Another Week, Another Destiny
So it would appear that this blogging thing is going to become a weekly rather than daily event. The whole "I have enough time during the week to write about myself for an hour and not suffer for it" really isn't going to fly this year, I have found. Meh, works for me. I like to be busy :-)Let's seeeeeeeeee what happened this week? I did my first lesson on Hurricane Katrina. That is actually rather extraordinary, as everyone else I know had to cover it relatively early on. I think the lesson went well....I was with an 8th form class that I like, and I found an article on the social implications of Katrina, you know, the whole did racism play a role type thing. They read it and actually had a relatively good discussion about the question. Obviously, they all thought that racism was at the forefront of what happened and that George Bush should take the blame for the whole catastrophe, including Katrina hitting New Orleans in the first place (just kidding about that part.) Then I had the chance to enlighten their young minds about the way the U.S. system of government works...I told them that the federal government couldn't come to LA until they were asked because of state vs. federal rights. The one student asked, "so Bush couldn't go down to New Orleans until they asked him, but he can invade Iraq, no problem?" Right. Good question. How do you answer that?
Anyway, I promised them that next time I'd find a topic that would present the U.S. in a good light, a statement about which they were very skeptical. They were asking about what could possibly be good, and I decided on the spot to talk about charity and volunteerism (a concept that just doesn't exist over here). I mentioned how my HS had a community service component for graduation and how the largest student organization on my college campus was dedicated to volunteering all over the city of Worcester. I talked about how I've volunteered at homeless shelters, soup kitchens, day care centers, and nursing homes, and about how I have also worked as a tutor and a mentor. Their jaws were literally on the floor. The guy who asked the Bush-NO-Iraq question just looked at me and said "in your free time? for NO money????? because you want to????" HA I WIN!!! So...I think that impressed them, thank the LORD.
Other than that, school wasn't very exciting this week. Usual stuff. I did a class on Shakespeare, which was fun. I brought in one of those "Shakespearean insult" sheets where you can call people a "currish, folly-fallen bugbear," which, for obvious reasons, kept them entertained for a while. And that was about it for teaching.
Classes went well this week too. Nancy's poetry class is going to be a lot of fun. The two hours went by really quickly while we were studying Frost (we covered about five poems in that time.) She is a very engaging professor, and her class is always interesting and entertaining, yet challenging...just how I like it :-) International Conflict De-escalation was good...I actually got a seat this time, and the class had thinned out by a lot. I find the material fascinating, and I really like the professor. She has gone out of her way to make sure that I have had no problems in terms of registering or anything like that, which I appreciate. We were chatting after class for a while, and she was telling me about where she's been in the U.S...she actually spent a year teaching at Harvard, among other schools. Good stuff.
Tuesday night I went to the ballet (again) at the Staatsoper with Jen, Danny, Kristina, Nancy, and Guy. We saw Giselle, which was amazing. The music is beautiful, but the dancing was really good. The leads, and Giselle in particular, where just stunning!! The cast took about 5 curtain calls and the applause went on for almost 10 minutes, and it truly was well-deserved. I have to give Jen mad props for our seats. We paid 7E, just like last time (when we were on the side, in the nosebleed section), but this time we were actually in boxes. Second row, which has a limited view, but........when the first row people don't show up, then the seats are all ours!! So, we had front row box seats with a perfect view for 7E. Well done :-)
Wednesday night we were supposed to see a concert of Lieder (including Schumann's Dichterliebe...sigh) at the Musikverein, but when we arrived, there was a notice that it had been cancelled :-( Oh well, what can you do? We (Danny, Jen, Kim, Alexis, Emily, and I) decided we had to do something "Viennese" anyway, so we went to Cafe Central, this gorgeous, old-school Vienna cafe, for Kaffee und Kuchen. It turns out that sometimes in the evening they have live music, so we were treated to a piano-bass-violin trio playing everything from "Those Were the Days, My Friends," to the "Walz of the Blue Danube." It was a treat...the music, the food/drink, and the atmosphere almost made up for the concert cancellation.
Thursday night, after class, I actually played volleyball with Kim and some of the teachers from her school. They usually get together once a week for a pick-up game, and it was really fun even though I am really really bad at volleyball. Luckily no one held that particular fact against me :-) The other teachers were really nice, and I think I'll probably go back every once in a while.
Yesterday was an interesting day...I spent all morning trying to track down the birthday packages my mom sent that never arrived. They should have been here 3 weeks ago, but somehow all 4 have gone missing. I trekked to two post offices, who claim that according to their computer records, the packages have never even entered the Austria system, and to the Austrian customs warehouse (in a Worcester-ish area of town), which was also a big fat failure. Meh. I have no idea where they are...my best guess is that some post man in Vienna, Australia is saying, "Matey, do you know where Florianigasse is?" Other than that, I gots nuthin. After that I tried to go shopping for some pants that won't fall off my behind, but I failed at that too...Carly, you MUST look up size conversions BEFORE you enter a crowded store!!
Last night was much better than yesterday during the day. I went back to the Musikverein to see the Wiener Symphoniker play Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major and Brahms' Serenade #1 in D major. *sigh* It was fantastic....completely reenergized me, too. Jen and I bought Stehplatz tickets, which basically meant we got to hang out in the back of the hall (didn't matter because the room is really small, so we could still see all the orchestral action) for 5E and hear an amazing performance. I especially loved the Brahms, as he is my favorite composer. I'd never heard this piece before, but it was fabulous. It had a really good French horn part, and the horn didn't gurgle at all (my personal classical music pet peeve!)
Jo's dad and sister are in town, and the three of them were at the concert as well, so afterwards, the five of us went out for a late dinner, which was a lot of fun and very delicious. Mmmmmmm gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, walnuts, and prosciutto....mmmmmmmmm. Yes, so last night was really a good time.
Today I am basically buckling down to get going on grad school stuff, but I'm also taking a shopping break with Kristina to try to find those elusive jeans. Everyone wears jeans, so finding a pair shouldn't be hard, right? Ha. Good luck to me. Tonight I think people are going out for Mexican food and margaritas, so that should be fun.
Another good thing, last weekend we finally figured out tickets, so Greg will be visiting Vienna in March :-D :-D (contingent, of course, on whether or not he has grad school auditions...) So that made my week happy too.
Oh, for all people who like movies, here is a suggestion: Dear Frankie, a British film set in Scotland, is one of the best movies I've seen for a long time for 2 reasons. 1) Damien Rice's best song (in my opinion), "Delicate," is featured prominently in an important scene. 2) The movie basically had me in tears the whole way through (always a good thing.) See it :-)
Ciao! :-)
posted by Carly Fowler @ 5:54 PM
6 Comments:
Hey--that is the movie we were going to see on Easter when the line was so long that we went to the hospital to visit Beth instead!
p.s. what happened in your friday class?
and good job on the issue of volunteerism--yay for you!
Oh I'm jealous you saw that! I'll have to try and rent it cause i wanted to see it really bad....Padon was a good substitute though.
I love you and miss you!!!
P.S. I have your birthday packages...I stole them, mwahahaha j/k
PPS I'll miss you this weekend at the head of the charles, it won't be the same without the whole fam there :-(
Oh Carlos i'm glad to hear you are enriching yourself with culture and not just alcohol, as many twenty-somethings visiting europe are wont to do. Props on finding something to make America sound good. Interesting that it takes an austrian teenager to notice the irony of LA vs Iraq. Also interesting that they are so acutely aware of the perceived racial motivations. They may recycle more than we do, but last time i checked, Austrians had their fair share of racial/ethnic prejudices. Am I right on that or is that not the case anymore?
No, that is definitely still the case...for example, yesterday the city of Vienna voted for which party will control the city gov't for the next term. The social democrats won (as they have won every Viennese election since 1918, excluding the Hitler years), but the FPÖ (the extreme righ-wing party that used to be led by Joerg Haider) won 15% of the vote. That's actually a sizeable percentage in a multi-party system (the Green Party in Germany ruled as part of a coalition with the Social dems with only around 8% of the vote). The FPÖ definitely is an anti-foreigner (especially anti-Turk) party. One of their campaign slogans was "Deutsch statt 'nix versteh'n'" (German instead of "no understand") Soooo yeah, it does seem like they are coming from a place that would make it hard to criticize such U.S. policies, but then you get into such issues as Austrian impotence...oops, I mean neutrality....which means they themselves have no real power on the international political stage, except through criticism...but I could talk about that all day, so I'll stop now :-)
Lovely reading as usual. I would give you props on the volunteerism thing, but it's kinda already been done . . . sooooo I'm so glad I'm coming to visit!!!!!! When is Greg gonna be there? Are we going to overlap?
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