Teaching Trials and Adventures to Altaussee

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since my last blog post, so I thought it was about time for an update.

I feel like I'm getting into my stride with teaching now. I'm really starting to enjoy it! I've done lessons on Facebook, smoking, bonfire night, prom, report writing...and many more! The staff are very friendly and mostly helpful, and the students mostly are enthusiastic and interested. I especially enjoy teaching the 8th form (equivalent of year 13) because they speak very good English and really like hearing about England and things, and tend to participate in the lessons really well.

There have, however, been a few 'teaching trials', which I feel many of my fellow teaching assistants will understand:
- Some teachers do not reply to emails, ever, which means I have no idea what they would like me to plan for the lesson, and then decide to tell me what they want me to do an hour (or less) beforehand!
- It's hard to get 15 year olds to speak. They just sit there and look at you blankly until you start rambling like a crazy person and wasting five minutes of the lesson.
- Some students just love to talk, only they love to talk in German, and that doesn't really help in an English lesson.
- Some teachers like to sit back and let you lead the lesson, which is fine unless the class misbehave. Others like to participate in the lesson, which is fine unless they say something that isn't quite true, and then you have to decide whether to correct them in front of the class or just let it go and hope the students didn't take it in.

I went to one of my schools' Maturaball last week, which is basically like their year 13 prom, but they tend to do it earlier in the year. It's very different to prom back home though, as it's not just the students that go to the ball, but also their families, teachers, previous students of the school, and younger students too - so there were a lot of people! There isn't a sit down meal, but you have the opportunity to buy drinks and food while you're there. All of the food is made by the students, just like the decorations and invitations, because the whole of the Maturaball is organised and funded entirely by the students. This means that in the weeks leading up to the Maturaball, students are selling a lot of cake at break time, so I'm not complaining! I was really impressed at how much effort they had put into the organisation, and on top of that, they also provided the entertainment. There were group class dances, as well as a teachers dance, a tombola and many sketches that took place throughout the evening. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, and it was a great opportunity to get to know members of staff better and practise my German.

As last weekend was Halloween, I decided some baking was in order. We didn't really celebrate or anything, but my housemate, her boyfriend and I went to a lovely tea house in Linz for a relaxing evening of tea drinking and then came back to carve pumpkins. We were very impressed at Markus' attempt at carving the smallest pumpkin I have ever seen. And of course, I carved a minion into my pumpkin...

My minion pumpkin, Markus' tiny pumpkin and Charlotte's pumpkin

Last Thursday I went to see Spectre, the new James Bond film, and I loved it! I won't be giving away any spoilers, but it was amazing! I ended up going on my own, which I was a little nervous about, but I actually really enjoyed it, and felt like a strong independent woman who just goes to the cinema on her own and doesn't care! Sounds silly, but it made me feel good :P I think it might become a regular occurrence, as it's also a great way to watch German films.

It's also been really lovely to spend time with the other TAs - I feel like I'm making some wonderful friends who I have a lot in common with. It's great to have people I can go exploring with, but also who I can stay in and watch movies with :)

During my days off, I've been spending time working on my year abroad project, for which I have a deadline at the end of November, so a lot of my free time will be taken up with that for the next few weeks, but I have been off on some adventures too, because I want to make the most of my time over here!

For example yesterday, three of the TAs and I went on an adventure to Altausee, which coincidentally is where part of the new James Bond film is filmed! (Everyone was very excited in the cinema I can tell you!) It was honestly so beautiful. We took a train from Linz to Bad Aussee and then a bus up to Altaussee, which is a little village in the mountains. There is a lake there that you can walk around in about 2 hours, and I will add some pictures of our walk because the autumn colours and the reflections in the lake and the mountains surrounding us were breath-taking!

I have plans to do lots more walks like this, and to go and explore lots of towns and villages around Austria, because it is such a beautiful country with such a variety of scenery - I really love it here :) I am also hoping to join some sports classes in the next few weeks with the French assistant at my school, as it will be a good way to keep fit whilst also meeting new people. My aim now is to get involved in a lot more activities and meet new people to practise my German, because I feel like that will help me settle in a lot more.

The final thing I wanted to say is that I am starting to make some progress with the dialect over here. It's not easy at all, and at times sounds like a completely different language...here is a link to a YouTube video that gives you an idea of what I'm up against! The man in the video is actually from Upper Austria, where I am, so that is how people here sound :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkuAd97WUSw

Thanks for reading! I'll hopefully have lots more adventures to tell you about in my next blog post :)

Laura :)

Prague!

Last weekend, my friend Conor and I went on an adventure to Prague, as we had a long weekend due to Monday being a National Holiday in Austria. Here is a summary of what we got up to!

Friday 23rd October
There is a company called WESTbus who do bus journeys all over Austria, as well as into Germany and the Czech Republic. We were able to get a direct bus from Linz to Prague for just €26 each, and it only took 3.5 hours. The bus itself was pretty comfy, despite the rather rowdy crowd of Austrians sat right behind us, and it was a good way to travel. Once we arrived in Prague, we managed to find our way to a metro station, buy the tickets (the currency there is the Czech Koruna, and €1 equates to 26 Korunas - not easy mental maths I can tell you!), get two metros and a tram, and walk up a rather steep hill to our hostel, all without getting lost. We were staying in the Arpacay Backpackers hostel, and I would highly recommend it to anyone staying in Prague. It was €50 each for the weekend (three nights), and breakfast was just €3. Everything was clean and nice, and the staff were very friendly and helpful. We stayed in a 4 bed dorm on the fourth floor, where we had an amazing view of Prague castle from one window, and over the whole of Prague from the other - not bad!

Our view over Prague

Our view of the castle

On Friday evening we headed up to the castle and had a little look around. It was beautiful. We decided that we would have to come back another day and do the guided castle tour because there was just too much to take in all at once!

We headed back down into the town and looked for somewhere to have dinner. We ended up finding a nice restaurant where we had duck, and apple strudel for dessert (the most important part!), and once we worked out the conversion into Euros, we realised just how reasonably priced Prague is!

Saturday 24th October
On Saturday we headed down into the Old Town. We were staying on the other side of the river, and so the first thing we saw was Charles Bridge. We climbed an old watch tower, and this was the amazing view we had of a rather misty Prague.

View from Lesser Town Tower of Charles Bridge

View from Charles Bridge

The view as we crossed Charles Bridge was also phenomenal, and we were lucky to be crossing fairly early as it became packed with tourists later on in the day. The construction of the bridge began in 1357, and took a very long time to be completed as floods kept destroying parts of the bridge. There are statues of important historical figures for Prague placed along the bridge, which itself is around 620 metres long!

We then headed into Old Town Square, and we went on a free walking tour of the city of Prague. It was so interesting to hear stories, both fact and legend, about the city and its various monuments, and I would recommend Discover Prague tours to anyone visiting Prague. The walking tour lasted around 2.5 hours, and went to the following places:

Memorial to Jan Hus, a key member of the Protestant movement during the Catholic-Protestant wars. He was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415, but his followers, the Hussites, continued to fight against Roman Catholic rule in the Hussite wars after his death.

The Old Town Tower, home to the Astronomical Clock, which apparently is the number one overrated tourist attraction in Europe. Every hour there is a 'clock show' which is not very impressive nowadays, however it is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world, as it was installed in 1410. 

The Rudolfinum is now a concert hall and art gallery in Prague, and home to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, however during the war is was made the office of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking Nazi official. Around the top of the building are statues of famous composers, however there is a story that says during the war, Heydrich was angry that there was a statue of Mendelssohn on the roof, as he was a Jew, and so he ordered two men to go up and take down the statue. However they did not know what Mendelssohn looked like, and by accident took down the statue of Wagner, an anti-semite and Hitler's favourite composer!

Tyn Church dates back to the 14th century, and was designed in the late gothic style, however construction took a long time as it was controlled by the Hussites for two centuries. If you look closely, the two towers are not actually the same size!

After the tour we decided to have some lunch, and we ended up in an Italian restaurant. After lunch we went to an art gallery in Old Town Square that was home to three exhibits by Salvador Dali, Jan and Kaja Saudek and Andy Warhol, which were really interesting, even to someone who isn't a massive art fan!

Our plan was then to go on a Legends Tour of Prague, to find out more about the stories told about the city, however we were the only ones to turn up, and so there were not enough people to run the tour. However, the tour guide was very kind, and on his 'walk home' told us a few stories about the Bridge and other monuments, so we didn't miss out altogether! Many of the stories had some form of death in them, and the apparent preferred method of killing someone in Prague was 'defenestration' which means throwing someone out of a window! This seemed to happen a fair amount, and so we were told if we were going to upset a Czech, it's best to do it on the ground floor!

We were absolutely shattered by this point, and so headed back to the hostel via a crêperie (oops!) for raspberry and chocolate crêpes and hot chocolate! Our other two roommates had arrived by the time we got back, a guy from Canada and a guy from Germany, so we spent quite a long time chatting with them that evening and getting to know each other, and it was really interesting to hear about the travelling they have been doing.

Sunday 25th October
On Sunday morning, the guy from Germany joined us to do some exploring. Our plan was to return to the Jewish quarter to do the Jewish museum and cemetery as we didn't see much of it on the tour the day before, however the queue was very long, and so we decided we would come back. Instead we went to see the John Lennon wall.

We walked back through Kampa Park, which was looking beautiful with all the autumnal colours, and onto an island in the middle of the Vlatava river, where we ended up eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the river. Here are a few pictures from that:

After lunch we headed back to the Jewish quarter, but the queue was still long (even by British standards, as Conor liked to tease me) and it was quite expensive, so sadly we ended up going to a chocolate museum instead. Yes, that's right, a museum dedicated to chocolate. Naturally, I was in heaven. It was actually very interesting, you learnt a lot about the history of chocolate and the legends surrounding it in Latin America, all the while getting to taste endless free chocolate. And we had a demonstration of truffle making (which we also got to eat) and a 10% discount voucher for the shop...!
Once I'd eaten my fill of chocolate, we had dinner in a little restaurant in the centre of Prague with our roommates (I had a salad - felt I needed to balance out all the chocolate, plus I really wasn't hungry!), and then we went to see a concert in St Nicholas Church in Old Town Square. In Prague at the weekends there are concerts everywhere, and it would be impossible to avoid going to one. We watched the Prague Brass Ensemble and it was a very lovely concert, and I experienced something I never have before - the pews had heated cushions! It was quite something!
So after two very busy days and lots of food, it's safe to say I slept well that night!

Monday 26th October
Monday was our last day in Prague, and we checked out of our room but left our luggage at the hostel. We had signed up for a guided castle tour for the morning as we hadn't had chance to fit it into the rest of the week, and it was great fun. Here are a few pictures from our castle tour:

From one viewpoint we could see this, the Petrin Tower. This was opened in 1891, two years after the Eiffel Tower, which it strongly resembles. It was actually designed by the same architect who designed the Eiffel Tower. The Czechs claim that the Petrin Tower is actually taller than the Eiffel Tower, but they seem to be also counting the height of the hill it stands on!

Prague Castle and the Hercules Gate

The Archbishop's Palace. 

St Vitus Cathedral, which stands in the castle grounds. The front part of the cathedral, as you can see here, was built in the 1920s, and painted black to fit in with the Gothic facade of the back part of the cathedral. 

The back part of St Vitus Cathedral in it's original Gothic style.

Inside St Vitus Cathedral

The Czernin Palace, now home to the Czech foreign ministry, and also the site of another defenestration (throwing out of a window).

After our tour of the castle and surrounding area, which took about 3 hours, we then headed to the train station after picking up our bags from the hostel. Unfortunately there weren't any buses on the Monday so we had to get the train back, but it was still a comfortable journey, once we'd figured out how to buy our tickets and where we needed to be! And the most exciting part was the fact that inside the train were little carriage compartments, like on the Hogwarts express!
We made it home safely on Monday evening, and I can't speak for Conor, but I was exhausted! I had a fantastic time in Prague, it is a beautiful city and would recommend it to anyone wanting to do some travelling around Europe.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this rather long blog post!

Laura :)

My Second School

Hello everyone!

This week I started at my second school. My Monday morning didn't start off too well, as I arrived at the school and was taken into the staff room by the secretary, and after waiting for ten minutes or so, I was informed that my contact teacher at the school was signed off ill for three days and they didn't have a timetable for me. Luckily some of the English teachers adopted me for the morning and I was passed around different classes until they found my timetable, which then turned out to be wrong, so I will have a different timetable when I go back in two weeks! However despite all of this, all the teachers were very helpful, and one of the teachers especially. She's letting me share her desk, and gave up an hour and a half of her own time on Monday to go through everything with me, introduce me to everyone and answer all my questions. She was a life saver!

Something I have also found about the school is that the children are louder, and like to chat amongst themselves in class. One of the teachers said that this might be because it's a sports school, rather than a private school like my main school, and this can make teaching difficult when you have to spend half the time asking them to be quiet. I've found myself using many phrases I remember my teachers using, like:

"I'm talking, so no-one else should be."
"Please can we listen to one another?"
...and my personal favourite:
*to person who is talking* "Could you please repeat what was just said?"

That being said, I have had some really good lessons this week. The students like to have fun, so if you're willing to laugh along with their jokes and make the lessons entertaining, they will actually participate and learn something. And that is the point of me being there, to give them fun lessons and to get them to speak in English, not to just do textbook exercises. I've also realised how rewarding it feels when someone who has been messing around, actually joins in the discussion and makes a really valid point!

So this week was exhausting but rewarding, and hopefully when I go back in two weeks, I will get to meet my contact teacher (I still haven't met her) and things will be easier, as I've found my feet a little more in the school.

Apart from work this week, I went to watch the quarter finals of the Generali Ladies Linz tennis tournament, which was great fun! We ate cake, watched some great tennis, and even learnt all the tennis terms in German in the process!

I also went to visit one of the English Assistants who lives in a town outside of Linz called Steyr. She gave us a guided tour of the town, and here are some pictures:

There are mountain goats living in the castle moat in Steyr!

Two rivers meet in the centre of Steyr, and it's beautiful. 

I also have a fair amount of lesson planning to do, as the last two weeks have mainly been me doing the same introductory lesson over and over again, whereas now, I've introduced myself to everyone, and I start teaching on the topics they are studying. This week, I will be doing lessons on character profiles, the evil within people (linked to The Lord of the Flies), and ways to learn a foreign language abroad - so quite a variety!

Next weekend we have a long weekend, as it's the national holiday on Monday 26th October, so some of the other TAs and I are planning a long weekend trip to Prague which is very exciting! My next blog post will be all about our adventures there :)

Thanks for reading!

Laura

Becoming a Teacher!

Hello everyone!

This week was my first week teaching in Austria! I am working in two schools, and so will do alternate weeks in each. On Monday, I started at the first one, which is a little outside of Linz city centre. In order to get there, I have a twenty minute walk/10 minute tram journey, followed by a ten minute bus journey. It's not too bad, but the problem is, Austrian schools start at 7.45am!!!! So if I'm teaching first thing, it's a very early start for me!

On Monday I had a little bit of confusion with buses, because apparently the bus doesn't go from the logical side of the road...it goes from a lay-by on the other side of the road, does a U-turn and then heads out of the city - I mean, who wouldn't have guessed that?! Anyway, that meant I'd missed the bus, but luckily I was organised and had gone for an earlier bus, so the next one would still get me in on time. And it would have, if I hadn't then missed my stop...So I eventually arrived at the school, rather flustered, but luckily I met my contact teacher in the car park and she didn't seem to mind at all! Our stereotype of the Austrians being very punctual isn't quite as accurate as I thought - they seem to be very laid back, at least at this school!

This week has involved taking in a lot of information in a short amount of time. Luckily one of the year groups was away, which meant I had less lessons to teach and more time to try and figure out what I was supposed to do! The lesson I've been mainly doing this week has involved introducing myself and where I am from, playing a couple of games, and then discussing stereotypes of Austria and England, which is always good for getting them talking. The students seem to be interested in what I have to say, and are all really well behaved, which makes me feel a lot more comfortable.

I am mainly working with pupils between the ages of 15 and 18 in this school, and I was amazed by the level of their English - they are pretty much fluent! I particularly enjoyed working with the oldest year, as it was just a normal conversation really, and they even tried to teach me some of the Upper Austrian dialect. Each time they asked me to repeat something, they would end up bursting into hysterical laughter - I'm guessing I wasn't quite doing it right! I have to say, I am finding the dialect very hard to understand - hopefully by the end of the year I'll have made some progress.

The teachers at the school have all been so welcoming and friendly. The English teachers like to practise their English with me, and I tend to speak to all the other teachers in German - apart from one French teacher, who speaks to me in a mixture of German, French, and English song lyrics (she doesn't speak much English but has memorised song lyrics - it makes for an interesting conversation!). They've all been happy to answer my questions, show me around or help me with anything I'm worried about, especially my contact teacher, who I've been sending a lot of emails with questions about bank accounts and lessons and general life in Austria!

On Wednesday I had a day off, and I spent the day setting up an Austrian bank account (I did this completely in German, I'm very proud of myself) and I also popped in to my second school, as at this point I'd heard nothing from them, and had no idea when to come in on Monday to start work. The receptionist was very helpful and gave me a bit of information, and so I am coming in at 7.45am with the hope that I will then be given a timetable and be told what I'm doing! We shall see :)

On Saturday I had some friends from the English TA training week over. I showed one of them around Linz during the day - we visited the many churches and cathedrals that Linz has to offer and did a lot of the tourist attractions. Then, after chasing each other around Linz for about an hour because none of us could get in touch with the others, meaning things just got very confused, we had a lovely evening eating pizza and watching a film - it was needed after a long week for all of us! And then today (Sunday) we went to watch the qualifiers of a professional tennis tournament held in Linz. We cheered on our fellow Brit Johanna Konta, and watched some great tennis - we're now thinking about going back next weekend to watch the quarter final or even the final :)

It has taken me quite a while to write this, as Niki (the cat) is begging for my attention, and likes to sprawl out over the keyboard in the hope I'll stop typing and just play with her. I am loving having a cat around the house - she's great company, even is she can have some attitude on her sometimes ;)

"Please play with me????"

Tomorrow morning I start at me second school, so my next blog post will be all about my first week there, and how things went! So I will update you all soon :)

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)

Language Assistants Training Week

Hello everyone!

Last Monday I went to Hinterglemm, Austria for a language assistants training week. It was such a fun week, we received loads of information and resources to use in the classroom, and we all came away feeling much more confident in our teaching abilities and what we needed to do. I spent the weekend planning my lessons, and so far things seem to be going well, but I will write another blog post about my first week at school next weekend :)

One of the best things about the week was being able to meet other English Language Assistants who will be in the same area, and in some cases the same city, as me. I've made some wonderful new friends from the UK, Ireland and the USA, and we spent a lot of the week getting to know each other's cultures and discussing the wide differences between our versions of English! But above all, it's lovely to know that I have people that I get on so well with in the same city as me, and who I can meet up with at the weekends and maybe even do some travelling with!

The course itself was at Hinterglemm, which is home to a ski resort and is located in the mountains west of Salzburg. Here is the view from our conference centre that made us pine to be outside:

Luckily, on the Wednesday afternoon, we went on a group hike up a mountain! The scenery took my breath away, it was beautiful. And it may have taken us longer than the rest, but we made it to the top of the mountain, and back down, and we were only 30 minutes late to dinner! I was so proud of myself for getting to the top, and it was totally worth the sore legs for the next few days! And just to make sure we were all tired out after the 11.5 mile hike, we had a traditional Austrian dance lesson for two hours in the evening! It was great fun, but I sure slept well that night!

Here are some pictures from the hike:

And here are also some pictures of a lovely walk I went on with my housemate Charlotte last weekend. We climbed a tower where we had an amazing view over Linz, and you could even see the mountains in the distance.

Today was my first day teaching at the school. It's nice to be getting stuck in to what I'm really here to do, and all the teachers seem lovely. It's going to take some getting used to, but hopefully the students will find my lessons interesting and I'll get into my stride soon.

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)

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 :)

It's been a while...update time!

In October, we had a meeting to start everything off, and I found out that I did not have to go to Spain for my year abroad as I'd previously thought. So...choices! Do I choose France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain or Latin America?!

Well...

I chose Austria!

My reasons?
1. Austria is beautiful, naturally.
2. I've been learning German for eight years now and I feel like my spoken language is not where I would like it to be, and so I feel I will benefit most from time in a German-speaking country.
3. The Germans and Austrians are very organised and welcoming, and I think this is what I need on my year abroad.

So, I will hopefully be spending nine months in Austria as an English Language Assistant through the British Council starting in September/October 2015! The application is sent off, and now all I have to do is wait and see - and this time, I will actually post about it in time!

Thanks for reading!

Laura