Monday, 9 May 2011

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.

1 comment:

  1. hey lovely im glad the polcie are so nice to you! (or just bored) so looking forward to having you back in this country

    xxxxxxx

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