I’m currently on my second sick day in four years in Vienna. I had a 101.8 fever on Monday, though I somehow made it through the school day. Barely. For my last class, I just gave out the assignments with minimal explanation and told them to read the book and work in groups. I promised we’d go over questions on another day.

I have spent the last few days between my bed and the bathroom, trying desperately to keep hydrated. It’s probably a bad sign that I’ve started thinking a bed pan is a good idea.

Apparently I’m in good company too, as 6 staff and almost 50 kids were out sick yesterday. 50 kids is almost a fourth of our enrollment!

I’m not really sure what happened. I mean, it’s been more than a week since I last ate a hot dog off the ground.

Though my roommate is taking good care of me, he is also gloating over the fact he has avoided this outbreak by getting a flu shot. That’s his theory, at least. I am half-tempted to lick his toothbrush as a test of his all-powerful flu shot, but that would just be mean. “How’s your flu shot working now?”

No, my computer’s not gay…or a cowboy. And really, it didn’t catch fire. But the screen is completely broken. Sad. It almost slipped off my lap Sunday morning, and though I caught it on the top corner of the screen I must have pressed too hard. All I get now is a white screen with a colorful crack running from the bottom left corner to the top right. Underneath the crack are thin rainbow-colored vertical lines.

So now it’s relegated to desktop status. Fortunately it’s only the display that’s broken, so I didn’t lose any data. Kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop, though.

I carried an old monitor from school home on Monday. I think I get extra geek points for carrying a computer monitor on the Ubahn. Not that I really need extra geek points.

Fortunately I have ordered a new laptop that will arrive with my parents in less than 3 weeks. I guess I overestimated the life of my computer. She lived a long life as a computer, and will live on as a code-free DVD player.

…except I didn’t. After a particularly long week, I skipped out of school at 5, ate an early dinner of leftovers, camped out on my couch, and was pleasently surprised to find a Phillies/Yankees spring training game on my computer. I enjoyed watching a few innings before sleep overtook me. An hour and a half later, the phone jolted me from my sleep, and in another 15 minutes my apartment was full of people from school. Karaoke was on the menu, but a place couldn’t be found, so we decided to have a guy’s night out at Wieden Brau.

We found a table easily for the 5 of us. I recommended the Dunkles, but the waiter said they were out. Sad. So we all picked other drinks, which looked surprisingly similar when he finally brought them. And tasted quite similar as well. 20 minutes later we decided to order two “Chicken Baskets”. This was one of two things on the menu written in English, which I found odd considering there actually is a German word for chicken and basket. The waiter apologized and said that the kitchen was closed. This was also disappointing.

15 minutes later a group of young Austrians came in and sat at the table next to us. In another 10 minutes they had cheeseburgers and chicken baskets(CHICKEN BASKETS!) placed in front of them. We called over their waiter and asked how come they got food and we couldn’t? He said he was sorry, but the kitchen was REALLY closed now and there wasn’t anything he could do. Incredulous and annoyed that our waiter had lied to us, we got up to seek out a late night hot dog. Then we saw the other waiter bring a really dark mug to the same table, so we asked the waiter if that was the Dunkles. He said yes, and it was a good thing our waiter had already left. Lied to twice! Can you believe it? It was hard to be really upset about the whole episode because it really was kind of amusing. I mean how often do you go to a restaraunt and are lied to by a waiter?

We laughed about it as we tracked down a hot dog stand at Schwedenplatz that would actually sell us hot dogs. For some reason I ended up with a hot dog that came sliced on a plate instead of in a bun. Oh well. Then a piece fell off my plate on the ground, so I bent to pick it up and the rest of my hot dog fell on the ground. Repeatedly citing the ’10 second rule’ I picked up the pieces of my hot dog and continued eating them as we walked back to my apartment.

So my roommate John and I decided we needed to go to the Olympics. After all Italy borders Austria, so it’s relatively close, right? And I have the brilliant idea that we need to see Olympic curling. Among the many advantages of curling are that it’s indoors and it’s the cheapest ticket at the games. Also, for some reason I have an odd fascination with the game. I blame this on the Canadian channel during the 1998 Winter Games.

So last weekend we rent a car, and along with the 3rd grade teacher and a friend from church, and set off for a weekend whirlwind tour of Torino and the Olympics.

So the drive took a bit longer than anticipated due to construction and a dense fog from about Venice on, and we got to our hotel in Milan at 3:30 in the morning.
The next morning we drive 2+ hours to Torino, check out the sites, get as close to the Olympic Flame as we can without buying a hockey ticket for Czech Republic vs. Latvia(see picture above), and peer over the fence at Olympic village. Then we take the train out to the curling venue, take in 3 exhilerating matches, drive back to our hotel in Milan(arriving at 3 am due to a dense fog and an unintentional detour).

The next morning we take the subway into downtown Milan, check out a few sites, and then head back to good old Vienna. I am very happy to have had the foresight to take Monday off.

All in all, a great trip. Even though I did have to eat peanut butter sandwiches for about a month so that I could afford it, and drive 2200 kilometers in a weekend.

I will be blogging more about Olympic trip 2006 in the days to come, so be sure to check back often.