"I'm nice!"

Last Wednesday I went to Vienna for a Fulbright reception at the American Ambassador's house.
I always feel a little like a country mouse visiting the big city in Vienna. It's Austria's New York. Though Graz has over 200,000 people, you might as well be from a place like Darmstadt or Cowan. Vienna is not seen as Austria's biggest city, it's seen as Austria's ONLY city.

I got to Vienna early and met up with Emily, who is a Fulbrighter living in Linz, for my first experience with a Christmas market. We had a nice walk-around and I ate a lunch of apple strudel, a chocolate and banana smothered waffle, and Gluehwein (it's ok, I take vitamins). I'll explain more about the Christmas markets later.

After out little excursion we got ready to go to the ambassador's house for the reception. I wasn't sure how to dress for this, so I decided to wear black. I thought I looked like I was headed to a funeral, but the less color you wear the more Austrians seem to like you so I probably just blended in.

To get into the ambassador's house we had to give the guards our invitations and present a picture ID. This is probably the first function, save that party I went to at IU with Andrew, that I've had to be on the list to get into. If I had to use one word to characterize the rest of the night, though, I would say that it was nice.

The ambassador's house was nice. The ambassador and his wife were both nice. The food and wine they served were nice. But most of all, I was nice.

After we walked into the house and checked our coats and bags, we entered the main room to join the rest of the Fulbrighters. I spotted a group of people I knew from orientation, waved to them, and started to make my way over to them when someone suddenly stopped me. "Emily, this is Ambassador Eacho," the Austrian-American Fulbright director (on the left) said. The man standing next to him smiled at me, stuck out his hand, and said, "Hi, how are you?"

The reply seems simple enough. I had any number of adjectives to choose from: "Great!" "Wonderful!" "Fantastic!" "Good!" "Happy!"

But could I think of any of these? Nooooooooo. I was so flustered to realize that I was actually meeting the ambassador that I forgot all of the appropriate responses and replied, signature confused smile on my face, "I'm nice."

WHAT?! "I'm nice?" Really, Emily?

To prove that I really was an articulate master of the English language I decided to chat with the ambassador longer. I made some small talk about something I don't even remember now (I've apparently suppressed the wrong part of that conversation) and think that I probably did redeem myself.

The rest of the night went much more smoothly. We listened to remarks from the Ambassador and from a few of the Fulbright people and had a little time to mingle (aka network). In any case, I don't think my grant can be revoked over the misuse of adjectives, so I'm probably safe. Furthermore, the ambassador doesn't speak a word of German. I consider us even.