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Published: November 14th 2008
Servus.
I have had a ridiculously busy week, and this is my first time to update this ol' thing, so I thought I'd let you all know what I've been doing.
To start with, I'll answer Kristy's question from my last blog, which was something I'd thought about after I'd written it but was too lazy to go back and change it. Erasmus is the European Exchange Network. All the European kids here are here with Erasmus. Though I'm not Erasmus, as I am not European, I'm still a member of the network, as is every change student at my university , which basically just means I get invited to trips, get discounts on stuff, and a few other things. Instead of saying, "Ich bin Ausländstudent," we just say, "Bin Erasmus" and everyone understands that we're not Austrians. There's also a program, Socrates, but Erasmus is the one to do.
So, my long long long week. Here we go:
Monday was my first day to teach. I had spent Saturday making stupid copies, even though it was raining here and was the perfect day to sit in pajamas all day and do absolutely nothing. I had about a million things to do on Monday, as well, none of which got done, because I had about a 6-hour block of my day stolen from me. I had to catch the train at a little after 12 up to this teeny tiny village called Kapfenberg. I had brought work with me to do auf dem Zug , but that didn't happen. Since I had never been there, I was paying attention to pretty much everything. I had to umsteigen at Bruck an der Mur, and then I finally made it to Kapfenberg. I could definitely have lived without ever going there. It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it type place, and not really scenic . I then had about a 15 minute walk to this giant factory complex which was pretty disgusting, and from there found the building I was supposed to be in. After finding the room I was supposed to teach in, I started to set up some stuff. I was teaching people who allegedly had no knowledge of English, so I decided to start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start
. I wrote the alphabet on the board, and felt kind of stupid since here I am, the 20-year-old, teaching people in their 40s and 50s to recite the alphabet, and I figured they wouldn't be too crazy about it, either, but such is life. It's surprising how much you need the alphabet I've come to find--yes, Kristy, not just with singing with Chase!-and how many times I've had to spell my name over here . Anyways, we ran through the alphabet, which was harder for them than I'd expected, and then did basic conversation. They were less than thrilled about having to do mini-conversations with each other, and yes, it's dumb, but hey, I've had to do it in every language class I've ever had and that's how you get used to doing just basic conversation and the tempo of the language. I guess I should say, too, that it was 3 men and 1 woman, all of whom were THRILLED to be there. From there, we went and did the numbers 1-100, "to be," "to have," nationalities and countries, and then the contracted forms of "to be" and "to have." I also had them doing math problems and phone numbers to see if they understood the numbers and how to spell and all kinds of crap. I was quite proud of myself for coming up with most of the stuff I did. They had a real hard time understanding the fact that states have different area codes , and I was giving out area codes like 401, 860, 203, 802, 804, 303, etc. etc. Anyways, I didn't give them a break , which they were really mad about , so I called it a half-hour early and sprinted to the train station to catch the next train. If I'd missed it, I would've had to wait around for another hour, and that wasn't about to happen. I caught the train back to Graz , and did some reading and Czech homework on the train. However, I emailed my boss Tuesday and said nope, not going to happen. It was pretty cool to be on the other side of the classroom, but it's way too much of a time commitment having to plan everything out, and the students are exactly the nicest people I've ever met, and having an hour commute just ain't worth it when you're a college kid. Anyways, good experience, but glad it's over. Handed in my keys today. She said she's going to "keep my number if something came up in Graz," and I politely found a way to say, "Don't hold your breath."
Anyways, since Monday, I've basically just been trying to catch up. We're in our 4th week of school here, so we have midterms next week and things are really starting to pick up. I also started a new class on Tuesday that I have just for this week and then a week in January. It's Intro to the History and Culture of Ancient Egypt. I had it this week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. It's great! It's really interesting, and I understand absolutely EVERYTHING! Granted, the professor is from Germany, so she doesn't have the crazy Austrian accent. I've gotten so used to listening to her that today I had my other German lecture , and was bored for an hour and 45 minutes since I understood absolutely nothing since his Austrian accent was so thick.
Anyways, Tuesday was busy, had classes and then spent the night doing homework. Wednesday was a really really long day as well. I had my Ancient Egypt class which was good. The professor knew who I was once I'd said my name since we'd exchanged a few emails, and I was there before class started and so she and I chatted a little bit. She told me I have a very unusual name and asked what nationality it was from. I'd told her before that I was American, but I said it was an English last name, so she got a little confused and apologized profuselessly for believing I was the wrong nationality. I laughed and told her it was alright, 'cause she never thought I was the wrong nationality since I do indeed come from the U-S-of-A. After that class I had Czech. I really like that class, it's probably my favorite , but I will say this, Austrians are dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. I think my professor is starting to get a little discouraged. She was literally standing at the board saying, "Ok guys, German has 3 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. Czech has 3 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, neuter...WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING THIS?!?!?!" Czech also has a 7 case grammatical system, where as German only has 4, but those 4 exist in Czech, so really, they only need to learn 3 more! They cannot grasp so many basic concepts of language that it's shocking. I mean, I know I'm good with languages, but these are things that are universe truths to language study, and the shocking thing is, they all exist in German! They should be having no problem with it and I should be the one confused, but ironically, I'm the one doing the best in the class. Granted, I do have the advantage of living roughly 3 feet from a Czech...
Anyways, I had hit my max and was pretty annoyed by the time class got out. Czech is a really hard language, so kudos to anyone that can speak it! Of course, the parts of the language that I need help with the other kids in the class can't even begin to think about, so it's really frustrating since we only have 7 or 8 classes a semester, and we still can't get past, "hello, my name is..." I was supposed to have volleyball Wednesday night but was so exhausted and in such a bad mood from having to catch up on so much work , that I decided to take the night off. The ESN leaders at my uni just started a movie-night thing, and they were kicking it off with L'auberge Espagnole, the Spanish Apartment, one of my favorite movies of all time. When I was in France, Bérénice had made me watch it, and said I was going to love it. She was right. It's about a French guy who goes on an Erasmus exchange to Barcelona, and he lives in an apartment with like 7 other people from all over Europe. It's just about their year in Barcelona and the friendships and stories and adventures. It's really good. Being Erasmus students, of course we were going to eat it up, too. Now, I really do indeed living in an auberge espagnole . Anyways, we were going to go to that, but we all decided to be a little bit lazy, and Libor and I instituted a new weekly occurrance: a trip to Neubaugassekino. Neubaugasse is our street, and Kino is the word for movie theatre in German. We'd spent Saturday night just being lazy and watching movies, and we were planning on watching L'auberge espagnole on our own in Neubaugassekino . Well, we didn't end up watching L'auberge espagnole. Instead, Libor, Thomas, and I watched American Pie. Olga was going to join us, as well, but she had a lot of homework to do. Next week, though, for sure. It's a beautiful thang.
Yesterday I got to sleep in, which was a definite relief. When I did wake up, I went downstairs with the Czech to the Doorman to try to buy a bike, but of course, starting yesterday, he was out of his office until the 25th, and so I could go to Steyrergasse and see him there if I wanted. That was just a sick joke. I pulled the lazy card, and instead, the Czech and I went to the grocery store right behind our place. We both can't cook beyond the basics, but Olga said she's going to help us learn. For now, we both just bought some Frankfurters and cooked 'em and that was lunch. I then went to the library and did some reading, and then had my Italian class, which from now until the end of the year is just listening to presentations. I have mine this coming Thursday. 45 minutes long. Sweet. I moseyed home after that and Libor and I again just had hotdogs for dinner, in true college style. After that, just did some homework and relaxed for the night.
Today I had to wake up at the crack of dawn for class at 9. As I said earlier, it was History of the Latin Alphabet, in which I understand roughly 11%!o(MISSING)f what the professor says. Today, I decided to practice my Latin alphabet and see how much cursive I could remember. The answer? Not a whole lot. lowercase letters are good. Uppercase, though, needs some work. I then went to my Italian class, where I had to leave after a half-hour to go to my last class about Ancient Egypt until January. While we were waiting for Italian, though, these two girls who are in my other Italian class sat next to me. As most of you know, in Europe, to write the date, you write day/month/year. So, they wrote 14.11.08 on top of their notebooks. Something I've been wondering about, though, is why everyone here always writes a line above the 08. So, I decided to be the true foreigner and ask why. It was actually pretty funny, because at first they didn't understand what I was saying, and it wasn't because of my German. They understood me perfectly, they just couldn't understand why someone would question that. They then told me it was to destinguish the date from the American system, since the American system writes the year first, and so the line was the signifier which was the year. I laughed and said, "Nope, not so much. In America, it's month/day/year." They were shocked and couldn't believe it, because that's what they'd always been taught. It actually spurred quite a debate among the people around us, and nobody knew why they write the line above the year, just that they do. Pretty funny.
Once school finally got out, I handed in my key to my old boss, and thank God that is over, and I went to the grocery store. Tonight, Libor, Thomas, and I are going to make true hamburgers, which should be interesting, so I bought some stuff for that, and I also bought some stuff to try to make a genoa grinder. Though I succeeded , it was nowhere as good as true Reale's. Oh well, such is life.
As for now, I'm off to watch last night's episode of The Office and lounge around for a bit. Oh right, I also met our last flatmate this week, and could have done without it. She's nice enough, her name is Amanda, and she's from Marseilles, France. She only speaks French and then some English, and she hates Austria and she hates German. She gets very mad that Libor doesn't speak English, and you can tell she's unhappy when the 5 of us are chatting to each other in German, as German and Spanish are the two languages we use most often here. I'm at the point now that English is not my primary daily language, which is awesome! I've started to think in German, have a hard time remembering spellings and English, and actually took a mental measurement the other day and said in my head, "Ja, das wäre vielleicht 3m." Yea, that'd be 'bout 3 meters. Huh??? Meters?? Where did that come from?? My science teachers would be proud. For some reason, it's all suddenly clicked.
Anywho, Office time!
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kristy
non-member comment
Doe a deer... Aren't you actually eating weiners or frankfurters? Try to branch out a little amigo! xok