Thanksgiving Is As Thanksgiving Does
So it's totally been a while since I've written anything substantial. What can I say? It's been a busy few weeks, and I'm rarely home for more than a few minutes at a time with nothing to do, so the first thing to go, sadly, is this, since it is not in any way responsible for me getting paid. And my money to live off of must come first, I suppose :-)Okay - teaching. Things have actually been going pretty well recently. I think I've finally sort of gotten the hang of planning lessons, and I've always been comfortable in front of the classroom, so I guess the two together are beginning to pay off. I've still kind of given up on "hard hitting" lessons because they seem to render the students unresponsive. Instead, I do such things as "personal ads," in which the kids write their own personal ads (which are usually dirty, let's be honest here). Then I collect them all, and the kids read them out and try to guess who wrote which ad. Hardly a life-changing event, but the kids enjoy it, AND they read, write, and speak in English, which is kind of the point. This week was actually completely crazy at work. For the first time since arriving, I finally had taught all 12 hours that I'm supposed to, but that also meant that I had to plan 12 lessons. So literally from Sunday to Wednesday night, I spent every free moment trying to put together lessons on Thanksgiving history, Thanksgiving food, the American school system, scary stories, Native Americans, the Olympics, JFK assassination conspiracy theories, pocket money, and mascots to name a few. To any TA's reading this - let me know if you want my lesson plans...I could start putting a book together at this point. Anyway, that basically took up ALL of my free time this week, and let's just say that I was glad that yesterday was Thursday and my 3-day weekend had arrived!!
What else has been going on? Let's see....I saw Harry Potter 4 and LOVED it :-D I'm going again next week with one of my classes from school, which should be fun. Last Friday night, Guy, the husband of Nancy, who is here on a professorial Fulbright grant, put on a fantastic concert at Fromme Helene, a really cute little restaurant/cafe in Josefstadt. He was great - wonderful stage presence and fabulous songs (standards from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat Cole, etc.) Also, a lot of the Fulbrighters went, and it was great to see people again...everyone's been so busy that we don't get together nearly as much as we used to, but I suppose that is the natural course of events.
Last weekend I made the 6 hour train trip to Munich to see Antonia...it was sooooo nice to finally be able to catch up with her and spend some one-on-one time together. When she was in Vienna in October, we never had the chance to just sit down and talk. It was a really fun weekend. We didn't do anything too exciting because I've already seen the sights of Munich, but we did walk around the innere Stadt and do some shopping and eating of pastries and the best Pad Thai I've had since arriving in Europe :-) Saturday night we went to a church to hear the Brahms German Requiem. I was actually rather disappointed at the performance, since that is my favorite piece of choral music. The choir was pretty average, and the soprano soloist was almost heinous, but that's okay. After the concert, we were both pretty wiped out, so we just went back to her apartment, where I was able to see her photos from the 6 months she spent in Chile. Ahhhh I totally want to go to South America now!! Sunday we slept in, made some brunch, and went for a walk in the English Garden (which is HUGE!) before I left to come back to Vienna and commence lesson planning. Which is about all I've done until now! Hahaha not really.
Tuesday night, I ended up going over to Danny's apartment for a bit, where we watched Noises Off, with Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Nicolette Sheridan, John Ritter, Christopher Reeve, and Larry from Perfect Strangers. It was probably the funniest movie I've ever seen, I must say! Definitely worth renting! What else did I do? Wednesday night Kim came over to borrow my oven to bake her Thanksgiving pies....SO NOT COOL that two pies (one apple and one pumpkin) are currently residing in my fridge and I'm not allowed to eat them!! Yesterday (Thanksgiving), Alexis and I decided to bail on aerobics (because seriously, who exercises on Thanksgiving on purpose?) and instead we decided to be ironically American. First we went to Starbucks for coffee (because they are the only coffee establishment in Vienna that I know about with squashy, comfy sofas), and then we went to *ahem this is shameful* McDonald's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was ironically amusing to say the least. And last night, after McD's, I went to hear the Brahms German Requiem (again) at the Musikverein. The concerts are not even comparable. It was phenomenal, and it was honestly the first time that I've ever enjoyed listening to the 5th movement with the soprano solo. It was such a moving experience. I love that piece so much, and I'm so glad I went.
Yesterday (Thanksgiving) I was so totally homesick. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and it was so strange to a) not be home, and b) to have it be a totally ordinary day. Tonight, however, we Fulbrighters are doing Thanksgiving (a day late because, like I said, yesterday was NOT a day off) and doing it right. We're having it potluck at Nancy and Guy's apartment. They are doing the turkey, I'm bringing ham, and various others are bringing the cranberry sauce (located at a British/American grocery store), greenbean casserole, cornbread stuffing, pumpkin and apple pie, mashed taters, etc etc etc. MMMMMMMMMMM I'm excited :-D I do have to say, though, that I'm so glad that I'm going to be able to be home at Christmas. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't go (not to mention that I'll be able to see Gregory :-D :-D) The countdown is on: 26 days until I'm home, and 35 days until Gregory arrives in Atlanta!!!
BUT it is nice to be in Vienna this time of year. Last night as I was walking home from the concert, it was snowing, and I was walking through the Christkindlmarkt (the open air Christmas market at the Rathaus), and it was just so breathtakingly lovely. Tomorrow I plan on starting on my Christmas shopping by visiting some of the many Markts that are currently open around the city :-) Hurray for that!!
That's about it for now, I guess. Hope you are all well, and happy shopping today!
Ciao.
posted by Carly Fowler @ 1:51 PM
3 Comments:
I get to be the first commentator!! I'm so glad you're going to be home for Christmas too!! I didn't go home for Thanksgiving this year either--very wierd, and did you know that we are the only two barfs who are going to be in ATL for any substantial amount of time around Christmas. I find this particularly ironic since we are the two that live farthest away! I'm only home from the 18th to the 26th, which I think means I will sadly miss Gregory. Send my love to Austria and to your family. Miss you TONS and can't wait to see you!!!!
I just realized that my previous post sounded kind of like a middle school yearbook entry. I'll blame it on the coffee [insert attempted HTML tags here--it wouldn't let me use them--said they weren't closed] I don't know what those mean/look like when posted, so I decided there's no time like the present to find out! Ok, so I'm kinda bored at the moment--forgive me later :-)
I'm bored, i've read this entry a million and one times...i want new stuff!!! especially about any cute boys you meet that you can set me up with when i come over there...yahoo!
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