The icy-cold beautiful blanket.

Hello everyone, so i have a bit of time so i'm going to write a short post about what's up with me. So this weekend i went snowboarding in the Austrian Alps (two words: a mazing) and hung out with kirsten and watched some girly movies. We went for a hike on Sunday up the mountain near her dorm through a snowy park for a beautiful overhead view of the City of Salzburg. Let me tell you, God is an amazing creator and this place is so full of beauty, wrapped up in it's crystal ice blanket. This week classes are starting up (i've got german in two hours) and we are going to Munich this weekend to tour the city and stay with Christopher McKissick! Hopefully there i'll be able to hook up to the internet and post some photos online for everyone's viewing pleasure. i've been riding my bike around mostly to get to/from home-class-kirsten's dorm-the library-the grocery store-etc. This has been a great blessing and it's much more enjoyable than the city's public transit and mostly more convenient. It is a little freaky sometimes with the ice and crazy drivers, but as long as i'm cautious i should make it out of here alive. Right now i'm trying to find a part-time job so's i can make a bit of money and meet some new Austrians hopefully, so i won't stay any longer, but i love you all and i'll post again this weekend. Tschüss! -aaron-

Es gibt Schnee! (There' Snow!)

15.01 Local Time - Salzburg Austria - Universität Hauptbibliothek

Hey everybody! So unfortunately internet access has been mega-scarce up until now so i haven't been able to e-mail nor update practically anyone. (booooooo...) Anyway, Kirsten and I have our Salzburg Uni. Matrikelnummern so once the fees are paid in Vienna we'll have full access to university resources.
Since my last post, I've:
-been to San Diego with ed, aro, emily, kirsten and myself.
-got all packed up said goodbye to folks and left orange outta LAX on British Airways.
-flew to London, England and enjoyed a long day and a half-ish in the land of the Brits.
-saw the typical sights of London: Tower of London, Tower Bridge, St. Pauls Cathedral, Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, The Glass Testicle, The London Eye (the under maintenence London-Eye) Parliament, The Clock Tower of Big Ben, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, and a grand array of other British-type tourist activites. (Kirsten and I also went to Abbey Road!)
-ate sandwiches, drank British water, and experienced other British type foods, etc.
-experienced grand frustration with the London bus system and the horribly early closing time of the London Tube.
-Visited Joy Meckes (yay!) who is currently studying at a university on the East End.
-Flew to Munich, Germany and immediately boarded a bus to Salzburg, Austria.
-Moved into my housing accomodation with Frau Schöttke, Ivan (a spaniard from Barcelona who speaks rather good Deutsch), and my roommate Ben Englehart from Detroit.
-Ate many traditionally cooked, greasy Austrian meals made by Frau Schöttke who is in many ways like my Grandma Jones...
-Journied to Oberndorf on the German-Austrian Border and saw the Cabelle where "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" (Silent Night, Holy Night) was composed and first performed and crossed the bridge into Germany for a tour of an old church and Pita Bread and Salmon paste at an extremely Greek Restaurant with ten people in all from our group including Ben, Frau Schöttke, Kirsten, and myself.
-Had two weeks of German class.
-Went on a very beautiful sleigh ride up in the Alps to a 'hut' = a hunting lodge for food and drink and merryment.
-Kirsten and I had our first Valentine's Day!
-Today is our Eleven Month-a-versary so that means i have to leave so we can go on a date!

i love you all and i miss you.

my address is:

Aaron Choate
bei Frau Schöttke
Karl-Adrian Straße 12
A-5020 Salzburg, Austria EU
(Please write the word 'Geschenk' if you are sending a package for customs declaration)

my cell phone number if calling from US is: 01143 676 4709744 (free to me but probably expensive to you!)

bis später -Sepp- (Aaron)

my life in the knife trade

So just in case you were wondering about the conspicuous title of my album, i mean blog, it's the title of a Boy Sets Fire song. They're a pretty decent hardcore band and i like most of their songs on the record of theirs i actually own which is entitled 'After the Eulogy.' Anyway, that being said, here are my thoughts/activities of late. i have been working a few days already with Mark Wright, a handyman and a member of Circle Church, (which my roommate ed attends and plays in the worship band for). So that's been pretty cool. It'll be nicer to get some money for Austria, though i keep having to spend it on stupid things. We have been working at this dude's house in Coto de Caza on the opposite end of where kirsten lives, and his place is HUGE. The guy's name is Tom Gephardt and he owns a brewery or two in Pittsburgh. Whatever it is, they make a beer called Iron City and it's light beer companion, IC light some of which are contained by aluminum bottles (sweet!). They also make Augustiner beer, and probably some others I'm not aware of. So the guy has a 'carriage house' (not a garage) which houses eleven of his prime condition show cars, all of which get driven someplace in the range of never to almost never. Oh yeah then the cars that he and his wife actually drives on top of that. There are three Rolls Royces i think, a Bel Air, a yellow Woody, a mustang GT, an all black show car which i'm not sure what it is, an old school Cadillac, and obviously a few i can't remember. The main house is pretty crazy also. Blah blah blah. So in other news, my old roommate Aro returned to california with his girlfriend Erin after their extreme road trip 2005 from Wisconsin to Oregon to here. Crazy. Sounds like they had fun, minus the TWO speeding tickets that Aro got. ha. ha. ha! It's weird that he's here after being in Spain and just gone for so long. What's even more crazy is that i actually hung out with Grant for a record amount of time 'cause ed, aro, and grant all used to be roommates in Pralle-Sodaro Hall on campus. So they go way back. We all played a sweet board game called Loaded Questions last night that Naomi's sister's husband's brother invented (something like that, i don't remember exactly who it was.) It was a lot of fun and much craziness and good times ensued. i miss Kirsten a lot lately. i know it sounds crazy since we are still able to see each other every few days or so, but she still ends up having to drive back to Coto every time we hang out which is usually late and she's tired and i just wish i could drive her home so she could rest in the car and then tuck her in for sweet dreams and go home. i don't have a car either so i don't have any logical or convenient way of getting to Coto. i am wearing an excellent anklet which reads the name of the girl i admire and has some rainbow beads on it. i won't mention any names*ahem*...KIRSTEN...*ahem* but the anklet is really great and give me warm fuzzies and little bundles of joy whenever i look at it or remember that i'm wearing it. Here are a couple of Proverbs that i really liked yesterday and decided to rememberize and think on while i was at work:

As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another.

He who tends a fig tree will eat it's
fruit
and he who looks after his master
will be honored.

As water reflects a face,
so a man's heart reflects the man.

Death and Destruction and never satisfied
neither are the eyes of man.

These are located in Proverbs 27--i'm not telling you where, go read the whole thing!

Love.

Home again Home again, Jiggity Jog, Home again back again

Well here i sit at my parent's computer in San Jose about to depart for Orange, Ca and a whole different world. Home was nice but I was only here for a few days--got in Thursday night and it's now Sunday afternoon and I'm soon to be southbound. My mom threw a surprise birthday party for my Grandma Jones (my mom's mom) with the help of some cousins and relatives up in Sacramento. It was pretty cool. It was nice to see all of that side of the family having a fun get-together. I think the last two large family events for those people have been funerals. Anyway, it was good to see them, even though I didn't really know a lot of people there. I performed part of "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Fly me to the Moon" by Frank Sinatra with the help of everyone snaping and the karaoke machine on the second one which I borrowed from my neighbors across the street here in San Jo: Eric, Dee Dee, and Brian Dineson. Gratzie, gratzie! It was a lot of fun. My other grandma from the East Coast is here as well for a while and I count myself very lucky. Though both of my grandfathers have expired, I still have two great grandmothers and a wonderful family. My brother and mom and dad all love me and support me very much. sometimes i do not know why i am so blessed and others are not... i don't feel more deserving. i mean, roundabouts 150,000 people died in the Tsunami/Earthquake incident a bit ago and there are so many tragedies of less casualties happening still and constantly (perhaps not lesser magnitude for there is still loss of life). My brother Travis and I just finished watching the movie Troy today. It got ahold of me a bit more than when i saw it in theatres i think. it was a great movie, and exciting, but it begs the question to me: why war? why must people have a name that never dies and lives on in history? what about living in peace and being a good person and a good husband, or a good father, or a good son, or a good wife, or daughter, or grandparent, or whatever? where's the shame in that? what about loving God, and your lover, and your family and friends and your neighbor, and your enemy and being content with living well? De todas formas, como se dice en espanol, he escrito mucho esta vez en mi <> I didn't expect that when I opened up a new post I'd have so many thoughts ready to come gushing out. Welp, methinks i'll go have a flight and meet my love for a night of joy and gratitude. like my good friend Dillon always says, I leave you in the grace and favor of the Lord.

Patience That Kills

Alas, we are here in the studio (still) without much progress on getting the system to work how it should. We have made at least a little bit of progress, what with practicing and rehearsing over again so we'll be ready to record if (hopefully when) we get this thing working. We also played with some effects to decide what sounds we want for this and that--mostly guitar stuff. I am very frustrated right now. Why is it that out of all the versions of Pro Tools out there the school has to use 6.5? Oh yeah, and this particular software works with the MBox, and the Digi002 Mixing Board, but NOT the Digi002 Rack (which is what we're working with). Kyle called Pro Tools this morning and found out that specifically the things we are using are probably not compatible with one another. BOOOOOO. I pray we can get it working and that some sort of miracle happens. Perhaps we can put another version of Pro Tools on the computer? Perhaps we can get another computer with Pro Tools on it? Maybe it'll all of a sudden start working? Maybe some computer genius will stumble upon our little room and find us dejected and downcast and then say, 'hey guys, what's the problem?' and then just be like: *click* *click* *click* and voila! It's fixed! Maybe? Maybe. See you later. -Aaron-

Hello again blog! Hello online world!

Well, ED and I just finished doing scratch tracks for the new album right in our very own bedroom! We just used an overhead mic and recorded on acoustic guitar, bass (w/the little 'Back Stage' Peavey amp) and sang. We had fun. I'm getting excited to get into the studio. I hope we can get in there on Friday night as planned. What might hold us up is the fact that the drummer who will be playing for the album, Matt Wise, had to get a Yellow Fever shot today as he will be going to Brazil on a film shoot with his dad pretty soon and they will be living in the Amazon Jungle like crazy wild savages! ...uh I mean film-makers. Anyway, due to this fact, we may not get enough practice in between now and then, but we'll see. Hopefully we will.

Also, kirsten decided that getting a blog was a great idea after seeing mine and Ed's and Aro's, so she got one too! You can look at it here. I can't wait to go to Austria with her!

In other news, I just learned how to create DVDs with my parent's DV camcorder on the computer so I've been messing around with that and it's been fun. I am stoked to make some really great DVDs for people. I also got a chance to chat with Chris the German via Skype (an excellent program which many more people ought to use, especially when planning to go abroad or needing to talk long distance for FREE). We are trying to plan when Dillon's plane ticket to and from Germany oughtta be and also when my return flight should be. That'll 'bout do it fer now. love, aaron

My first blog ever!

Hey everybody, thanks to the inspiration of ARO my old roommate (and soon to be housemate for a bit) as well as my current roommate, the black man, ED, I have created a blog! Kirsten my lovely ladyfriend had recently inspired me to begin journaling by gifting me the sweetest spiral notebook I've ever seen, and that no doubt helped my decision to finally make a page.

Perhaps also after reading the entries of ARO whilst he was abroad in Granada, Spain I was quite enthralled at the prospect of journaling at various internet cafes in Austria and beyond--updating my friends and family in the states about my excursions in Europe via cyberspace. In other news, we (Kindred Fall) are going to be in the studio at the Chapman University Film School recording about twelve songs for a debut album, so stay tuned for that. Anyway, that seems like about enough for a first blog, but I'm sure there'll be plenty more in the future. Hasta pronto. -AC-