Christmas holidays and returning to Austria :)

Hi everyone!

I'm now back in Austria after a lovely Christmas in England.

I had a great Christmas holiday, which included seeing lots of family and friends, eating lots of lovely food, and celebrating my little sister's 18th birthday by taking her away to the Harry Potter Studios in Watford! Here are a few pictures from my Christmas:

Rachel and I with our grandparents

Rachel and I with our grandparents and cousins

An amazing Dartmoor sunset

I spent New Year with these lovely people

I got to meet adorable puppies on the farm! Unfortunately they didn't want to come back to Austria in my suitcase :(

Rachel with the hand made birthday cake from our hotel!

Practising for going to Hogwarts in September!

My first try of butterbeer ft. butterbeer moustache

The Great Hall

Mum, Rachel and I in the Mirror of Erised

Rachel and I trying out Hagrid's flying motorbike

No. 4 Privet Drive

I flew back to Austria on Monday, and spent the next couple days working on a deadline for university. I started back at work on Thursday and have been doing a lesson on extreme weather and ways of talking about the weather in English. The students particularly liked how many words for rain we have in the English language! The idea for this lesson was sparked by the floods in England at the moment, and I hope everyone back home is staying safe with the bad weather!

Having left rain behind in England, I was very excited to come back to the first proper snow this winter in Austria! It was beautiful, and whilst a lot of it has now melted, we did make the most of it by building a snowman after work on Friday. However, the Austrians don't tend to play in the snow...so we did get a lot of weird looks!

You know it's cold when a lake is frozen over!

The beautiful snow near one of my schools

Our snowman!

Yesterday I went on my first adventure of the new year. We went to Passau, which is just over the border into Germany. It is a beautiful town, and we had a lovely day doing some exploring. Here are a few photos from the trip:

The inside of St Paul's Church 

The inside of St Stephan's Cathedral 

The monastery up on the hill

The Danube river

In Passau, three rivers meet. This is the exact point where all three come together.

The view from the Veste Oberhaus

Thanks for reading!

Laura

Christmas and Krampus

Hi everybody :)

So this is probably going to be my last blog for the next few weeks, as I head home for Christmas on Wednesday - wahoo! I cannot wait to be back at home, I'm so ready for it :) But here is a little run down of what I've been up to this week...it's been a busy one, as December tends to be!

I began the research for my year abroad research project this week, which meant that I was getting most of my classes to fill in a questionnaire during lesson time. They were all really helpful in filling it in, and happy to do it - the only thing is I now have a lot of data to analyse! After the questionnaire part of the lesson, I've been talking to my students about Christmas in the UK, and that's been quite fun. They cannot get their heads around crackers - they just do not see the fascination. They also get very confused about why there is no meat in mince pies, and why on earth we eat fruit cake, when we could have chocolate cake instead. My favourite part of the lesson, though, has been getting them to listen to 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and try and write down the gifts they hear - my favourite suggestion was 'a jingle bell tree' instead of 'a partridge in a pear tree'! But they were good sports and played along :)

On Monday I did my first lesson at the local primary school. They have asked me to do some private lessons with a group of 6 and 7 year olds, about 20 of them. And oh my goodness were they adorable. I was teaching them some Christmas themed words, and so had made flashcards for 'Santa Claus', 'Reindeer', 'Present' etc and they were shouting the right answers out whenever I showed them the picture. I also taught them to sing 'Silent Night' as they sing the same song in German, and I was amazed at how quickly some of the youngest ones memorised the whole verse in English! At the end of the lesson, one of the girls came up to me and said (in German) "Laura, guess what? I have English on my t-shirt!" - it said 'I love you to the stars and back', so adorable! And then as I was leaving the building, they all shook my hand, thanked me for the lesson and wished me a good Christmas! Austria is seriously doing something right!

This week I also had a lovely girly sleepover with Carissa. I went to stay with her in Kirchdorf, and we watched a few films, made brownies (and ate them), and we made apple strudel (the first time I'd made it!)...and of course, we ate that too ;)

As this was the last full week of term, both of my schools had their Christmas parties as well. One of my schools is in the grounds of a monastery, and the party itself was in a part of the monastery which is not open to the public, so it was very exciting. The general format of the Christmas parties was that a group of teachers get together and form a choir, and they are very good, and then there are some texts read out, and once this part is over, you eat, and drink quite a lot of Punsch and Glühwein (mulled wine). I had a great time at both of the parties, it was nice to chat to the teachers out of the normal school environment.

On Friday, I hosted a film afternoon at my main school. I've been organising it for a while, and the idea stemmed from the fact that no one over here has really seen 'The Sound of Music', but they will always be asked about it if they go to an English-speaking country. So they bought tickets for €1 and in return I brought along snacks and drinks. At first I was a little disappointed with how many people came in comparison to how many said they would be interested, but the ones that did came really made the most of the opportunity, and although it's an old-fashioned, cheesy film, they sat and watched it, and many stayed to watch the entire 2.5 hours! People only left early because they had to get buses. And the sweetest part of it, was that as each person left, they personally came up and thanked me for organising it, and wished me a happy Christmas, so that made it all worth while.

On Saturday, Emma Cate and I took an old-fashioned bus to a little village just outside Steyr where they have the official North Pole post office. Unfortunately the post office was closed when we got there, but we had the excitement of travelling on the bright yellow bus with the very loud horn, and exploring the village which had a beautiful Church.

Once back in Steyr, it was time for the Krampuslauf. This is a tradition in Austria, and the idea is that on the 5th and 6th of December, St Nicholas comes if you have been good and gives you little gifts like sweets etc, but if you have been bad, Krampus comes. The Krampuslauf is basically where people dress up in 'Krampus' costumes, and run through the streets scaring people...it was interesting to see, and you have to give them credit for the effort they put in to the costumes, but it was terrifying. There was a railing between us and the Krampuses, however at times they would climb onto or even over the railing - poor Conor ended up with Emma Cate and I cowering behind him!

Fairytales in Austria are darker than England, for example they tell the Brothers Grimm stories. The idea is to scare the children into behaving, because children over here are given a lot more responsibility than back home. The 6 and 7 year olds I taught got the bus home by themselves after school!

Austria doesn't have the Santa Claus figure. They do have St Nicholas who comes at the start of December, but they also have the Christkind (Christ child) who comes on the evening of 24th December. It is an angel figure who comes and brings presents, as well as the Christmas tree and decorations. The children have to leave the room while the Christkind is there, and know to come back in when a bell is rung. It has been really interesting finding out about the different traditions over here, even if some of them are terrifying!

So all that remains is to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and thank you for reading! Until 2016...!

Laura :)

A very festive murder mystery!

Hi everyone :)

This week has felt like a very short one. Having Mum, Jen and Alison to stay last weekend, and the bank holiday Monday and Tuesday, meant I actually only worked on Wednesday. Thursday is my day off at my second school, and then Friday was a training day, so the week went by very quickly.

On Thursday I worked on my Year Abroad Research Project, as in school next week I will be working through the classes getting them to fill in my questionnaire for my research, so I've been busy designing and finalising that.

Our training session on Friday was a follow up to our training week at Hinterglemm in September, which now feels like forever ago! It was lovely to see everyone again, as some I haven't seen since September, and to see how we're all getting on. Some people presented their 'Greatest Hits' in the classroom, so it was fun to see how everyone teaches and what has worked for them. We also got some more tips and ideas to use from other English teachers, and generally felt more confident about our teaching ability than three months ago!

On Saturday, something very exciting happened. I'd organised a Murder Mystery evening for some of the Teaching Assistants to come over. Everyone had a character, it was Christmas themed, and it was fancy dress. Overall the evening went very well, everyone got into character and played along really well, and there was a lot of fun and laughter! The bribery and suspicion just made it all the more fun. Naturally as the host, I was Santa Claus, "Head of North Pole Operations" (and because I went all out with my costume, I won the 'Dressed to Kill' award :P ) The best acting went to my beautiful wife for the evening, Emma Cate (Mrs Claus) and 'Mrs Money Bags' was Lisa (Spanky the Elf), who ended the night with the most money, due to her bribery skills. The murderer, Chloe (Jangle the Elf) did a very good job at spreading rumours and covering her tracks, so much so that no one guessed that she was the murderer! So hats off to Chloe! Here are a few pictures from the night that show the fun that was had...

Me getting into character as Santa!

Mr and Mrs Claus

A group picture of us acting out our roles for the night.

Now I am officially in the festive spirit, and I'm ready to teach my students all about Christmas in the UK whilst wearing my Christmas jumper. I hope they're ready for me!

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)

A weekend of visitors!

Hello everyone!

Apologies for this blog being slightly delayed, I had some visitors at the weekend and am only now getting around to writing my blog post!

So last week, I went on a little adventure to visit Carissa in Kirchdorf, and it's beautiful there. It was nice to step back into the countryside, and not being constantly surrounded by noise as I am in Linz. Here are a few pictures from this visit...

Carissa and I also went on a traditional Austrian baking course, where we learnt to make various cakes and biscuits that are eaten at this time of year. After getting over the initial understanding nothing as it was totally in dialect, we approached a nice-looking couple of ladies who were more than happy to help us and give us lots of information about what we were making and how to make it! We now have recipes for al of these, which is very exciting, and I'm looking forward to trying some out soon :)

On Friday, my visitors arrived, and I was very excited about it! Mum, Alison and Jen flew into Vienna on Friday night and I went in to collect them. We spent the weekend exploring parts of Austria, so here are some photos and details of what we got up to!

Saturday:

We spent our first day looking around Linz. We went to the New Cathedral and the Old Cathedral, I took them for a look around the Christmas market, and we went for a walk along the Danube river too.

In the evening, we went out for dinner with two of my friends out here, Conor and Emma Cate. It was really lovely for them all to meet, not just so they can put names to faces, but also because they got on so well, and it was nice to bring some of home to Austria :) I also made sure everyone tried the traditional Wiener Schnitzel, and it seemed that everyone loved it!

Sunday:

Our second day was spent in Salzburg. We caught the train over in the morning and our first port of call was the tourist information, where (thanks to Emma Cate's knowledge!) we got tickets for €24 that got us into every tourist attraction in Salzburg, as well as giving us free travel for the day. 

We took the bus into town, and where we got off, we had an amazing view up the river.

First off, we went to Festung Hohensalzburg, which is a castle up on a hill, the highest point in Salzburg, where you get the most amazing views! There was also a small Christmas market in the grounds of the castle, and a few museums and rooms you could go in and look around. 

The next stop was lunch, and Jen and I decided we were going to go full-Austrian and have Bratwürstel with Sauerkraut and Mustard. And it was good!

After lunch, we went to the Salzburg Dom (cathedral) which had lots of stately rooms and beautiful art and Baroque architecture to look at. We did an audio tour of the rooms, and learnt a little bit about the history of Salzburg itself. The city gets its name from its salt mines. Salt (Salz) is the city's most important and prominent exports, and we saw lots of Salzburg salt being sold at the Christmas market. 

Our final stop of the day was the Salzburg Christmas market, which was much bigger and busier that the one in Linz. However, unlike the Christmas markets in the UK, the stalls sell a lot of traditional food, and handmade local crafts and gifts, and so it is lovely to browse, and also a great place to do some Christmas shopping!

Monday:

Our third and final day was spent partly in Linz, buying a few souvenirs and Christmas presents before they travelled home, and partly in Vienna at the Rathaus Christmas market, which was, in my opinion, the best of the weekend. 

After we managed to navigate the underground, we arrived at the Rathaus, but for some reason couldn't find the market. We somehow ended up in a courtyard in the middle of the Rathaus which reminded me a lot of Hogwarts...

But luckily we finally found our way to the Christmas market, and it was well worth the detour! 

We spent some time browsing and shopping for Christmas presents, and treated ourselves to some Kinderpunsch (non-alcoholic punch, traditional at Christmas markets) to keep us warm in the Austrian winter weather!

I was sad to see them go on Monday night, but we had a wonderful weekend, and I loved having them to stay. Plus, I'll be flying home in two weeks today, so it won't be long until I see them again!

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)