Castle Life Reflections

This is another all-over-the-place one, but it's late so I'm typing fast! :)

You would love this place. The clouds decend on the valley and smother the high, craggy peaks and then you know it's going to snow! It was snowing big fat flakes last night and we twirled in them and it was beautiful! They were illuminated by the lights in the front courtyard and people threw snowballs and for one total california guy it was his first time in falling snow EVER. Imagine that, your first snowfall in the alps in a castle in Austria! 

The people here are masters of soups. They've served us so many over the past few days! Some for lunch and some for dinner, and (haha, when I can taste them) they're phenomenal and so cozy! Tonight we had vespers which was awesome, as always, it comes just in time every week! Afterward Shanan (our guitar chaplain guy) just wanted to keep playing, and a bunch of other people still had a lot of energy so we all hung out in the big room upstairs and they formed a little band and played boy-band music from middle school--I don't like boy-band music sooo I only knew of few of the words but gosh darnnit you can do some mad tambourine to just about any song, even if you don't know it well! It was a great memory! As was last night, a big group of girls and I watched pride and prejudice on the big bed in our room and it was just the coziest, girliest thing ever and we ate it up! Please, castle, snow, and pride and prejudice? Its a girl's dream come true. We may even have had chocolate.

There is no logical floor plan in this quirky castle-turned-cabin of ours, there's random curlying staircases everywhere, hidden hallways and tucked away rooms! The doors all have big, flowery iron door-nobs with big, old fashioned key-holes with matching keys. There are two pianos, one in the library and one in our classroom room and you can hear talented people sneak off from writing their papers and plink away in happy, procratinative bliss. During the day, when we're working on homework (we have two big papers to do, plus a lot of poetry to catch up on) we're scattered on the floor in the small lobby or on the living room couches or floor. Imagine legs stretched out everywhere with apple laptops set upon them, us typing away with headphones in, totally zoned out to the world. Then of course, every hour people start getting antsy and take breaks, talking, going for walks (it's 20 min to the town, and a steep walk back up!) or, as some discovered today, getting the 2.40 euro hot chocolate in the restaurant connected to our castle, across the courtyard. I love that everyone is here together, and I'm so thankful we have a week here to rest up! It's actually hard to get used to, not having to go somewhere all the time, but I love it. My favorite part is knowing that when I walk outside I can touch grass that goes on for a very long time and isn't bound by cement boundaries. Did I already say this? Cities are endless miles of pavement, but here we're free! If anything, I'm learning I love outside, REAL outside, too much to live in a city!

 Typical Prague in the early morning, a stunning city.

 Krakow street performer, how does he do it??!

 Best lunch in Krakow! It was super cheap and with great people :) I had vegetable filled pancakes! They were actually pretty good, and more like crepes than pancakes.

Best dinner in Krakow, group meal at a Jewish restaurant on the Jewish New Years, where a traditional folk band played for us, it was awesome, and we had "dreidel, dreidel, dreidel" stuck in our head for the next few days!

I love you all!

Kenzie