First day of work...

Folks,

Today was the first day of official work for Franciscan University - Gaming Campus. What a day. I woke up at 7:45am. I was late to Mass and ended up not going.... eeek not a good way to start out the week. Katie met me as she was getting out of the Church. The work day began with us driving to Scheibbs to buy drinks for the student social at the end of August.

We got to Scheibbs and went to the alcohol store. Wow. Beer galore. One of the things we do here at Franciscan University is promote a balanced life, so one way we do that is provide alcohol for the students. Now wait a second... how does this accomplish promoting a balanced life? Well... all things in moderation. One can drink and yet be balanced. And it's difficult to achieve that balance coming from the United States, where drinking is not permitted till 21 years of age. In a way alcohol becomes taboo till that age. 

But Europe is a different story altogether. It seems that here in Europe, people are brought up in a culture where drinking is acceptable at a much younger age. So what we try to do is introduce them into a culture where drinking is acceptable, but should be done in a responsible fashion that is in line with the Christian life. Therefore we have a social in the beginning of the semester where we provide them with alcohol, but monitor them so they can see that it is acceptable to drink, but that there is a responsible way of doing it. All things in moderation.

So anyways... the shopping for the drinks was fun. Afterwards, Katie and I went to the market to buy food for ourselves. I mean we've been living in Vienna for the past month and have no groceries in our places, so we had to stock up. I ended spending a whopping 75 Euro... Lots o food there. But I'll be eating well! Before we went back to Gaming, we stopped at a small cafe in Scheibbs. Fantastic coffee... I hope to frequent that place often.

We got back to campus at around 1pm. We took a lunch break and then met in the office where we had a short meeting with the overall director of the program. It was a good meeting, because it was short and to the point. Katie and I started working on some projects and ended at around 17.00. I told Katie and Tomas that I wanted to cook them dinner. So I made the following:

Tomato Basil Mozzarella Salad 

Fresh Foccacia Bread (thank you Niki for the recipe)

Lemon Chicken with pesto on penne pasta

We had some great wine and chocolate for dessert.

We ended the night watching the "Count of Monte Cristo," a must see movie...

Ok time to hit the sack I'm gonna try to make it to Mass at 8am. God bless!