The Flight, the Travel, the Friends, and the Fun:

At 2:40 p.m. on February 4th my journey began, and the word journey is an understatement. I flew out of Amarillo, Texas and traveled the short flight into Dallas, Texas. Everything was so far so good until five minutes of being in Dallas. Because I take after my mother, I forget things very easily, for example: my phone, my keys, my wallet, etc... and this particular time it was my carry on luggage. I had just finished bragging to my boyfriend, Matt Church, about how quickly I had walked from my plane to the next gate I needed to be at to get on my connecting flight, and then I realized I did not have my carry on luggage. So I walked briskly back to the plane and they told me they had already taken my luggage to the baggage claim. Oh, and my flight leaves in thirty minutes. Awesome. So after shedding some panicked but non baby-ish tears, I went to baggage claim and told them what happened. A very nice woman offered to help and told me to go check in for my flight and that she would bring my luggage to me. I met up with Emily Ray who is also studying abroad in Austria and just tried to calm down. Right as I was about to board, she showed up, thank goodness. I boarded my long, long, long flight to London and it wasn't too bad. I was fed, got good wine, and got to watch some great movies. After landing in London, Emily and I sat for three hours until we boarded our last flight that took us to Vienna, Austria. As I was exiting my final flight, I heard two men talking about how to get to Graz. It turned out that these Scottish gents I met are also studying abroad in Graz, so naturally I told them I was too and invited them to travel the rest of the way with Emily and me. Their names were Tyler and James and thank goodness they were there to help because we finally had some muscles around so we did not have to carry our heavy luggage. While waiting for the bus at the airport, there was another man, Andrew, who looked like he had packed around the same amount the rest of us students had so I asked if he was studying abroad. He said yes and as fate would have it, he was also going to Graz. So Emily, James, Tyler, Andrew, and I all set out for our final destination. We took a bus from the airport to a train station. From there we took the train from Vienna to Graz. It was a two and a half hour ride and it was great. There was a lot of bonding and story telling as we all embarked on our adventure. When we finally arrived, it was almost surreal. We all trading phone numbers and social networking information and went our separate ways for the night. Emily and I met our "buddies", which are women that were assigned to meet us and help us out while we were here. Their names were Greta, who was mine, and Helene. Immediately we all hit it off and went to dinner. Just from walking a short distance, Graz is amazingly beautiful  literally breath taking. It was too dark to get pictures of the city, so you will have to wait for those. So where was the first place I went in Graz? The Pub, and yes it was great. It lived up to my expectations of what an Austrian pub would look like. Emily got pizza, Helene got a black bread with cheese, I had their burger, and of course we had to try their authentic Austrian beer. All of it was fantastic. I would say day 1 was a total chaotic success. More adventures to come.