Oberösterreich - Upper Austria

Hi everyone!

My year abroad is fast approaching and things are starting to fall into place. In mid-late September I will be headed to Linz in Upper Austria for nine months to work as an English Teaching Assistant. This scheme is run by the British Council and they have placed me in two schools. One is a private Catholic school, and the other is a standard secondary school. From the communication I have had with teachers at the schools so far, it seems that I will do alternate weeks in each school, leading smaller groups and sometimes larger classes, helping them with their English and teaching them about the English culture.

I am in the process of sorting out accommodation, and am hoping to live with a group of students in the Linz-Urfahr area, however this is still to be confirmed. Although the cost of living in Austria is quite high, I have been able to find some reasonable rooms in shared flats/houses through the website www.easywg.at, which I found through one of the blogs on www.thirdyearabroad.com. I just had to create a profile and I could search for relevant adverts, and people advertising rooms that fit my criteria could email me and so the process was put into motion. I am hopeful that one of the flats I'm in contact with currently will work out, as they all seem very nice so far!

I am also hoping to do lots of travelling while I'm away, both in and around Austria. I'd love to visit Vienna and Salzburg, as well as possibly Budapest and Prague, and maybe go down into Italy. That's the great thing about Austria - it's bordered by so many countries that travel around Europe is so easy and not too expensive.

I am also hoping to learn to ski - it's a must if I'm living in Austria! Hopefully my awful balance and fear of falling won't get in the way too much!

For now, this is all the information I have, but I hope to post on here every few weeks to let everyone know what I've been up to and how my year is going.

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)