Week 15: Back At Life

After returning home from an incredible weekend in Paris, this week hit me in the face with the reality of schoolwork and changes back home.  I found it a little hard to get back on my feet and deal with everything happening at once, but fortunately I had a free weekend to catch up on all my school responsibilities.

20 April

I went to my teaching internship for the last time today before May 11.  Eva Maria had planned to go teach for 2 weeks in Egypt, to help with an international school there.  Due to various situations at the school, she decided it would not be best for me to come in alone and teach the students.  For Monday I prepared a lesson on sports, to help students understand popular sports in America and learn sports vocabulary.  I was so excited because the lesson ended up going very well!  The kids in the older class did not pay attention as well as I would prefer, especially when I asked them to write answers to a few questions in response.  But overall I think I taught more to their level during this class. The class with the younger students went better, especially as Eva Maria gave me a few pointers on discussion throughout the lesson.  Overall she complimented me for the lesson, which I really appreciated!

We had classes in the afternoon as usual, but I felt intensely distracted after finding out rather distressing news about my employment situation for next year.  I made it through class and then headed over to my German teacher's house, where she hosted a dinner to help us learn how to cook different Austrian dishes.  I arrived late due to class, but was there to help with making Spinatknödel (spinach dumplings).  Traditional Austrian (and European meals in general) have many courses and this was no exception.  We started off with a soup that contained Griesnöckerl (dumpling), then the main course was Gulashsuppe (goulash soup) with the Spinatknödel, and for dessert we ate the best Sachertorte (traditional Viennese torte) I will ever consume. While the delicious supper and wonderful company helped relieve some of my stress, I went home still worried and was relieved to Skype with my parents to start working out things for next year.

21 April

Stress started to wear away a little in the morning, as I continued on here with classes and catching up from my Paris trip.  I read a story for my Cultural History of Austria class for homework and then Skyped an old friend from work in the evening, which helped provide a significant amount of clarity in regards to my employment situation.

22 April

Our class met early in the morning at Café Central, one of the most famous cafés in Vienna.  I always love it when IES likes to give us "free stuff" (a.k.a. what we pay tuition for) and so I thoroughly enjoyed my hot chocolate at Café Central, for which IES paid.  Our teacher then talked with us about Kaffeehäuser (coffee houses) and the development of Kaffeehausliteratur (coffee house literature) in Vienna.  We then went to the Naturhistorisches Museum, which I really enjoyed!  The museum contained different types of gems from all over the world and other collections from the Hapsburgs. My favorite part was when we actually got to go up to the roof of the museum!  The person who led our tour has personal connections to IES and let us go up there to see one of the best overviews of Vienna which I ever saw!

View of the courtyard in front of the museum

Having fun on the roof!

The beauty of Vienna extending into the horizon...

After enjoying a beautiful view from the museum, I headed back home and tutored Laurenz as usual. I then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening catching up on e-mail and sending out e-mails for jobs and apartments for next year.  I ended the evening by Skyping with another one of my old friends from IU, who provided further helpful advice.

23 April

This morning I met for breakfast with the coordinator of my teaching internship, Heidi, whom I really love!  She is such an encouraging and great person!  We went over to Café Frauenhuber, a favorite of Mozart's back in the day.  She was kind enough to buy me breakfast as we talked through some of the concerns about my internship.  One thing that really challenged me was that Eva Maria often corrects me in the middle of my lessons or will completely take over from me, which is different than my experiences presenting in business situations.  I often became frustrated and confused inside, although I tried not to express it.  Eva Maria could see this on the outside and I was afraid that I offended her. Heidi explained to me that I need to simply recognize the culture difference between professions, then do my best to express at the end of the semester how much Eva Maria truly taught me.  I appreciated our conversation as it helped me process some very confusing moments which I had experienced while teaching at school.

I headed over to my Bezirksmuseum (museum for the history of my district in Vienna) in the afternoon after classes, in order to start my research for a Seminararbeit (final paper). I ran into a couple IES students there, but took my time gathering info from the museum and taking a million pictures of different signs, so I could reference then later when writing my paper.  For the evening, I headed over to a café near my house where Österreichische Studentenmission (campus ministry) was holding a meeting. We talked a lot about foundational assumptions of life and how they relate to our work.  The discussion was pretty deep and while I didn't understand everything perfectly during the presentation, it was really cool to be able to understand most everything in our small group discussion!  I love practicing German in these situations that challenge both my intellectual and linguistic ability!

24-26 April

This weekend was really not fun and exciting, because I spent it mostly catching up on school and getting my head screwed back on straight after my whole living and employment situation was thrown up in the air earlier in the week.  My German teacher assigned us a book to read in German.  I also started hacking away at my Seminararbeit and my reflection paper for my internship, through which I decided to challenge myself by writing it in German.  I fortunately got most of my homework completed over the weekend and felt much better starting the next week.

A couple highlights on the weekend came in the time I spent with my friend, Katie, on Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday morning we met in a district called Ottakring and enjoyed a traditional Viennese breakfast at Café Raimann, which we both noticed was way cheaper than the prices at cafés in the center of Vienna.  I appreciated our conversation to catch up on life and to talk about the frustrating housing situations we were both facing. Afterwards, we headed over to the 16th district, where we met my internship coordinator, Heidi, at a local Saturday farmer's market.  She showed us a place where she buys food from a bunch of local producers - cheese, bread, fruit, juice!  All in a little market hidden in the 16th district of Vienna!  She even bought us little samples at several places...I really love Heidi, she is so sweet!  Katie and I then saw each other again on Sunday at church and went over to Café Himmelblau for lunch, a small café near my apartment.  I had to interview several people for my Seminararbeit (term paper) about their life in my district, since that was the theme of the paper.  My landlady, Amina, actually told me that Café Himmelblau was operated by an old acquaintance of hers who went to study at a chef school in America and then came back to Austria. How fascinating!