Sending me mail

I almost forgot. This is VERY important:
If anybody wanted to send me mail that isn't on a computer, it is very very VERY important to write it with EUROPE at the end. Apparantly things sometimes get mixed up and get sent to Australia instead of Austria--a situation that is increasingly maddening as I enter my 5th week waiting on a package from Beth that I will probably come while I'm gone, not get picked up in time, and then get sent back to the states... and as I am still waiting for my stupid stupid dumbass bank card.
So, if you plan on sending anything, address it this way:

Jenna Cushing-Leubner
c/o Schubertheim
Leechgasse 1
8010-Graz, Austria, EUROPE

Thanks.

Oster Ferien!

Right now I'm eating canned corn with Schaffkaese. How gross am I?

Alright, so Easter Break started officially on Saturday, but we'll just count Monday as the first official day, since it isn't a weekend. I spent a good part of the weekend wandering around the city with either Christy (Friday) or Meg (yesterday and today). Friday Christy and I got ice cream (it was almost 70 here) then trapsed up to the schlossberg, where we sat on a wall overlooking the city for a good hour and a half having a "conversation" about Graz, and how much we love it. Which is to say, every 15 minutes or so, one of us would pipe in with something else we just love about Graz. Then we wandered around and "looked" at apartments. Basically we day dreamed of what it would be like to live in an apartment downtown. Very exciting. Since Christy left on Saturday morning, Meg and I have been eating a lot and watching "My So-Called Life". Fulfilling, to say the least.

Now to the fun part: EASTER BREAK!
STILL haven't gotten my bank card in the mail yet, so I'm hoping to scrape by on under 300 euro over the next two weeks. Ordinarily wouldn't be a problem, but it definitely will be a chore with traveling and having to eat out every single day.
So, it turns out I won't be around at all until the first weekend of April. I thought at first that I would be home for a few days before Easter, but I think that has changed.
Here are my plans:
Beth, Bob, Frau, Bob's parents, and Jason--a friend from Bob's work, are in Germany as we speak, and heading to Salzburg in the morning. I leave Graz at 6:35am, meet them in Salzburg at 11:44am, then we are going on a bunch of Alpine tours, and tours around Salzburg, ending in a Mozart concert on the 23rd. On the 24th, it looks like I will be going with them to Vienna (was going to save some money by going home to Graz, but got an email this morning from Beth that said that Bob's parents want to pay for me to stay in Vienna, which to be honest is more than a little uncomfortable for me, but I think I'll just do something really nice for them when I get back to the states. They leave for home on the 27th (Easter Sunday). I'm taking a train on that day up to Stuttgart, where I will be staying with my roommate Christy's great aunt until saturday or sunday. I'm very excited, and a little tweaky about the Euro deal. I think it will be really fun, though, and am really looking forward to seeing everybody, and working on my german for a good week straight in a more laid back setting (Stuttgart). I've also never been to any of these places, so I'm pretty excited about all of that, too.

Other exciting things: Earlier this week I sat in on the tutoring job that I'm going to be taking over on April 13th. Tutoring is sort of a loose term, though. Basically I am teaching a high school English class once a week. The girl who does it now is studying compostition at the music conservatory here in Graz. She's been here for almost three years now, and is leaving for 2 1/2 months to do a composition fellowship in Japan. It's really sort of a shame, because it turns out she is absolutely great! She's proven to be a good source of back issues of the New Yorker, let me raid her bookshelves, loves This American Life, is watching my plant while I'm gone, and gave my name to the four other students who she tutors individually. Here's the best part: Somehow we started talking about linguistics (probably because I'm a massive geek who always somehow squeezes it into to conversation. God. I'm probably really boring...). Specifically we started talking about phonetics and the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). Turns out that she writes her music based on the IPA. So, she doesn't write words, she writes sounds. Pretty cool and even more intense. We talked about it a lot, and she gave me two of the pieces she has been working on. I'm going to go over them and see where possible problematic sections are for reading the IPA, etc. I'm probably going to be recording me reading it so we can compare notes and look for common mistakes. Probably doesn't sound like much, but I'm VERY EXCITED! It's SO cool. We also talked about a bunch of other things to do further down the line if this preliminary stuff works out. It's too bad that she's heading out so soon, but It's definitely been very cool to meet her. Also good to see that you can actually make it on a student visa. (turns out you can make up to 10,000 Euro legally in Austria without getting taxed, and with just a resident visa... good to know, possibly...)

So that's that situation. Otherwise, bringing plenty of schoolwork to do while I'm on the train. Looking forward to the trip, and still still unbelievably still having a good time.
Love you all!
Jenna

Let me touch your face....

Hey! Does anybody want to see pictures of Jenna in Austria? My clothes are probably dirty, but I've gotten over it. See if you can too. Don't get tripped up, while it appears that all of these pictures have been taken on the same day because the clothes don't change, they actually have been taken on separate occassions. I know. Gross.
Here's what you have to do:
Go to: http://www.photo.epson.com
On the left hand side it will ask you to either sign in, or right below it you can type in the email address of the pictures you want to see. In that space type in: cmp001@lvc.edu (that's my roommate).
It will open up on a new page with options for different types of pictures. If you want to see pictures of Graz (where I am), you can click on the Graz pictures. If you want to see pictures of me go towards the bottom and click on the People pictures.
A new page will open up with little pictures on it. Click on the "Show all" link.
A lot more pictures will show up! Scroll to the bottom of the page. The last ten or so include pictures of Jenna, as well as my roommate Christy and another pal, Meg. They also have little thumbnail comments that Christy thoughtfully wrote. If you click on a picture it will get big and take up a lot of your screen.
If you love me a lot, you will use one of these as your background.
If you love me even more, you will create a looping slide show and use me as your screen saver, leaving your computer on even as you sleep.

In the land of Vollkorn und Honig

Day: Saturday
What I’m reading that isn’t about linguistics: “Naoko”, a Japanese mystery novel from Jaron that’s pretty good.
New roommates for the weekend: One. SUNY Meg who was evacuated from her room when her new roommate’s boyfriend came to stay.
Number of times I’ve eaten Spätzle with goat cheese in the last week: Three
Number of times the power in our dorm has gone out: Two
Number of times it has stayed out in only the bathroom for more than eight hours due to SOMEBODY leaving the burners in the kitchen on the entire night: One.
Things I don’t understand: Pretty much everything.
Tried to figure out how to post the one an only digital picture of myself looking mad sporty in Austria. To no avail. We had our first practice for La Crosse on Tuesday, and on Wednesday received a speedy email attachment photo of us sweaty and hardcore awesome with our La Crosse sticks. I’m pretty bad at it, but it will probably be fun. Wednesday we were kicked out of the game room in the basement for kicking the soccer ball around and told the roof might be a better option. Hmmmmm….

First week of classes down, and I had a geektastic GREAT time! I love love love my classes. I understand my classes, except for two of them, which I probably won’t end up taking the exams for anyway. Right now I should be in the library for my classes, but they aren’t open on Saturdays or Sundays. And they close at 4pm during the week. Why not? Everything else does. So this week I’ll library myself out. Oh, one other thing: We don’t have books for our classes. We get a resource list. If we’re lucky we get a binder in the institute library filled with articles. No matter what we get, we have to make copies of it. All of it. Something else Jenna doesn’t know how to do? Make copies.

It’s too bad. Since everything shuts down on the weekends, for once it would be the perfect opportunity to head to the library and study up. In fact I really want to head to the library and study up. I’m insanely interested in everything we are covering, and I want to read all the articles we’re supposed to read… for ALL my classes. It’s insanity. And thwarted. I guess I’ll start preparing things ahead of time next week, and start making the copies. I already have four presentations scheduled, three papers, and one very exciting group project. Don’t ask me about exams. I don’t want to talk about them. You can take your final here any time until the first week of the next semester. In the fall that means by the first week of March. Which is what all my rooms were full of when I thought the first week of classes was supposed to start. Tricky tricky. For the spring semester that means the middle of October. Which really means the beginning of November. Yes. November.
Not a bad deal. Actually, I’m still going back and forth on that one.

All in the timing

Well, I just got back from the post office, where it took me an HOUR AND A HALF to send a package and a postcard. Though to be fair, the postcard only took about 90 seconds. I’m also including the time it took me to walk to the post office only to find that, of course, they are closed from noon until 2pm every day. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, Austria is well known for their Siestas in the middle of the day. Oh wait. No they’re not. So then I just waited, something I’ve gotten good at. It’s funny, I see the Nordic girls going absolutely nuts at all the bureaucracy and disorganization. Strangely, I’m feeling pretty thankful for how absolutely unorganized and inefficient everything in South Africa was. Thanks to freaking out for the first two weeks there, I just sort of wander around now, figure something will open later, and go to the next office I’m told to go to… where chances are they’ll tell me to go somewhere else. It helps that NONE of my classes have actually started this week, when they are scheduled to start, so all I have is time to go from office to office to office in any case. So I sent a package home for Easter, which is only supposed to take 4-5 days to get there. I’m shooting for a week and a half. Either way, it would be nice to know that they receive it eventually. That took awhile, after standing in an Austrian “line”, which basically means a clump of people that you scratch eyes out to get out of first. Both Elisabeth (Swede) and Eva-Maria (Fin) had package problems. I probably do too, but I just don’t know yet. Apparently Beth sent me a package on Feb 14th, and it was supposed to take 10 business days. Still no sign of it. Will check tracking when she sends me the number, but chances are it’s stuck in customs, and it would have been just as fast for her to physically bring it with her when she comes in three weeks. Durr…. Still… not really frustrated just yet. The class situation is sort of bothersome, but I’m doing pretty well with that. Thanks UKZN. Seppi said something pretty useful last night: “Everyone thinks that Austria is going to be efficient like Germany, but really we’re much more like Italy.” Ahhhhh… I get it.

Had a great time last night: Went with Seppi and Jaron in this mobile soup kitchen. From 8-10 pm we made three stops at Stadtpark, Hauptplatz, and the main trainstation (Hauptbahnhof). We had hot tea and sandwiches we picked up from a convent. It was really a good time. Seppi volunteers to do it every other Thursday, and I’m invited along every time. Afterwards, Seppi took us through the seedy part of town, where he opened a loading dock door in the middle of a wall. We walked into the baking factory for Auer Brot (which is the ritzy bakery that’s all over town and drives up the prices for all the other bakeries). It smelled awesome. There was bread everywhere, and in the back they were baking in these huge ovens, and there were carts and carts full of pastries. Apparantly the bakers do a little downlow business at night and sell things at a discount. Very funny, and VERY secretive. It was so so so good. Something to add to our new bimonthly ritual.

It snowed again today. Not sure how long it’s going to last this time. Christy and I are going to take the Lacrosse sticks out as soon as it starts melting a bit. First meeting on Tuesday sounds like. Tonight: homemade salsa with some of the amis, then an ERASMUS (the EU joint study program) party late late tonight. Next week: classes start. If we’re lucky.

First Day of School!

First day of classes!
I know I'm a total geek, bu today was my first day of real Austrian classes, and I was totally excited! My roommate Christy and I went around finding our buildings and classrooms yesterday. I was supposed to have two classes today: Development of language and text competence in school aged children, and the Theology of Hitler. Both are "lectures", although the first is going to have a little more work to it, and the second didn't actually meet. No professor.. and apparantly in Austria the 10-minute rule is the 45 minute rule. ugh.

Anyway, because Eau Claire is crazy in setting up credit equivalencies, I'm taking 15 classes, and eventually will probably pair it down to a smooth 12. Yes. That's right. 12. Classes. The classes only meet once a week for 1 and a half to 2 hours a day here, but for the most part your entire grade settles on the final paper or exam at the end, so no matter what lecture or proseminar (More individual work than a lecture), I'll have a good 10-12 exams and papers to do before July 2nd. Sort of funny, actually. The semester is over July 2nd. Students here can do their exams or papers anytime within a year of taking the class, but I need to have this form filled out by the professor as (yes) my ONLY proof of taking the course and the grade I get to bring back to EC (Can you believe this?) before I leave. My flight is the 13th of July, and I only have my room until June 31st (yes, before the classes are actually over...). nice, hmm?

Anyway Class today was excellent! I understood everything the professor said, and it sounds so interesting. During the course of the semester we have to do a small research project with kids 10-12 years old to test their language competence alone and in pairs--looking at their reading and retension skills when working with a text and creating a summary of said text. May not sound incredibly exciting, but I just dropped into the course because I thought it might be a good idea to sit in on for future possible research concepts. Good move I guess. Pretty neat. Tomorrow I'm sitting in on a class in the Amerikanistic building called Varieties of English. My mentor is taking the class, so I'm going to sit in for fun and help her out with some of the dialect issues and linguistic terms. I like to give back. Also may be going to a class on Language change and Variations of German.
Thursday: Living styles and Social Relationships of Immigrants (this is the equivalent of a 5 credit course back home.. and is basically one big reasearch project. Probably over my head, but I'm going to at least sit through the first session and see how I feel.) Language Acquisition, Jesus and Mary in Islam, Famous Forged Documents.
Friday: Austrian State Treaty of 1955, Society Culture and Social Change; African Structures of Time and Space
Monday: Meaning of 1989; Languages of the World; Problems of Sociolinguistics; Assessing Multi-Lingual Comeptence

The obviously linguistic courses I'm taking for sure, the others are padding, really interesting sounding lectures that are only worth 1 or 2 credits back home (really stupid), and sounded super interesting. All German but one--Assessing Multi-Lingual Competence. My excuse: The professor heads up research in the field I'm applying to study with the Fulbright, and I'm hoping to woo her and convince her to write me a letter of support. The top five students in the class get to take part in a field research project. If five Austrians beat me out of that in and English taught class, I'm moving to Guam.

So, nothing so crazy I guess, but VERY exciting to me!
Hope everything is going well for the rest of you!
Let me know if you want my address, etc.: cushinjr@uwec.edu
LG
Jenna