Timmy dropped us off at our new house, With John and Jane, the parents of our good friend from UH Hilo, Jay. They let us stay at their place while we were taking classes. Their house is only about 4 miles from the campus. Living with John and Jane was fantastic, we really enjoyed spending time with them, going out to their local bar & grill, or sitting at home and watching old westerns.

The weather was perfect during those weeks, it hit 100 about 5 or 6 times, perfect after coming from the Viennese 56 and rainy. Unfortunately, the school believes it is healthy to keep the rooms air conditioned at 50 degrees so that nobody gets overheated. I wish I brought my snowpants.

I took two classes, Teaching Elementary Social Studies, and Teaching Elementary Math. Both of these classes were very enjoyable but extremely intense. Each class is only 8 days long, and comprises of 8 hours each day. They are worth 3 credits. It is great to be able to do these classes in such a short period of time, but it definitely has it's price. After each class was over, I was exhausted. Laina took three classes, Research and Foundations of Bilingualism, Language Acquisition Methods, and Assessment Techniques. Since she took three classes, and I only took two, she was much more tired by then of our time.

That was the classwork, but in the meantime (the tiny amount of fun time we had), we got to do lots of fun things. First off, my parents came and visited us during our first weekend, the 4^th of July. We spent the first two days with my dad, visiting Shenandoa National Park. We had a fantastic time hiking and driving down the blue ridge parkway. The area is so green and beautiful, distinctly different from either the northeast, where I grew up, or the west (where we've visited a lot). Green everywhere, thick undergrowth, and many tall trees, I really enjoyed walking through the forest. After we left Shenandoa, we went to Old Town Alexandria, which is a super cute/quaint brick laden downtown. There is a nice waterfront where you can see the capitol building, and most of the city.

Shenandoah National Park

The second half of the weekend, we spent with my mom and Holly. We celebrated with them, and had a fantastic time seeing the city. We checked out many different restaurants, and had a great time walking around at night. We went to the Newseum, a fun museum based on the media, and news coverage and how it has changed over the years, as well as it's impact on the world. It's very interesting and I would recommend seeing it. The last thing we did together was the 4^th of July fireworks on the national mall lawn, right in front of Washington memorial. We had a great time together!

Fireworks!

Once getting back to classes, we began to make many great friends which we really hope to stay in contact with. To give you an example of one of my classes, I had so many classmates who were working all around the world: Germany, Switzerland, Bosnia, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, China, Kuwait, Virginia, and Myanmar. The amount of networking and connections that you can make here is incredible.

My math class!

We managed to head off campus with a few of our new friends, Kathryn and Karin. We went into D.C. For the day and brought the ukulele! There was a huge “Folk-life” festival going on, and the first and biggest part of it was for Colombia. At one of the cooking demonstrations, a older Colombian guy came up to us, very interested in the ukulele we were carrying around. We handed it to him, and he played a few riffs, definitely slightly confused about the tuning of the instrument. After explaining to him that the uppermost string has the highest tuning, he figured out a few things he could play. His son brought over his instrument, called a “Cuatro” meaning four, an instrument which looks similar to a ukulele but about half the size of a guitar, and then he played a few Colombian songs for us. Kathryn and I played a song on ukulele together, and seemed to like it.

After the folk-life festival, we walked to the capitol to get some pictures, and then headed home after some amazing self-serve frozen yogurt.

Capitol Building!

Sharing music with the Colombian guy

Also, we had a fantastic time seeing out old college friends, Alex, Aleshia, and Jon. We headed out to Maryland for a weekend and went walking out to great falls. It was really good to catch up with them and start planning the next Pirate Ninja reunion (the last one was over a year ago at the wedding!.)

Hiking to Great Falls

The last thing we did was go and see a baseball game, The Nationals vs The Mets (the Nats won!). We had a great time it was our first time watching live baseball, and it was perfect before we left back to Europe.

Catching our afternoon flight back from Dulles, we arrived into Vienna the next day, worse for the wear. It took me three days to get back on my normal sleeping schedule, and it was even harder for Laina. She left 3 days after we returned to go on a massive Euro-roadtrip with her dad and brother (Details coming soon!)