Winter Gloom, Berlin Doom

Here in Salzburg (and much the rest of Austria), it's been wintering since October. I am OVER it! Except for the skiing.

Sure enough, I just looked out my window and it's snowing ever so slightly. 

Four months and counting of snow and winter and I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see the sun again. Occasionally the sun will peak ever so slightly through the clouds; we've had two whole days this winter of sunny blue, skies. Two whole days! (note the sarcasm.) My teachers have said more than once that they can't remember a grayer winter.

As much as it may seem to snow in Salzburg, it's worse out in the Land. Sometimes it will snow all day while I'm at school and then be raining in Salzburg when I get back. For whatever reason, the temperature is always a degree of two higher here in the city. Something to do with the mountains or the valley.

Winter monotony has set in pretty heavily on us TAs; constant gray and snowy weather kind of limits the activities that we can do. Well I'd totally be down with coffee and cake everyday but my wallet and waistline cannot afford that.

But it must be said, the snow is beautiful. Taking the train/bus to school I pass miles and miles of snowy, untouched fields with white, fluffy, and taunting snow.

But there's always the skiing!

My first skiing adventure of the season was about two weeks ago when Rachel, Katie, Kim, Tim, and I headed to Flachau, a nearby ski resort. It had been a few years since I skied, not to mention the last time was totally disastrous, so I was a bit nervous about how this was going to go. But as the day went on I could feel myself getting better and better and my confidence increasing. After about three hours on skis we were wiped, so we joined the others for an apres ski lunch.

This past weekend I visited the parentals in Vorarlberg. I was dying to hit the slopes again, which mean lugging home a huge suitcase full of ski gear. This past Saturday we headed up to Laterns for another afternoon of great skiing. The snow was so plentiful it was practically falling off the trees.

A bunch of us TAs are trying to put together a ski weekend in Saalbach-Hinterglemm for this weekend, which is also were we had our orientation.

So yes....I can deal with the winter as long as it means skiing every weekend!


What else has been going on around these parts? For February break earlier this month, Liva, Rachel, and I took a quick three day jaunt up to Berlin, one of my favorite cities to visit. We visited a bunch of sites and museums, including an underground bunker, Topography of Terror (Berlin was seriously a fascinating but awful place to have lived in for most of the 20th century), the DDR Museum, and got our fill of Mexican and Thai food. Just what the doctor ordered!

Super creepy underground Bunker in W. Berlin used to protect against nuclear attacks

The bathrooms. The bunker is still used today and can be supplied in about two weeks.

This would make an excellent setting for a horror movie

The beds

Mexican food! Finally!

Kids These Days: Austrian Schools Part II.

I knowww, I am so incredibly overdue for a post. I still have to talk about krampus, my schools, Thailand. Let's start with school.


Overall, I'm enjoying my job. If I didn't have to get up so early every morning, I would say that I'd really look forward to school.

For the most part, my lessons are going well. I have a good number of days that are great, and an occasional crappy day. It's rare for me to walk out of the classroom feeling like I had a complete flop lesson. I've gotten some really good feedback from my teachers as well, which is always nice to hear.

Speaking of the teachers (I guess I should call them my colleagues, though that just feels weird...). They have been incredibly nice and welcoming to me and I really enjoy working together with them and just chatting about whatever. They seem to enjoy having me in class and, despite their busy schedules, are pretty good at communicating with me. Every so often, I come into school to find out about a schedule change or cancelled class that no one had bothered to tell me about. This is a huge pain, but thankfully it doesn't happen too often.

There are of course, always exceptions. I have a few teachers that just don't really seem to know how  to use me in class. What really works best is when the teacher sits back and let's me do the talking. Thankfully, the majority of them get this. There are a few that like to "team teach" and frequently interject, or event worse, use me as the class dictionary. It is annoying, but lucky for me, it's the exception and not the rule.

Then there are the students. I like to think, and do think, that most of them like me and enjoy having me in class. I have no doubt that their are some who are not so psyched to see the English language assistant when she walks in the door. I think many of the students expected that I'd only be there to teach them fun lessons. I do try my best to make the lessons fun, but some topics (such as cover letters) are just not fun no matter what you do with them.

By the hardest part of this job has simply been getting used to the schedule and figuring my way out around school. The lessons are the esay part- I know what I'm teaching and I speak English! It has, however, only been within the past six or eight weeks that I've become completely comfortable with my schedule and with how the days hum and flow. School structure and schedules in Austria are SO DIFFERENT from the U.S. I don't think any of my schools realized this- so I've had to figure most of this out on my own.

These days, I (usually) know where to be and what to do and no longer have to follow my colleagues around like a little dog. I've figured out the paper trail I need to follow anytime I don't get advance warnings about schedule changes. Best of all, I (mostly) don't feel like a poser in the conference room. The new person/foreigner stigma is finally fading!

Teaching classes on my own has become a pretty regular thing. We ARE NOT supposed to do this...in practice, however, a lot of assistants do from time to time. For me, I have at least one class to myself every week, but often more. Which is way more than I would have ever expected. One of my colleagues who I have a lot of classes with has been out for several weeks and I feel a bit like the substitute teacher. For the most part, I like teaching the classes on my own and having full authority over the class and lesson. 

The HBLA (which has since gotten a name change and is now the HLW).
This school, almost all girls, has a service industry career-prep focus. Students study tourism, hospitality, bookkeeping, languages, and cooking. The HLW is a Berufsbildeneschule (BHS), which are vocationally oriented schools.  The school is divided into two streams- the five year Matura  program (Matura is the exam students take for high school completion/uni admission (though only a handful from each class in this school will actually go onto Uni. ) and the Fachschule, a shortened three program.

Out of my three schools, this one is the lowest in terms of student performance and motivation. BUT. It's really becoming my favorite school. First off, I love my colleagues and all the other teachers that work here. I feel totally comfortable in the conference room and chat with a lot of teachers, not just English ones.

But most of all, more than my other two schools, the girls here really seem to appreciate having me in class. The novelty of having a native English speaker in class has not worn off; I feel like this is the school where my presence in the classroom really has the greatest effect on the students.

There are challenges, of course- the level of English is lower. Many of the girls only seem to show up to school because they have to (particularly the Fachschule). But they are also some of my most enthusiastic students and also some of the most willing. My 5th level classes (final year) surprise me all the time with their discussion and enthusiasm.

The HAK

The HAK is a business focused BHS. This school is the best of both worlds...great colleagues, good students. The teachers are (for the most part) dedicated, (for the most part) lively, and great to work with. The students are a few rungs up the ladder from the HLW in terms of motivation and ability.

A lot of the lessons I do at the HAK have a business focus to them, which does mean I have some  boring topics now (trends in employment, anyone?) and again. It's my biggest school and has a huge conference room, so I really don't know any of the teachers outside of the ones I work with. Also, I don't have a permanent seat, which means I kind of have to awkwardly bob around and stake out a spot throughout the week. I still do occasionally feel a bit of newcomer stigma (which is never going to go away, both as a foreigner and by not being a full teacher) but it's not a big deal. 

What else can I say about the HAK? I like it.

The BORG

The BORG...where do I even begin....

This SHOULD be my favorite school. It's a grammar/college prep school with a music and science focus, which means the level of academics and subsequently the level of English is high. But I'll just say it: I'm not a huge fan of the BORG.

Most of this has to do with my colleagues. The conference room atmosphere and relations between the teachers are noticeably bad- lots of gossip and teacher drama queens.

Even after several moths of working at the BORG, I steel feel extremely awkward anytime I'm not in class with the students. Except from my betreungslehrerin, I have never gotten the same welcoming and "we're happy to have you" feeling that I get from my other schools. While the students are good (I have a some really great classes here), my presence at school doesn't seem to matter much one way or another, to both the students and the teachers.

The school really just does seem to have a bit of a chip on its shoulder. Thankfully I'm only here once a week.

If you want to know what goes on in my lessons, here's a quick run down of a lesson I recently taught (mostly at the HLW) on behavior and etiquette in America.

I showed the students about 12 slides listing a "behavior" or custom in America, which they then had to judge as either true or false. For example, "Americans often tip 10-20% of the bill in restaurants, for haircuts, etc.)"

We then talked about behavior and good manners in Austria (toasting before drinking, standing up when the teacher walks in the room) and how it differs from other countries. The students then made a Dos and Don'ts chart about manners and customs in Austria for a vising friend from a foreign country.

For the Fachschule, the lesson would usually end here. The Matura classes go through the material at a faster pace. So for them, I showed them a video clip from "The Queen"- the scene where Tony Blair meets the Queen. We'd talk about the manners and etiquette they saw in the film, is it still relevant, how does Blair's wife feel about it, etc.