During the rough days of my internship, I had one thing to look forward to: the obligatory trip to Vienna.
According to our official looking 'curriculum manual', this trip is all about discovering the beautiful Austrian culture. Main goals are learning about the school system, language, food and culture. Sounds great (and a little pretentious to be honest), doesn't it?
But if you put a group of 36 college freshmen and sophomores in a hostel in Vienna, you know things will be slightly different than the curriculum manual promises...

I went to Vienna on April 16th. After that date, everything becomes a blur. You see, we ran from one side of Vienna to the other, then back to the almost exact point where we started. And that for five days. We lost people on the Tube, we lost people on the streets, we even lost people on the toilets! It was chaos, but an organized and fun chaos.
We visited Prater, a luna park right in the middle of the city. The entire freshman class went go-karting, which meant full-on craziness. The roller coasters were constantly filled with screaming freshmen and I even went 117 meters up into the air in the world's highest swing ride: the Prater Turm!
The next day we toured the city in a bus and visited Austria's national television studios. I saw a lot of gigantic buildings that day, a ton of expensive cameras and a rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Festival.
Day 3 began with a tour of the Stephansdom and its catacombs (which are filled with bones). While most of my (hungover) classmates fled the catacombs as soon as the first skull came into vies, I enjoyed the peaceful cilence and the creepy vibe. I was even a bit disappointed when I had to leave the catacombs and head for Schloss Schönbrunn. Schloss Schönbrunn was a bit 'meh...' to be honest.

Me accidentally being in a picture of Schloss Schönbrunn

On the last day I did absolutely nothing. We visited a school in the morning and claimed a gigantice lounge-bed-thingy in the hostel for the rest of the day.

Let's take a moment to appreciate this fine piece of art, shall we?

So that sounded pretty nice and calm, didn't it? Well, it wasn't. In between the cultural activities, there was a lot going on.
I drank wine for the first time in my life. When my roommates realized I wasn't going to puke or have a hangover, they gave me a round of applause and pronounced me a 'grown-up'. As if :P
One of older roommates, however, got so drunk that she puked all over herself and one of the guys. She had to spend the night in the guys' room, where she was at the moment of puking. When she came back she brought a sour stench of wine puke with her. Upon entering the room she wrinkled her nose and said: 'You guys, you make the room stink.'
It wasn't all about drinking though. When people weren't getting wasted, they were taking pictures, lots and LOTS of pictures. In one of them my friend and I were photobombed by an old fat man. After getting back to the hostel and talking to our roommates, we discovered that this man had photobombed almost all our pictures that morning!

I also became the center of attention for the first time in my life, as my roommates decided to straighten my hair and showed me to the guys - who didn't even recognize me ar first, Probably because they had been drinking since noon that day.
Not everyone wanted to drink all day long, so at one point two of my roommates and I hid in our room with Chinese take-out and acted like we were on the Big Bang Theory. We discussed the most awkward thing of all: sharing a toilet with six people. This brought us to the great idea of impersonating the guys and their war over the toilets. We also decided our bathroom smelled disgusting (the drunk girl left her puke-stained clothes there) and one of the girls used her deodorant to mask the smell. We almost suffocated because of all the gasses and everything smelled like mango for hours. When one of our roommates came back and asked what had happened in the bathroom, the three of us yelled: "Mango poop!" and laughed for a solid five minutes.

So yes, things got crazy. A bottle of wine exploded in my hands. I bumped into a guy in a Superman suit (he even said 'hi' to me!). Batman chocolate eggs were eaten all day long. It was simply awesome. Next year we'll go to Berlin, hopefully with less drunk people and more Big Bang Theory style take-out!

Stay Awesome!

I've never had any trouble coming upwith new and slightly random topics for blog posts... until this week (and as you might have noticed I'm also uninspired to think of catchy titles for my posts). I asked you guys for help on Twitter and the amazing Tudda Pudda was the first to respond:


I don't do anything before I sit down to read, except telling everyone to shut up because I want to read, but I was very excited to write a post full of life-changing writing tips, I really was. So I pictured my own writing process and came to the stunning conclusion... that I have no idea what I'm doing when I'm writing. My writing process in a nutshell:

Step 1: Randomly get ideas at 3am
Step 2: Scribble idea down on the nearest piece of paper
Step 3: Try to make sense of it in the morning
Step 4: Unprepared word sprint!
Step 5: Run out of ideas
Step 6: Wait for inspiration to come

I know, I know. Not at all what you expected. I may sound like I'm almost a pro, but in reality I'm an overexcited amateur. I could give you tips on how to be overexctied, but that's not what you're looking for, is it?
I was bummed when I realized that I couldn't do a post on writing tips. I discarded the idea and started studying for finals. My slightly dysfunctional brain, however, had other plans than learning German geography. I had barely opened my text book when a little voice in my mind whispered: 'Hey Envy, you can give tips on what to do while waiting for inspiration to come!'
I tried to ignore the voice, because I recognised it as the one that usually makes me do stupid things, but this time it was very persistent. 'You're the best at waiting for inspiration to come. Write about what to do while waiting!'
I looked at my text book, then at my laptop. It was an easy decision. 'Okay,' I said to myself. 'Let's do this.'

Growing up, I never realized how little money my family had. We spent our Summers in California, I always had more clothes than I could wear and my birthday and Christmas presents were always top-notch. Now that I'm older and responsible for my own finances, I realize my parents don't have that much money. It's not like we're poor, but I want to be able to support our family. That's one of the reasons I set up an Adsense account and show a teeny tiny ad on this blog.
Over the past few months I've made a little money and when I reach €70 I'll get paid (I hope that'll be some time in June). I swore to myself that I would use the money sensibly and use it to pay my college tuition. But then I discovered a site called I Waste So Much Money and gone were my plans of buying next semester's books with my blogging money...

You see, there are so many amazing things I could do with €70! I could buy at least 20 of these cards and send them to all my blog buddies all over the world. 'Cause, you know, I tolerate your online company so much I might start to actually like you ;)

Go buy them on Etsy

Or I could by a bunch of these, make the toilets at college awesome and mess with the minds of every female Potterhead there! I wonder how many would actually try to flush themselves... :P

Buy them here

I could also be selfish and blow it all in one go. I wouldn't mind spending all that money on one of these. I can already see them hanging on the wall of my future apartment!

You can get these right here

My family is not religious, so when I was a kid I had no idea when it'd be Christmas, Easter or Ascendence. Okay, I knew it was almost Christmas when my parents dragged a huge freaking tree into the house, that much was clear. And Ascendence was when my Dad came home from a run with some kind of injury. For some reason that was an annual event, just like putting up the Christmas tree. But Easter? I had no clue when it'd be Easter again.
At five years old, I noticed something: Easter Cookies in the cupboard. Before I'd mindlessly eaten Easter Cookies, but at that moment I realized my Mom only bought those a few weeks before Easter. They were the most amazing cookies I'd tasted in my life. They were supposed to look like a fried egg and you were supposed to eat them whole. Five year old me didn't care about all that. To me it was a delicious cookie with a load of frosting on it. The only way it could be more delicious was by eating frosting and cookie seperately. That sounded easy, but it was ridiculously hard to seperate frosting from cookie, and so it became one of my big goals in life to solve the Mystery of the Easter Cookie. Now, thirteen years later, I've finally reached my goal.


I tried lots of things when I was still in elementary school. First I tried simply nibbling the top of the frosting off the cookie. That didn't work. I almost lost a tooth that way and the frosting stayed firmly in place.
A year later I tried it the other way around. The cookie was eaten first, which did have some effect (namely that of the cookie and frosting breaking into tons of tiny little pieces).
I was a little older and wiser when I ate the Easter Cookies again in 4th grade. I came up with the idea of turning the cookie sideways, then scarping frosting off the sides with my front teeth. It was my biggest success so far, but I still wasn't happy with the result.
A year passed and it was time for my next attempt. That year things went terribly, terribly wrong. It turned the cookie sideways again, but nibbled bits of the cookie off, instead of bits of frosting. Not only did the cookie crumble, all these bits and pieces became soggy and the frosting was all sticky and gross. After that small disaster, I gave up. The Easter Cookie had won the war.

Years went by and every now and then I tried solving the Mystery of the Easter Cookie. Without any success. Nothing worked. Until two weeks ago. My Mom had bought some Easter Cookies, like she does every year. Without thinking I picked one up, placed my front teeth between cookie and frosting, tugged at the cookie and suddenly, before I knew what was happening, the cookie came off and I had a mouth full of frosting!
It was a moment of pure bliss. Finally, after all those years, could I eat cookie and frosting seperately. And it was delicious.

So here I am today. My family is in the living room watching tv, while I'm in the kitchen, finally triumphing over the Easter Cookies. I've never felt so powerful in my life!

Happy Easter and Stay Awesome!

For some reason I always wanted to learn Spanish. When I was twelve I wanted to learn Spanish because I was going to Costa Rica and I couldn't go anywhere without annoying the locals. When I was fourteen I wanted to learn Spanish to prove I was smarter than all the other kids in my class (I really had my priorities straight back then). When I was sixteen I wanted to learn Spanish because it sounded really cool. And when I was almost eighteen, I wanted to learn Spanish because I was going to Peru and not talking to locals was still a no-go. So last summer I picked up a book and started learning Spanish.

From Envy's Make it Happen List
#9: Learn Spanish
Status: Awesomeness Achieved

It's been a while since I made something from my Make it Happen List happen. College was killing me, my internship was not what I expected it to be and I found myself literally burried in with homework on more than one occasion. However, there was one thing that made college awesome over the last eight weeks: I started taken extra classes. That doesn't sound awesome at all, I know, but those extra classes were Spanish classes. One of my long-time dreams came true and because I already knew some very, very basic stuff, I leaned back for a while and enjoyed the ride.

I find myself laughing way too hard at lame jokes like these since I went to Peru. (Source)

The classes started with the very basics, which meant I didn't have to pay much attention during the first three classes. After all, I had learned enough Spanish to laugh when someone said 'Buenos dios!' (which means 'good gods') at breakfast in Peru, instead of 'Buenos dias!'. And while travelling through Peru, I also learned that phrases such as 'Pelicano kaka' meant a pelican could poop on your head. On top of that, I could already introduce myself and say how old I am and that I'd like to have beer and eggs (though I don't like beer and eggs). But when I had to say anything else, or order something in a restaurant that wasn't beer or eggs, I was at a loss for words...

During eight weeks of classes the sweetest Mexican woman I've ever met (okay, I've only met one Mexican woman in my life, but she was very sweet) taught me how to count to a million, how to tell all about my daily life and how to describe my family. I learned the days of the week, the months of the year and the seasons. I learned a ton of words and verbs. But best of all: I can finally understand people when they speak Spanish to me! They have to speak as though they're talking to a person with an IQ of 75, but if they talk slowly I can totally understand Spanish!

Learning a language isn't something you do in eight weeks. Nor in eight months. But I've finally made that one big step. I can speak enough Spanish to survive on South American streets (or Spanish streets, though I prefer South America) and understand basic conversations. There are now 406 million more people in the world I can annoy with my pointless conversations! I can read a paper (all those Latin classes finally came in handy!) and I don't want to brag, but I'm finally smarter than Dora the Explorer when it comes to Spanish! Admit it, being able to say that is totally worth the extra classes.

Stay Awesome!
PS. I couldn't resist adding this lame llama joke to the post.