Back to being a student bum

I just rounded off my teaching assistantship with a 1st class, doing ordinal numbers and realising I have absolutely no idea how to spell eighth or twelfth. Spellcheck is being put to good use right about now.
There hasn't been much taking up my last weekend, with the slightly large exception of our grill party and me being studious. The grill party started off with Helen and I trying to find an open supermarket. Once successful, she was then ID'd for beer. That's 16. When she handed over her driving license the young man at the till proceeded to ask "really??" in the most disbelieving manner imaginable. I found it hilarious!
We made our to the beach where we found Jesse being a model boy scout (although apparently he never was one) and building up a fire. Everybody slowly arrived in pairs pretty much and food was grilled, burnt and munched. Stones were skimmed/thrown. There was posing in front of the sunset. It was all really rather lovely.
Once it started to go dark we all made our way to Jesse's house, where we changed into white t-shirts (if need be) and wrote all over each other. Standard leaver's practice! You can see them in this photo >> as well as the game we were playing. I have no idea, it was like taboo, but not. I wasn't very good at it. Other events of the evening include playing the piano (we are quite the musical group) and waffling.
After sleeping a little on the floor, I helped Kieran take his stuff to the station, by which point I think most people had gone to get the first train home. I then wobbled home.
After listening to 'The Duck Song', with which at least half of 6bc seemed to be obsessed, my classes were nothing out of the ordinary. I spent the rest of the day in the glorious sunshine, down by the lake. I was actually really productive and it was nice to take regular breaks cooling down by taking a little paddle in the lake. My inability to apply sun cream evenly has yet again been brought to light. So although my tan is coming along nicely, I have random little pink patches. Darn British skin...
I got very restless last night though and needed to go outside. At first I went for a walk, but it was dark so I didn't stray too far. Then I went back outside and ended up sat with some of the boys from the Marianum. And a French girl. No idea what she was doing here. They all got told to come inside eventually (lol), but I stayed outside. Not because I'm badass, but because I don't have rules like they do. This time I just lay on the grass, observing the stars. They seem brighter here. I guess that's to do with less pollution. I still can't find Orion though. The Plough is the most obvious constellation here. At least to my eyes.  It was nice to stare at the night sky, headphones in and just soaking up the beauty of it all.
It's probably good that I wasn't in work until 11.50 today as I stayed up pretty late. However I'm fairly certain my neighbours were pulling an all-nighter studying. It was time to use my ear plugs.
I don't quite know what to do with myself this afternoon...

Wish I'd stolen the inflatable parrot..

I forsook my Friday afternoon habit last week despite the beautiful weather. Well, I took my essay down to the lake rather than a newspaper. It was productive. I wrote a whole section!
Saturday was a rather mixed up day. I did say I would go to Feldkirch with the other assistants as there was some sort of medieval market thing going on. However, I got entirely distracted by hunting down things for a Hawaiian party, which ultimately took me to Switzerland. I did however find a lei, so all was not lost. I also bought a new top, something I was later very happy about after I proceeded to spill food down my front. Why I'm telling the world this little fact is quite beyond me!
The Hawaiian party was sort of Hawaiian. The mass of flowers, inflatable parrots and men in Hawaiian shirts didn't really make the brass bands playing 'Waving Flag' by whichever numpty released it, or the Full Monty and more Hawaiian. It was however quite enjoyable. Raffi and I went for a few drinks in town afterwards. The were no stag do's this time but what I presume was some sort of hen night, as they were all dressed as dwarves (I think...).
Sunday was devoted to lesson planning. There may have been other goings on but my memory serves me not.
So I began my last week in Blumenstrasse. My classes have all gone nicely this week. Even the Wednesday that usual drive me crazy we nice. Although I think they enjoyed the activity I'd set for them. It involved watching the Big Bang Theory and very little talking. Plus I was offering sweets and chocolate.
I got roped into playing volleyball at the Marianum on Monday. While this was actually a lot of fun, clearly my technique needs improving or I should only use a soft ball.  I have a gargantuan bruise on my hand./thumb/wrist. It's not that obvious thanks to covering it in arnica gel asap but it's been pretty sore. (To be honest, the only reason I know it's there is because it hurt) Or I could just blame Christoph and Jürgen for being the ones to ask if I would play in the first place. That's a much better way of looking at it right? Definitely nothing to do with poor skills, even after I attempted to kick the ball and I ended up on the floor. Smooth.

After we finally stopped playing (it was pretty late) I realised I had some stuff to prepare for the next day and spent ages fretting about how to provide a vocab list for this picture >>>
Normally I just give explanations of new vocab in English but I had to provide translations this time. Correctly finding out what a ruff/ bodice/etc. is in German without the help of a German speaker? Stressful.
The class went OK though.
I went to my last house group on Tuesday. We had pizza and I took chocolate. It was really nice. Plus they gave a German bible which they had all signed as a present. Aren't they lovely! It was kinda strange saying bye though.
On Wednesday after more sunbathing (it was a frequent activity at the start of the week) we went for a few drinks at beach bar. Evening by the lake is pretty :)
Yesterday seems to have been erased from my memory banks. This probably means I did very little of actual interest. Oh no wait, I went up the Pfänder!! This was quite the lovely thing to do whilst it was still sunny. Sadly, it was clouding over on my descent and I did get caught in the rain. Better than the fact that I was quite loudly singing along to my iPod whenever I thought there was no-one in earshot. Mostly this worked, apart from when I didn't spot a man sitting in his car. He laughed at me and said at least I wasn't bad at singing. Tiny bit embarrassing, perhaps??
Today the rain persuaded me to be a little more productive. As much as I enjoy sitting in the sunshine with my essay, it's not the best way to get it written. I went to the library again. I'm around 2/3 of the way through my essay, and I got given a supervisor yesterday. I'm a wonderful student :D
Oh and I finally booked a flight home.

Donner and Blitzen ♫ dasher and dancer and...

I've discovered the library. Not that I'm a bookworm, but it is incredibly helpful for researching my essay. After a few days hiding in the politics section so I could open a window and enjoy the sun (if it was there, it mostly hasn't been) I discovered the Kuppelsaal. It's pretty :) This made a much better revision spot until I got chased out yesterday by people setting up mics and repeating "testing. eins. zwei. drei. testing." Of course there has been some teaching involved too. Nothing too exciting. 

I'm a little distracted. There's a thunderstorm going on at the moment. The rolling peals of thunder are immense and the lightening bolts are ever so slightly mesmerising. I opened my window and sat on my windowsill for a while. Little bit cold to stay there for too long. It was absolutely gorgeous today as well. I did some work outside, soaking up some rays. It was after I opted to sit in the big basket swing thing that work got put to one side. Much better to just lie, swing and enjoy the good weather no?
Last Friday provided a brief dry spell, long enough that I was able to carry out my tradition of reading a foreign paper by the lake. Some random guy started talking to me. He thought I was French. He ranted at me about how much better Austria is than France. I jumped at the chance to run away, meet Jesse and get my camera back. There's some interesting photos!!
We had a barbecue. How lovely :) Afterwards Raffi and  I went out. I came home with drawings on my arms. This has something to do with running into a bachelor party. The ink was kinda stubborn. The next day was also very lazy, but in the evening I set off in the pouring rain for Bludenz. There was some confusion over the plan, which resulted in me sitting unnecessarily in Feldkirch for a while. By the time I arrived it wasn't long until the last train again so I opted to just stay over. This involved catching the end of The Life of Brian in German (I've never seen this before) and being told off for not taking up enough of the bed.
After a good lunch and a bit of a gossip about the Vampire diaries finale, I made my way home. I ran into Xan at the station so he came to get his coat which had been sitting in my room since the police brought it round. My tiredness was making me anti-social so I spent the rest of the day as a recluse, maybe watching some TV. That is until my epic skype sesh with the Sherby ladies. We might be in 4 different time zones and have microphone difficulties, but we had a 3 hour catch up and it was amazing.
Which brings me to this week. Very few of the teachers seemed to know I was there this week so lots of my lessons have been cancelled or simply unable to be found. I could moan about turning up early to sit and around doing nothing but I won't. Especially when in the 4 classes I had today, I've done about 15 minutes of actual work. More time to work on my essay sitting in the sunshine :) or on facebook chat. One of the guys here told me to spend less time on that. Oops. I've also munched my way though a LOT of chocolate. It helps me study :D

Thumbs up to the Austrian Police

My contact teacher didn't seem impressed that I'd taken Wednesday off so I hauled myself into school for 8am Thursday morning, wishing I could be anywhere but. I had 3 straight classes, which passed fairly easily, with the exception of listening to a student's rant about how non-Austrians shouldn't be in that school because they don't speak perfect German. I'd have liked to point out that he probably doesn't either but I was just gobsmacked.
Anyway, after these classes I was getting ready to eat my sandwich from breakfast and head home to bed when a teacher asked if I would come to her class. In theory I could have said no, in reality, I would have felt so bad for saying no especially when I'd had the day off before that I duly followed her to a 1st class. They were actually really nice. One kid asked me if I thought Bin Laden was really dead. He's about 10. So they asked me lots of questions as new classes do and then the teacher hit on the bright idea of me teaching them some cheerleading. I tried to get out of this, I really tried. I failed. Before long we were all being ushered outside so we had plenty of space. I taught them the simplest chant I could remember. They seemed to love it. I wanted to die. On the way back to the classroom, 2 girls stopped to tell me I was beautiful. It was like having my Chinese classes again!
I watched some presentations from one class that afternoon. One group made us stand up and treated us to a rendition of 'O Canada'. I stifled my giggles.
Friday was a beautiful day. One of my colleagues had invited me out to lunch. We went to a nice restaurant for a 3 course meal. It was lovely! We sat in the garden part as it was so sunny but only one arm happened to be in the sun and as a result my left arm was slightly pinker/browner than my right. I finished off the afternoon with my foreign newspapers by the lake. The fact that Bregenz made an appearance in my Russian paper made me oddly happy!
Friday night was epic. There was some 80's party at the festspielhaus which we decided to go to. All the assistants came to mine before hand, which involved some of the boys climbing onto the roof (I should probably add that this is below my window and not dangerous) and resulted in a large amount of now dead insects in my room. 2 boys decided to get a late train home and the rest of us went on our merry way. The evening involved manoeuvring chairs to the middle of "wishbone lake" (essentially a puddle with a 'sculpture' in the middle as you can see), rounding up stray cups to get the deposit and therefore not pay for drinks, the macarena, various knee injuries (i escaped lightly with just a bruise) and losing lots of stuff.
The losing of stuff did pose a slight problem as I then didn't have my keys. (I know, I know, I'm an idiot. It was just the keys though. I had my phone, my purse was at home and Jesse had my camera)
Anyway, I crashed at Helen's. After some wandering on Saturday partly for Chinese food, partly to locate lost belongings I eventually rang  Maral to ask her to let me in my building. It took a while before I found anyone who could unlock my room door. The nuns were AWOL. I hadn't been there very long when I got a phone call. The sentences " the police are here for you. You need to come downstairs." don't exactly strike confidence in someone. However, 2 very lovely and rather handsome policemen were waiting by the door, asked me to describe my bag and if I could come outside. They had my bag and Xan's coat in the van. I had to sign some forms and ring Xan to convince them that I wasn't trying to steal somebody else's coat but basically they just came by to drop off the stuff we'd lost. Sweeeeeet!! Considering the only piece of ID in my bag had been my Sherbrooke uni card they must have gone to some effort to find out where I live. I mean, there was nothing to suggest that I wasn't simply a tourist. Pretty much, they are either ridiculously nice or the crime rate is so low here they have nothing better to do! Whichever it is, worked in my favour :)
Saturday evening we headed to Bludenz, where we went out for dinner. It didn't really smell like chocolate. This sadden me slightly. Between Chris and I, everything got eaten. Happy times for my tummy.
After church yesterday, I wasted the beautiful weather by staying indoors all afternoon working. It got to about 6 and I couldn't take it any more and took my work outside. By which I mean I scrapped researching and took a pen and some paper and wrote my introduction off the top of my head. As I discovered last Summer, writing essays outside in the sunshine is most pleasant, although it works much better when it's in English. I rounded off the day with some translation. I am too cool for my own good.

Don't underestimate the importance of food

I successfully avoided napping on Monday. Second major achievement of the day? I knew 3/7 names of student. This is an improvement. Normally I look at them thinking, 'I spoke to you 2 weeks ago. You were with a different partner. Yet I have no idea what you're called.' *inward sigh*

I don't actually have much to write about. I haven't done very much. In fact, I have been very bored and very restless. Some how the ability to successfully entertain myself vanished. 

I had a new class yesterday. Thy were entertaining. Well aside from guessing my age to be 18 and telling me they were going to facebook stalk me. Some of them actually tried right there and then. The delights of modern technology. Luckily they have no idea how to spell my name so they won't find me. When the groups swapped, the first lot didn't want to go back to their real class so one boy said "No, we can't swap yet, we have one more question." That one question... "What's your life story?" Sense of humour :) I took notes from Hannah's storytelling (Maybe I mentioned it, Niagara Falls?) and sent them packing.

Kässpätzle

I wanted to get rid of my restless energy last night so I went for a run. Yes, I run. It's not that shocking.
Today I woke up and felt horrible; the moving made me (more) nauseous so I didn't go to work, which made me feel a bit guilty. However, I know I'm ill if I don't eat. I went down for lunch and had only a spoonful of potatoes and half a bowl of soup. So little food!
I came back to my room feeling sorry for myself and wanting only to sleep, until I remembered that I had a meeting. I decided to go to this meeting as it didn't involve pupils so I could be as pathetic and as grumpy as I liked. Essentially I was just reading through some exam questions looking for mistakes. The teacher was very nice, bought me a cup of tea. She also gave me a present. I now have a shiny cookbook of Vorarlberg cuisine, complete with a list of translations - dialect to German obviously. How nice! Anyone for Kässpätzle?
I'm feeling a bit better now. At least, I'm hungry and feel I could stomach some food. This is a good sign :)

Ich hab dich getoucht!

The majority of my week has been spent sleeping. In my defence, I have been ill. I always seem to be ill in Austria. Noomi said so at house group too. It wasn't really house group as sitting around, chatting and eating pizza. I was definitely sat in the wrong place. I was sat in the middle of 2, sometimes 3 conversations. My brain couldn't handle the amount of noise, the dialect and the speed. I spent a fair amount of time in my own little world, much to one guy's amusement.
Having wasted the entire day, I ended up staying up really late finishing my lesson plans for Wednesday. By the time I had finished, there was little point in sleeping. I'd just wake up grumpier. At least I had Tony, Mark and Liam for company. (N.B asking your ex's best friend for advice on an ex situ , even if it's not the same one, isn't the best way to start a conversation.)
The classes actually went quite well. I did turn up to school without my USB stick and have to come back and get it so I could print things off. That made me late. Oopsy. I was in school on time though, stupid printer being ridiculously slow. So yes, I had only the 2 classes all week. Easy life.
I ran some errands on Thursday and once again left without everything I needed. I made it all the way to the post office without the envelopes. I am a bright one. Anyway, I've now sent off everything regarding my broken phone. I haven't seen my usual post office worker recently though :O
That evening I played Touch rugby. One of the guys from house group had organised it. It was raining. My trainers are clearly not made for wet, muddy grass. I ended up on the floor more than once and came home horrendously dirty. About right for a rugby match then! It was really good fun! The amount of anglicisms was entertaining. Sorry, getoucht, intercept - all perfectly acceptable words. Merci also wriggles its way into common use. Who needs German when you can speak denglish??
Friday night, Maral and I decided to go to the opening of the Beach Bar. Thankfully it had stopped raining. There we ran into Raffi who joined us.(He will probably read this so just to add.. he is well cool) There was a reggae band. How cool! We moved on to a few other bars and met up with some of his friends and generally had a really good night out! Lots of dancing, which was always going to rate highly in my book. We stumbled home in the very early hours, when the sun was already up. Yes, yes, dirty stop out I know!
I spent most of Saturday sleeping, before going to meet the same group of guys at the beach bar again.
It wasn't as busy and it was quite cold. I drew lots of things in the sand, because I'm cool like that. Anyway, after everyone arrived we moved on to somewhere indoors. More dancing! Yay. Definitely didn't stay out anywhere near as late. I did enjoy the kebab on the way home though.

yeah that's right... dancing

I spent most of yesterday watching TV. Lovely and lazy still! Not like I had work to do. The school this week had forgotten to draw up a timetable for me. I had to turn up first thing and let them find classes for me. Before I'd even taught one class, 3 teachers asked if I would be in their classes this week. All I could say, "err I don't know." And they call me disorganised!
My favourite part of the day so far has to have been the boy who asked if we could do the whole English lesson in German, since I'm learning German and it would be really helpful for me. Can't decide if this is cheeky or adorable.  Closely followed by the following conversation:
boy: "What's your last name"
Me: 'McKechnie" *writes it on the board*
boy: "Do you like MacDonald's",
me: "No, not really"
boy: "but your name is almost the same!"
My aim for today is now not to take a nap before this afternoon's class. I can feel my eyelids drooping. Perhaps it's time for another cup of tea.