diverCITY - or what to do this Thursday evening

Approval, cooperation and tolerance - that's what my sister Kathi and her friend Chrissi try to achieve with their "Maturaprojekt". As both of them are in their last year at HLW Schrödinger and close to graduation, they had to organize an event as their last project. Kathi and Chrissi decided to organize an exhibition, to show that different music genres and especially their representatives can actually cooperate, get along with each other and especially have a lot of fun together.

Hip Hop, classical music or folk music - those and many other music genres will be represented at the exhibition the two friends pulled together.

The pictures show representatives of all different genres mixed up with a completely different genre or in a rather unusual pose. Kathi and Chrissi found a really talented photographer who just happens to be my dad ;)
He's actually really good, you can find some of his work on his FB Page: http://www.facebook.com/FotoFranzRauch
Of course the pictures of this exhibition are not online, but I've already had a short glimpse at them and I can assure you the exhibition is definitely worth a visit.

You can see the result of this experiment at the "Stern Bar" (Sporgasse 38). For those of you who have no clue where that is: Just get off the tram at "Hauptplatz" and take a right:



This Thursday (January 31st) the exhibition's opening will start at 6.30 p.m. There will be a deejay and I'll be there for sure and I would love to see as many of you guys there as possible - since most of the exams will be over by then we could also clink our glasses and celebrate that we survived the last weeks ;)
If, for whatever reason you can't make it this Thursday, the pictures will stay at the bar for a month, so whenever you have time just stop by and take a look while drinking a delicious cocktail or a cold beer ;-)

You can also join the facebook group http://www.facebook.com/events/390021234424368/ for more information, or if you have any questions feel free to ask me (:

Looking forward to seeing you there,
Julia

If you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own!

Hey guys,

I just saw this video and just had to share it with you - it really made me stop and think for a while.

There's nothing I have to add, just keep in mind:

All it takes is one and it really doesn't take much to make a big difference!

Travel magazine: Death Valley

Last week our homework was to write a paragraph about "The most _____ place I have ever been is _______". First I wanted to write about NYC, because as you may know I'm totally in love with the city that never sleeps, but decided against it, because I thought the adjectives "amazing or impressive" would probably be chosen by other students as well. Instead I wrote about the hottest place I've ever been to: Death Valley National Park.

Death Valley: An awfully hot but interesting place
The most broiling place I have ever been is Death Valley National Park, California. After living in North Carolina for more than a year I had actually been used to hot weather, since in summer the average temperature was about 90° F. But even so I was not prepared for the sizzling hot temperatures which awaited us at the National Park. In fact it was so hot, that a sign at the entrance said that we must not turn on the air-conditioning, because our car would overheat and most likely break down if we do. Since we did not want to be stranded in the middle of a blazing hot desert we turned it off and Death Valley greeted us with 75° at 7.30 am. While we visited the Sand Dunes and Zabriskie Point temperatures had risen to 90 degrees and were still increasing. Around 2 pm we ended up at the deepest point of North America, where with 120° temperatures were at their peak. After six hours of hot air and drinking more than one Gallon of water each we were ready to leave the “the natural sauna”, as I like to call it. Although Death Valley lives up to its name it is definitely worth a visit. However, I have never appreciated the cool air of a hotel’s air-conditioning as much as I did after the cruelly hot temperatures we experienced at the hottest place of the USA.

Text-to-speech - does it actually work?

Last week our English teacher told us about a free text-to-speech app called "Dragon Dictation", which he said is surprisingly accurate. He asked us to try it out and write a blog post about it.

To do so I went to the app store, where I had to find out that this app is not available for the Windows Phone yet. I looked for similar apps and there were a few, but only one was for free. It is called "Dictation Station", but since it didn't work at all I deleted it after 5 minutes. Instead of "How are you doing" it wrote "You doing", instead of "Hello, I'm Julia" "it wrote "I'm 2334" and so on. To sum up, I couldn't find a good text-to-speech app for my phone.

But after doing some research I found out that I didn't even need an app, because my phone has a "build-in" text-to-speech function and it works surprisingly well. I tried to send a couple of E-Mails and text messages and most of the time there were no mistakes in it. I'll definitely use it more often, especially when sending text messages or E-Mails from my phone, because it's much faster and more convenient than me typing every single letter.

Wicked - "it's time to try defying gravity"

“I'm through accepting limits, cause someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change, but till I try, I'll never know!“

This is a quote of my favorite musical: “Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz“.



It is based on the novel „The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West“ by Gregory Maguire, which is a parallel novel of the movie „The Wizard of Oz“ and L. Frank Baum’s classic story „The Wonderful Wizard of Oz“, which probably all of you read when you were children. The plot begins before and continues after Dorothy’s arrival in Oz and includes several references to the movie and Baum’s novel.

It is about Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. They are forced to live in the same dorm and struggle because their personalities and viewpoints are totally different. The musical also covers the topics of rivalry, love and especially the Wizard’s corrupt government.

I first heard about the musical about 6 years ago, when we played some of the songs at one of our concerts and I immediately fell in love with the music. One year later my classmates and I went to London and I saw a huge poster advertising Wicked. Until then I had not known that it played in London as well and of course I really wanted to see it. Unfortunately none of my classmates were as excited about the musical as I was and so I decided to see it alone. First it felt a little bit strange to sit in the huge theater without anyone I knew, but it was totally worth it.

Last year the musical played in Durham, NC, which was about 25 minutes away from where I lived. Nicole (a friend of mine) and I heard about a so called „Wicked Lottery“, where you could win cheap tickets (they were 25$) for one of the first rows. We thought we’d give it a try – and we actually won!

Although the singers were not as good as the ones who sang in London, it was still amazing and I just loved it. I would totally see it again, it’s just one of the best musicals I’ve ever seen.

My big adventure - part II

Alright guys, are you ready for the last 14 days of my journey? After Sacramento we continued our trip through California:

Yosemite National Park, August 28th to August 29th

Around noon we arrived at our hotel, left our stuff there and then went to Yosemite National Park.

 

Sequoia National Park, August 29th to August 30th

The following day our journey led us to one of the most astonishing places I’ve ever been to – I’d never felt so small in my whole life:

 

 

 

Death Valley, August 30th to September 1st

On August 31st we went to the hottest place I’ve ever been to: Death Valley National Park. Temperatures went up to 120°F (~ 49°C) and a sign at the entrance said something like “you must not turn on the AC, because your car will most likely break down if you do”. Since we were not too excited about being stranded in the middle of a dessert we did not turn on the AC – and without drinking more than one Galleon (about 4l) of water we would probably not have made it through the day. But it was totally worth it, Death Valley was amazing.

 

 

 

Since we were super tired because of the exhausting day in the dessert we went to bed pretty early and were all looking forward to the following day. Why? First of all we were going to LAS VEGAS and second it was my 21st BIRTHDAY :D

After sleeping what felt like 20 minutes I suddenly woke up, because I heard people singing and as soon as I opened my eyes I saw candles and my friends singing happy Birthday to me – they are the best! You have to know that I’m always super confused when I wake up and so the first thing I asked was “what time is it? Is it already in the morning?” – well I guess you know what time it was – of course it was midnight ;) We were having a midnight snack with my favorite cake (Red Velvet, yummyyyy!!! :D) and then went back to bed. Annika, Tine, Kathi & Luise: Thank you guys again for this surprise, you are amazing!! :)

September 1st to September 4th

In the morning we left our hotel and were off to Las Vegas! Once we arrived there we went shopping for the evening – and since I was already 21 by then I went into a liquor store to legally buy my first bottle of alcohol in the States. When I went to the cash register I was ready to show my ID – and the guy didn’t even want to see it!! I was about to say “hey, I just turned 21, can you please ask me for my ID?!!” but decided against it..Anyway, I had a great birthday and we didn’t even lose all our money there ;)

 

 

  

Unfortunately Luise’s and Kathi's time with us was already over and on September 2ndLuise flew back to Raleigh and one day later Kathi flew back to Austria. Now only Tine, Annika and I were left. We stayed one more day in Vegas and then continued our journey to Utah.

September 4th to September 6th: Bryce Canyon

 

 

 

September 6th to September 8th: Grand Canyon

Friends of us had told us that the most amazing thing you can do is to watch the sunrise at Grand Canyon, and they were right. On September 7th we left our hotel around 4am and arrived at Grand Canyon National Park around 5.30 in the morning. We spent pretty much all day there and then went back to the hotel - it was more than impressive.

 

 

 

 

September 8th to September 10th: San Diego

 

 

 

After 27 days of traveling our so called “Travel month” was over. It was the best journey ever, we saw so many different places, experienced things I’d never dreamed of and just had a wonderful time.

Thank you girls for this amazing month, it would not have been the same without you!