Well, after spending a rather freezing night “sleeping” in a train station in salsburg, i have officially started classes in gaming, austria! it is absolutely amazing here!!! i wish you all could come and visit! the campus is in this restored monastary which is over 700 years old. the church is absolutely beautiful and the whole place is stuffed with history. since ave is such a small group, we got to go on a special tour and actually went up into the rafters of the church and all of the side chapels that the monks used. last night a group of us got together and did night prayers in one of them – very cool/awe-inspiring. the rooms are amazingly nice. i swear, ave spoils it’s students as far as housing goes. not your typical dorm room at all. my bed is right by a window looking out onto one of the courtyards next to the church. gaming itself is a very small town in the middle of a valley of the foothills of the mountains. it takes your breath away, literally. i went running this morning and this hills are a bit of a challenge :o) patty (who is a girl for the information of maria) has a fire escape out her room so last night me, her, and meghan all hung out with hot chocolate looking up at the stars. we all have different roommates but i’m sure we’ll all hang out a lot.
some numbers: there’s about 20 ave students, 3 of which are guys. what a ratio. there’s a whole bunch (yeah that’s not a number, sorry) of ITI students which is a graduate program – they have more girls as well but it’s much more even. then there’s about 160-170 stubenville people which is more even as well. maybe it’s just because we don’t know eachother but some of the ITI seem slightly, eh, distant. i feel like a little freshman all over again! they’ve kinda got the whole – yeah, we’re graduate students, we’ve been here, this is our turf, you really think you can handle our classes? but some of them are cool. i met a guy named rowl (sp?) from romania who was cool. what a crazy name though… the stubies – there’s a lot of them so i’m sure some have got to be pretty cool, right? right now it’s in the whole meeting everyone and trying to remember names stage. i’ve figured out it takes a little while for people to let who they really are show through. right now everyone’s still in the “i need to make a good first impression” stage i think. time to get past that.
my classes: in case you’re interested…
logic (yeah nccs!)
ethics (had my first class today – we’re basing the class off aristotle and yeah it pretty much makes my brain hurt)
philosophical introduction to economics (an everyday for two weeks class i’ll be doing in october – sounds kind of intense but really interesting)
child development and character formation
mysterium salutis: catechism of the catholic church (the teacher for this class was actually an editor of the catechism! kind of excited about this one…)
sacred doctrine (good old core requirement)
yep, that’s bout it! no classes on friday, so i will definitely be doing a lot of travel. this weekend we’re going on a day trip to vienna!
well it’s off to lunch, so drop me a comment and let me know how things are back in america!
love you all!