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
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
posted by Jenna @ 1:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home