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Sunday morning, after a beautiful night's sleep back home in Vienna, several of us attended services at the local International Baptist church that Professor Horton had taken us to just a few weeks ago for our CIVA church tour. Our time there was wonderful. The congregation is comprised of members from all different nationalities and ethnicities. The people were extremely hospitable to all of us. I couldn't tell you how many of them came up and greeted us, seeming genuinely interested in our lives. The entirety of the service was in English, which is quite a rarity here in Europe. We were familiar with most of the songs the worship team sang, including, "More Love, More Power," "Beautiful One," and "Love in Any Language." The structure of the congregation/service reminded me very much of Brit Hadasha, my home congregation in Memphis. Can't wait to attend services there upon returning to America! The church provided lunch, and because of this, we were able to converse with several different people. After a refreshing, encouraging, and inspirational time of worship at the IBC, Sarah, Cari, and I headed straight to Cafe Pickwicks, an English bookstore/coffeeshop in Vienna, to diligently work on papers and homework for the rest of the day. We arrived back at the hotel around 730; Sunday night was spent reorganizing our room and skyping good friends from home. I was able to talk to Megan, Reid, Patrick, and Matthew. Not a terribly exciting day, but certainly productive!

Monday morning came far too early. It felt like we had been out of school for over a month since we had a 10-day fall break. There was a miscommunication between us and our German teacher, who had been told we did not arrive back in Vienna til Monday night (instead of Sunday). Because of this, he did not show up for our 8am class, which we were all VERY happy about. Instead of sitting through German class, that free time allowed for us to swap a few stories about our fall break adventures and watch ridiculous videos on youtube til it was time for humanities. After a quick lunch, Sarah, Ricki, and I headed back to school to work on different papers for our research projects. Around 4pm, we realized we were no longer being productive, so we headed back to the hotel for an ab/pilates workout. The rest of the night was spent again at Cafe Pickwicks studying for our German test and editing papers.

As you can see, we haven't had the most adventurous, exhilarating past few days since returning from fall break. We knew once we were forced to get back into school mode that we would be swamped with work. It hasn't been unbearable and the majority of the work is already out of the way for this week. I only have two more short papers to wrap up before Thursday. One month from today our group will be flying back to America! That just doesn't seem right to me. Time FLYS. Sorry this particular post has been less than exciting, but I suppose everyday can't be full of crazy, new experiences, right?