Pictures Up

oooooook people. after many long and dreary hours of playing around with websites and all that fun stuff, we finally have the pictures from ireland up on the web. we actually ended up creating a whole new webpage for our pictures using a picture hosting website. when you access this page you will be able to leave comments and even order copies of the pictures if you really like any of them, so this should work out very well for everyone. make sure you take some time to look at the layout of the website, once you select an album to view you can choose to watch it in a slideshow or just choose the pictures you want to see. and we can only put 250 pictures in an album, so there are two albums there for ireland, with around 350 pictures total. the web address for our pictures is http://www.catherineandalden.blogspot.com/. we have also added a link to the righthand side of our blog which you can conveniently click at any time to view the fruits of our hard work and dedication. so there you go! we hope you all enjoy the pictures, now we are going to get a drink!

-alden and catherine

Settling in

Hey everyone! Gruss Got! So like Alden said, we're here in Gaming though it may not be in the arrival he described it. We were, however greeted by Austrian children who gave us flowers as we came off the bus. It was so cute! There are many children here in the Kartause, where we live, most of them staff's children but they are all very friendly and beautiful. As I am speaking Alden is working to get our Ireland pictures up. There's over 300 I believe so enjoy! We had so much fun in Ireland though getting there was very difficult, with canceled flights and airport hassle you would not believe, traveling for 36 hours straight with only some sleep on a plane to hold us over, losing my ATM card at the machine in Dublin(I have received another one thank God, and thanks to Alden for bailing me out for a week), our bed and breakfast was a 45 minute walk from town, which was the last of our journey. We ached everywhere! But we arrived, and the people in Ireland were so wonderful and friendly. We took our time strolling the coast on Saturday, pub-hopping, and checking out the shops. I decided I'm going to buy my family each their Christmas present from a different country I visit. Sunday we did some tours, saw a neat castle, went under the burren in some caves, and of course saw the Cliffs of Moher. It was all so amazing and beautiful and we were sad to leave. But we arrived in Austria and it is just as beautiful, though very different. The town of Gaming is welcoming and quaint. We'll get some pics up on our new home sometime soon I hope. The monastery (The Kartause) is gorgeous and very old, the architecture is breathtaking, and we're right in a valley surrounded by Austrian hills. I simply love it. The local pub is a fun place to hang out but the food in the mensa(caf) is not so great. But we started classes today and I look forward to learning and incorporating everything together in this wild, unforgetable experience that is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We're also learning a few words of German too, everything is quite a bit different here but we're getting used to it.

So that's it! We'll be posting and getting pictures up as much as we can!
Miss you all and Ausveerdestain! (may not have spelled that correct...)
-Catherine*

The Arrival

hello everyone. we are now officially in gaming. as we stepped off the bus, rows of austrian children sang songs to us, they were direct decendents from the world-renowned von trapp family. hans carried our bags and birds chirped as we walked into our rooms, and little austrian maids brought us milk with dinner, fresh from the cows which graze out behind our beautiful residence. it was amazing. anways, this is my first post so i wanted to just say hello to everyone and i hope you all enjoy following our journey as much as we are enjoying having it. ireland was amazing, i alone took over 400 pictures and catherine took quite a bit also. we should have those up within a few days, we're a little overwhelmed right now. but we will try to post often and get many of our pictures up. well, i think we are going to go enjoy some free beer as part of the welcoming party so ill end this here but be sure to check back soon as we will keep you all updated on everything. guten-night!

-alden