The General State of Affairs and Minor Victories at the 2-Month Mark

**While walking along the main shopping street in Graz, I saw a window display in a clothing store being changed. The box full of random mannequin arms was delightfully random and struck me as pictureworthy!

I've officially been in Austria for 2 months and 2 days. I thought now would be a good time to check in with you, maybe revisit some of my older thoughts and posts, and let you know where I stand thus far!

• My first week of teaching, I reported my schedule of teaching 12 hours a week only 3 days a week--Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. As relaxing as this sounds, I've discovered that it's surprisingly tiring to teach "so much"! It's a really active job to stand in front of a group of teenage boys and attempt to enage them and capture their attention for 50 long minutes at a time. It requires being prepared...like dogs, I'm convinced that students can smell fear. If I'm not comfortable in my topic, they'll know it. I spend an average of 5-8 hours preparing my lessons (3-4 hours on a good day); then, I will study the finished lesson plan and learn any new information or facts by heart--in this way, teaching a lesson on a new subject is much like giving an oral report. The only way to really keep them engaged is to speak directly to them--not to read from a sheet or keep checking my notes. In my class, I am the expert on everything. It has to be this way, I've learned, for a successful lesson. Talking so much is also tiring--by the end of the school day I am totally ready to disengage. My schedule has just changed again for the end of the semester...I now work a highly desirable Monday-Wednesday block, giving me a 4-day weekend every week from now until Christmas. Ahhhhh.....


• Attentive readers of my blog may recall my reference to Frank McCourt's Teacher Man and my aspirations to be that teacher who gets by (and ends up teaching the students something along the way) by telling stories. Today I gave a lesson on Thanksgiving to a class of 16-year-olds. We started with the history of Thanksgiving and an explanation of the Pilgrims, etc., and then we moved on to a narrated slide show showing everything prototypically Thankgiving-y: all of the Thanksgiving foods, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Thanksgiving Day football, Black Friday, and even the Simpsons Thanksgiving special. I ended with an explanation of my own family's Thanksgiving Day traditions--a huge feast with all of the extended family, the rigid table manners enforced at my grandmother's house, and the annual weight-gaining competition. Every family has their oddities, and the weight-gaining competition, taken quite seriously by some, happens to be one of ours. I described how one cousin, whose strategy was to drink uncomfortable amounts of water, usually won the contest. One year my grandmother decided to help me win. She took my grandfather's velcro wrist weights (for power walking) and strapped them around my legs under my dress. When I got onto the scale, there was a general outcry of shock as it was discovered that 10-year-old Rebecca had somehow gained an impressive 12 pounds! As I was revelling in the certainty of my victory, I felt one of the weights loosen and start to slip down my leg. I tried to keep my legs tight together, but as I stepped off the scale, the weight slid to the floor and betrayed me. I was naturally banned from the contest and my cousin the water-drinker won again that year. As we were leaving class, the teacher told me, "You really are such a good storyteller! The kids were hanging on every word--you tell stories really well!" ...Perhaps I'll make Frank McCourt proud after all...


• You may also recall how my German has good days and bad days. This is still the case, but things are getting brighter. Well, perhaps. When my German is good, it's really really good; when it's bad, it's just embarassing. (See previous post!) While I still struggle with something I call Morgen-Deutsch (morning German, a term applied to any German before 12 noon), occassionally I do reach the point where (like in a previous blog) I can be mistaken--if only for a little while--for a native. Recently I was speaking to a teacher, and he was asking about how I learned German. He complemented me on my German and said that I had "a 0.1% accent...No! Actually a 0.01% accent." I also went to see "Ratatouille" in German not too long ago, and there were a couple of girls giving out free coffee samples from a new Nescafe coffee machine. As I was asking for my particular type of coffee, one of the people I was with addressed me in English. The girls, unusually outgoing for Austrians, started a conversation with me, asking me where I was from and noting that I spoke exceptional German. This led to another conversation on how and where I learned German. These girls were from Vienna and thought it was funny that I learned the local German; I explained to them that I didn't know any better, since Graz is really where I learned German in the first place, so I don't necessarily know which words are local and which are not. This led to a long and interesting conversation about their take on the Styrian dialect and my experience with it as a foreigner that lasted until I was literally dragged into the movie. All in all, my German is going really well. Aside from the absolutely terrifying incident of playing a game of "Telephone" in a circle full of Austrian teenagers at a birthday party--irrationally fearful that whatever was whispered in my ear would be either in dialect or words I don't know, causing great embarrassment and a suddent halt to the game--I'd say I'm doing pretty well.


• My lessons are still pretty darn awesome, and amazingly enough the kids are actually retaining information! It was a really big moment for me last week when one of the teachers told me how the kids corrected her in class: for some activity or other, she declared, "I'll be the referee, and I'll decide what's right or wrong." Then the students spoke up and said, "But we had Rebecca earlier today and she told us about baseball--it's not called a referee, it's called an umpire!" None of the students had heard of the word "umpire" until they had the baseball lesson...they actually learned something!


• I can also check off one item on the list of things I wanted to accomplish in my free time: learning ballroom dancing! I've started taking private dance lessons with another language assistant in preparation for the ball season. The balls (just to remind you, these are balls in the fairy tale sense of the word) have already begun and will continue for the next few months. We've decided to tackle some of the typical dances one would find at a ball--slow waltz, Viennese waltz, foxtrot, cha cha cha, and other random assortments of ballroom dance. So far we've done the cha cha cha (a ballroom favorite, since it does not require much space on the dancefloor) and tomorrow we begin with the waltz! It feels really good to be dancing again (as there is no swing dancing in all of Austria it seems, it's nice to get out dancing again) and I'm already looking forward to showing off at a ball!

And just to reiterate, I love love love getting your comments. Thanks so much for taking the time to read the blog--even if it's a one-sided activity, it makes me feel more connected to everyone so far away!

Happy Thanksgiving!

First Snow!

It's official...winter is here! It started snowing this morning when I woke up, and it's been alternating between pretty fluffy snow and wet icky snow ever since. It's sticking more up in the area where Iive, and it looked so pretty that I had to take pictures. As I'm a huge fan of snow, it's a happy day for me.



(Note: The rest of Austria has already gotten a bunch of snow, but Graz was like the black hole of all the wintery weather patterns. We're finally on board!)

Pardon me, but the machine devoured my money!

*Fall in Austria

A couple days ago, I went to the train station to buy a train ticket. My intention was to simultaneously get a Vorteilscard, which would give me half price on all train travel within Austria until I turn 26, and then purchase the discounted ticket.



I already had the application for my Vorteilscard ready and filled out; the only thing I needed to do was affix a passport-sized photo. Since I didn't have any extra passport-sized photos lying around, I decided to get some made in the photo machine at the train station. So upon arriving at the train station, I immediately went down to the area with the photo machines boasting passport photos, funny photos to give out to your friends, and photo business cards (among other things), and inserted my €5 into the slot, selecting the Passport Photos option. Taking a seat in the booth and pulling the curtain closed behind me, I was impressed with the kindly female voice walking me through all the steps. As the photo was being taken 4 times (from which I could choose my favorite photo to print), I couldn't help but think of the movie "Amelie"--of all the photos made in such booths in train stations, and also of the photo machine ghost that Amelie and Nino track through the city. I was instructed by the female voice to leave the booth and retrieve my photos from the slot on the outside of the machine. But when I went out there...no photos. So I waited, allowing them to print some more...still no photos. I went back inside the booth and started jiggling things and then went out to check again...still no photos.



Realizing that I was going to remain photoless until I did something about it, I decided to go up and buy my ticket. I didn't have the first clue who to seek out as the person to talk to about the malfunctioning machine and get my money back, but I figured the guy at the ticket counter would know. So I went back upstairs and purchased a ticket for travel outside of Austria which, thankfully, did not require a Vorteilscard. Before I left the counter, I explained to him that the machine downstairs was broken and asked who I should talk to about that. He checked in the computer and saw that the photo machine people wouldn't be coming to the train station for another two weeks, and so he told me to go call the phone number on the outside of the machine and that they would be able to help me.



With a feeling of dread, I went back downstairs. Calling the number on the automat is something I would hate to do in English, let alone in German. And what was I going to say when I called?!--"Hello...a machine...it is broken...help please...." I found the number on the outside of the booth, and with a here-goes-nothing attitude, I made the call. After a couple rings, a voice at the other end picked up and said something that was completely unintelligible to me. Barging right on ahead, I greeted the voice and explained that I was in the Graz train station with a broken photo machine that took my money but would not give me the photos. As I spoke, I was surprised at how well all of this was coming out, and I did not have the nervous phone stutter that I often have! The man asked me for a few more details about the machine (does it take your money? does it take the photos? do you receive the photos? so it takes the photos--i.e., it's working--but you don't get the photos?) and then told me he'd look into that particular machine and send me the €5 by bank transfer; all he needed was my bank information and account number. Since I didn't have that information with me (or memorized), I told him I'd have to get back to him later. He said that I could send him my name and bank information in a text message and he'd take care of it.



The next day I located my bank information and sat down to write the text message. I wrote a short message introducing myself and explaining that I had spoken to him the day before about the machine that....that what? That was broken? In English, I would say that the machine ate my money. I thought about this for a few moments, weighing the appropriateness of the phrase "ate my money" and also the implications of this phrase in the German language. After some deliberation, I concluded that it would be a lively and clever way of saying that the machine was broken if I said that it ate my money. And because German has two words for "to eat"--essen, which is what humans do, and fressen, which is what animals do (and is more akin to "devour")--I could use the non-human term and further indicate in a cute and clever way that the machine devoured my money. Satisfied with this conclusion, I proofread the text message about 5 times and then sent it, feeling confident and clever with my mastery of this awkward and unusual situation.



Within seconds, my phone was ringing. I looked down at the number displayed and saw that it was the photo machine guy. Thinking that he must be calling just to confirm that he received the text, I answered the phone confidently and self-assured. He then introduced himself and said that he had received my text, but that it was unclear what I meant by "the machine devoured my money." My feeling of confidence immediately deflated like a balloon. And the stuttering, ineloquent Phone Rebecca appeared. He wanted to know: So when you say that the machine ate your money, does that mean it took your money and didn't do anything? Or did it take your money and take your picture? Or did it take your money and take your picture but not give you your picture? Humbled and not feeling like a master of the German language anymore, I explained to him that, yes, the machine worked fine and took the pictures, it just didn't give me the pictures. He clarified the situation about two more times, and when he was absolutely certain that the machine did not, in fact, devour my money--that it simply did not produce the pictures--he thanked me and told me he'd take care of it.



A day later, I was discussing this situation with an Austrian friend. I told her about my clever text and the photo machine guy's confusion, and it was then that she explained to me that machines in Austria do not devour or eat one's money....they swallow one's money!



With this small lesson learned, I can confidently say that I will never forget that German-speaking machines swallow (as opposed to eat) one's money. Embarassment is truly an effective teaching tool.

Knock, knock!...

...Who's there?

Nobel.

Nobel who?

There's no bell, that's why I'm knocking!

....But in Graz there are bells, as I've mentioned in one of my first blog entries. A couple days ago it was one of those perfect fall days where the air is crisp yet comfortingly warm and the sun is actually shining. The trees were ablaze with the fall colors and it was just too nice of a day to stay inside, so I went up on the Schlossberg (a hill in the middle of town upon which a fortress and clock tower were built) to write some letters and enjoy the weather. Then the bells all around town all started to sound simultaneously, so I whipped out my camera and took a video of the view with the sound of the bells for your viewing pleasure...

Time is Like a Suitcase...I Pack to Fit!

***This is absolutely amazing and must be shared! THE ARNOLD APPLE: This is a Styrian Power Apple. From "the homeland of Arnold Schwarzenegger", this apple offers incomparable strength and taste..."Lovingly tended by skilled and dedicated fruit growers in their small and medium-sized orchards it is a rich natural source of health, strenth and flavor"!! At the ridiculous price of €1 per apple, it was totally worth it!!

The amazing thing about my time in Austria is, well, how much of it I have. Only working 3 days/12 hours a week, this gives me quite a bit of free time. I'm often asked what I do with all of my free time, and I never seem to have a suitable answer. But I'm rarely bored. So in order to let you in on my secret of how to stay busy enough that I don't go absolutely crazy, I will take you through my week and dedicate this blog posting to that wonderful and malleable concept of time.

Sunday

Let's start with the first day of the week and move on from there. Sundays in Austria are wonderful things. They're also quite a change in pace from my Sundays in New York! In New York, I would typically get up around 10 or 11 on a Sunday, loll around in my PJ's for awhile, meet up with friends for brunch, and then either stay home or go into the city until church started at 5 or 7 pm. Here, it's pretty much the opposite.

I wake up around 8 am on Sunday and get ready to go into church. It was surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of morning church, and getting up at 8 am is already like sleeping in for me! I'm going to the same church I went to when I was studying abroad in Graz--the Pfingstgemeinde, the pentecostal church. Those of you who are familiar with my staid presbyterian background may be raising your eyebrows and the thought of me in a "charismatic" church; while some of it certainly is new to me, I have to say that I felt at home from the first time I visited. Back in 2003 when I first visited the church, my German was still a work in progress, but somehow I was able to understand every word of my first sermon. The people were friendly and ranged in age from 2 months to 92 years, and I immediately felt at home. It was fun to show up at the Pfingstgemeinde a few weeks ago and see all of those familiar faces...and even more fun to see those familiar faces light up with recognition when they had no idea I was back in Austria! I've also joined a small group of students and younger working people that meets on Wednesday nights, with a surprising number (the majority, actually) of internationals.

Sundays are probably the best days for my German. I start speaking and hearing only German from morning till night, and Sundays are consequently my "on" days. So much so, in fact, that my first Sunday there I was mistaken for someone from Graz! As high and wonderful a compliment as that was, it set the standard wayyyy too high, so it can really only get worse from there! It totally made my day though. After church, I usually end up eating lunch with a group of people--either going out to a restaurant (cheap China buffet for €3,88 anyone??) or someone's home for lunch. After eating a warm and satisfying meal, we'll usually take a walk...and then suddenly it's Sunday evening already! For me, this is the ideal way to spend a Sunday...and since I don't work on Mondays, there's no pressure to get home and start getting ready for work!

Monday

Mondays are usually spent in preparation for Tuesday's lessons. It is on Monday that I start panicking about not having prepared a lesson plan sooner, and why did I wait until the last minute AGAIN, and what in the world am I going to teach on this week?! Since my only guidelines are to share American culture and to get the students to speak in English, I can basically do anything I want. One Monday I brainstormed a long list of topics that I think will last me through the year. So now I can just go to that list, figure out what I want to talk about, and start preparing a lesson. But this is where the time/suitcase analogy really comes into play. I can begin preparing a lesson at 10 am on a Monday and not finish it until midnight (i.e., like last Monday). Or, I can begin working on a lesson at 6 pm and not finish it until midnight. Since I have an infinite number of resources and activities at my fingertips (what did teachers do before the internet?!), I can spend hours and hours trying to find the perfect resources for the lesson and trying to organize the class to fit perfectly into a 50-minute time frame. At some point, I'm learning, I just have to call it quits and go with what I have. However, I must say, my lesson plans are still totally rockin'.

Tuesday and Wednesday

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I teach. Waking up at 6 am puts me in a good spot for a nap after I get home, around 2:30 or 3. I always tell myself that it won't be necessary to set the alarm, and then I always amaze myself that it's suddenly 5 or 6 and I still can't drag myself out of bed. I may meet up with friends in the late afternoon or evening, and usually I end up tweaking the lesson again. I keep telling myself that the afternoons after class are a good time to catch up on emails and letter-writing (again, sorry to those who are still waiting for a reply!) but usually I'm too tired to get around to the things I've been meaning to get around to. It's a cop-out answer, but I'm usually so tired from getting up early on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that I'm not good for much the rest of the day. My sudden need for sleep makes me feel like an old lady already, but I'm ok with that...

Thursday

Thursday I'm off again. This is the day I'll try to meet up with friends, go into the city, and enjoy the weather if it's nice. I can run errands like grocery shopping or going to the post office, and generally my room will need cleaning about this time too. Thursdays, ideally, are my "people days"--the days I'd like to have lunch/coffee/etc with the friends I've been trying to catch up with during the week.

Friday

Fridays I work, but then the weekend begins. Oftentimes there is some cool activity happening after work (some sort of festival, a visit to a chocolate factory perhaps, maybe lunch somewhere), and I forfeit my afternoon nap. I'm also looking into dancing lessons in anticipation of the upcoming ball season ("ball" as in Cinderella-lost-her-slipper-at-a-ball kind of ball!!) and these lessons will most likely fall on a Friday. Another great day for catching up with friends, Fridays are usually spent out and about. I could (and do, sometimes) wander about aimlessly in Graz for hours (aren't predestrian-friendly European cities great?!), which is an activity I somehow never seem to tire of. It's beautiful, it's interesting, it's historical, there are infinite cafes to wander into, there are woods and hills to climb...the possibilities are endless!

Saturday

Saturday is ripe with opportunities. If I go away for the weekend, it's the starting point for a weekend excursion. It's a great day for a Buschenschank, for example. Or a trip up to the mountains. Or... You get the point.

So although I can't exactly pinpoint how I spend my time, it is time well-spent. And it's definitely of the pack-to-fit philosophy...I have some other goals and activities for the year, and I'll just slip them nicely into the cracks.

And I leave you with a few more interesting anecdotes from school...

• In one of my earlier blog entries, I described the lesson plan about the controversial concert. The students were given a roll play in which they held a town meeting to decide whether the controversial band should be allowed to play in Weiz, and each student had a particular opinion on the subject. In one group I was observing, the town mayor was describing how he was in favor of the concert because of the business it would bring in and the people it would draw from the surrounding areas. He explained, "I want the band to come to Weiz because it will bring more terrorism..." There was dead silence, and then his group (and I [on the inside]) started to laugh hysterically. Realizing his mistake, he quickly added, "Uh, TOURISM! I mean tourism!"
• In another lesson on money and how Americans spend their money, I passed around some dollars and coins, and then we looked at a pie graph where the students had to guess what percentage of the American income is spent on which expenses (housing, recreation, food, transportation, etc.). After this exercise, they were given a text on how Americans actually use their money--things such as, 54% of Americans use coins as makeshift screwdrivers, 7% use them to even out table legs, etc. When going through the new vocab, none of the students knew the word "makeshift". But I found a fantastic resource in television, because they ALL knew of MacGyver, and so they were all able to understand the term "makeshift" when I gave them MacGyver (the king of makeshift!) as an example!
• This week I walked into a classroom after the break, and there was a student with a can of tobacco out on his desk, rolling his own cigarettes in class! I just stared at him, amazed at his (talent and) nerve. We were about to leave for an excursion anyway, but it amazed me that the teacher didn't say a thing!
• This week I got found out. Officially, I know no German. This is what the teachers want me to tell the students, so that they don't get lazy and think that they can start speaking in German or that I'll translate words for them. However, I always speak with the teachers in German, and sometimes they'll speak to me in the hallways and other places where the students are likely to overhear. I've often wondered why they do that if I'm not supposed to understand a word of German... A couple of weeks ago, I got to chaperone a field trip to see "The Bourne Ultimatum" in English. (Not bad, huh?!) There, they spoke to me in German again, but they kids were so rowdy they didn't seem to hear. This week there was a school outing to see a film on drug abuse, and again the teachers were speaking German to me. But this time, there was a kid from one of my classes sitting two seats down, and apparently he was listening in on the conversation. When I got to class yesterday, he announced, "Rebecca lied to us!" Not being the first time this class thought I'd lied to them--apparently they thought that Honor Codes in American schools were also a lie to scare Austrian pupils into not cheating--the teacher asked him why he thought that. "Because I heard her speaking to Mr. So-and-So. She speaks perfect German!" I was forewarned before I got to class, but during their groupwork this kid approached me, asking if I can speak German. I skirted around his question ("What makes you think that?") but he insisted that he's heard me speaking perfect German and that now everybody knows because he told them. I think that was supposed to me some sort of threat, but it had me laughing on the inside! But I just avoided the question, asking if he had a relevant question and that I could answer any questions for him on the topic at hand. ...I'm such a bad liar!...

P.S. Stay tuned to Flickr for some pictures of the amazing fall colors! It's kitchy, but I have to say it...the hills are alive! :)