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Published: November 9th 2008
Photographer
The photographer at work.Alright, nobody said that while we were abroad, we'd all have to actually do homework and go to school and do that stuff. Isn't going abroad about traveling and enjoying yourself and really just having a year off?
Not in Austria. This has been a very academic weekend indeed. It all started....Friday....
Friday morning I had to wake up nice and early to go with Elisabeth (my advisor) and Sophia (my friend from Mexico) to go and drop off the paperwork for our residency permit. Sophia also decided to stay for the year. Thus, I was up at 6:45, and we met at 7:45 and took care of it, which took a grand total of 5 seconds. I have to go back in 10 days now and pick it up. I came back to my apartment and relaxed for about 20 minutes, then headed out again, as I had class at 9. It was only the second meeting of History of the Latin Alphabet, which I'm taking entirely in German, as the last two weeks were cancelled since my professor was presenting a book in Western Austria and then Zagreb. As he said on Friday, though, catching up will
Fahrraeder
Our bikes on the path we were riding along. be no problem! We just have to stay now for an extra half-hour at the end of every class , and he decided to talk as fast as he could so that everything could be covered. All the other students had no problem with this, and that's how it came to be that for 2 hours on Friday morning, I sat staring at the wall while I caught one or two words, maybe even a sentence, about once every 8 minutes. My approach for this class is to write down the key words and names he stresses, and then from there consult my good friend Wikipedia, and thus hopefully have some idea of what's going on. You'd be surprised the way that Eramus students are getting creative about understanding lectures, there are a wide range of tactics in use.
After that class, I had Italian, which was fine, and then the sweet, sweet weekend. The Romanistik building isn't really close to the main campus of the university, but it's really close to my housing company, so after class I tried to go there to get a signature on
PRIVATGRUND
There are a lot of things that aren't allowed in Austria. Still, we trespassed on more than one property today... my Medelzettel so I can reregister with the government of Austria. Of course, it was after 12, which means that basically every useful office in Austria is closed, so I gave up on that. By that time, it was also raining pretty hard, so I caught the Straßenbahn into Hauptplatz, where I went to the bank and gave my bank account a low blow, having to pay for the rent for my new apartment (since I've yet to be reimbursed by my old housing company). After that, though, it was a nice rainy day, and I swang into Billa, grabbed some frozen chicken fingers, bought some tea, and went home. In proper rainy-day attire, I lounged around for the afternoon, just hanging out and keeping it lowkey, watching Scrubs and then one of my favorite movies, which is in Italian, La Stanza del Figlio. Dietlinde also was going to have a little gathering Friday night, since one of her flatmates from Austria loves international students and wanted to meet people, so Libor, Thomas, Martyna, and I set out for that at 8. We just hung out at Dietlinde's place for the night with a bunch of kids, a mix of
Tramwaymuseum
For some reason, there was a Streetcar Museum here. internationals and locals, which was a lot of fun and really cool to finally be able to have a full conversation with normal kids our age who just live here.
Saturday, I slept in late, after getting finally the first full night's sleep since I'd gone to Vienna last Sunday. I woke up and it was still raining, but unfortunately I couldn't lounge around again. I had to go up to the office for my job and meet with my boss and start making copies and getting crap together to teach, since I start teaching tomorrow. I'm not really looking forward to it, I had a kind of different impression of what it was going to be. I'd had the idea that it was more tutoring, so basically someone tells me what they want to study and I help them to understand, which is something I really like doing. Last year about once every two weeks I'd get together with some of the kids from my Italian classes and basically just run through everything with them, which was great, always a lot of fun and cool to "teach." I was thinking I'd be doing more of the same, but
Oesterreich
Austria, painted on a tree. nope. I am literally being the teacher of three Austrian men and one woman, and it's rapidly turning out to be more of a hassel than it's worth. It's obviously good pay, but it's almost not worth it. I have one class on Mondays from 2-4, but I have to take the train at about noon, and then there's not a train back to Graz until 5, and it takes an hour each way, so I basically have a 6 hour day for this job, 4 hours of which are wasted with doing nothing. It's more than a little bit frustrating. Oh well, I'm going to go tomorrow and see what I think, but if it's not worth it, it's not worth it. My classes are also seriously starting to pick up, as, as weird as it sounds, we're in the second part of the semester. I've spent a good few hours today reading a text in 15th century Italian dialect from Vicenza, which is like a weird combination of Italian-Latin-Spanish, so it's hard to figure out what everything means I really have to pay attention. I then have the joy of next week doing a 45-minute presentation in Italian,
Mariatrost
Looking up from the bottom. and then writing a 15-page paper (in Italian or German, whichever I find easier...), but I have to be ready to present this week (Thursday). Sweet. I also start one of my other classes on Tuesday, which I'll have this week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then also for a week in January (Intro to the History and Culture of Ancient Egypt...taught in German). Basically, the academics are really picking up here, so I'm going to scour the internet tonight to see if I can get some scholarships, because though I'm not poor, the travel money is starting to run low, and well, shucks, you only live in Europe as a broke college kid once.
Last night I did some homework and actually got a lot done for two of my classes, and then cooked dinner for myself and Libor since he had cooked last week. I made the ever challenging spaghetti, which compromises most of my diet here, as it's only of the only things I know how to make and not screw up. We then watched an American movie that I'd never heard of but he had with him, Winter Break, which was pretty hysterical.
Mariatrost
Walking up the stairs. We also took a break to play a card game with the Spanish kids. They travel in packs, no lie, you'll rarely see someone from Spain alone here, and my apartment is sort of the meeting point. I don't know why we don't just make them all keys haha We joke, though, that we need a sign that says AQUI SE HABLA ESPANOL. Anyways, we played a card game with them, and then they headed out. Thomas actually ended up going out to a club, too, but he was baking a cake. He left Libor and me in charge of it, giving us instructions for how to know it was done. Bad idea with two kids who can't cook. We kept checking on it regularly, and according to Thomas' instructions, it wasn't done, but we finally made the call the pull it out of the oven when it was starting to get quite black. Needless to say, Thomas was not in the best of moods when he saw that his cake was burnt, as he thought we'd forgotten about it when really we didn't think it was cooked enough and left it in there a bit
Houses
Some of the houses next to Mariatrost. longer. Oh well. While all that was happened, Libor and I also then watched American Wedding, always a classic.
This morning, we woke up to Thomas still in a bad mood, and he took off for the day with some of his French friends. In an effort to further dodge doing our homework, Libor came up with the idea of taking a ride out to Mariatrost, a church on the serious outskirts of the city. He'd been there once before and wanted to go back, as there were a lot of modernish houses in the area that he wanted to see again and take some pictures of. I borrowed Borja's bike, and we got underway. It was probably about a 15-20 minute ride, but it was cool. We rode up to my school
, and then from there kept going, which was an area I'd never been in before. We ended up going along a bike/walking path alongside a little river, and eventually in the distance could see the church up on a hill. It's bright yellow, which is really cool to see, and though today was relatively nice, as we were Maria Sprach
On each "landing" on the way up the stairs, there was a snippet of a story about Mary. approaching there were still some menacing rain clouds in the sky, so it was really cool to see the contrast between the clouds and the church. We got there and walked up about a million stairs to the top, where there was a small Platz and incredible views of the surrounding area. We explored around the church for a little bit, then headed back down the hill. From there, we went up into this little housing district across from the church where the houses he wanted to see were. We both started to ride up the hill, and then looked at each other and say, "yeah....no..." and ended up just pushing our bikes up. It was wicked steep, but also had some pretty cool views of the area, and nearly all the houses up there had wild architecture. After that, we turned around, hopped on our bikes, and flew down the side of the hill, which was a blast. We then took our time and moseyed back to Neubaugasse, and since then have just been doing homework. As I said, I'm currently bogged down in my 15th Century Italian, though am stopping for the evening since it's almost 9 o'clock.
Mariatrost
Mariatrost. Enjoy my pictures!
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kristy
non-member comment
I'm glad to see you are finally having some work to do! How is the "teaching" going. Can you do work on the commute to and from? It seems like the money would be worth it. OK, probably going to get laughed at for this - at least by some... what does Erasmus stand for? Rainy and a little chilly today - I am going to Northern Virginia this weekend - not as exciting as your jaunts but I cant wait! xok