Classic Rock, Czech Ausflug, teaching stories

Hi all!

I forgot to mention that there was a marathon here in Graz the other weekend which I saw the tail end of. There were lots of people running and also live music scattered around.

I stopped to watch one cover band playing, they did classic rock like "Sweet Home Alabama" etc. They weren't that great. But I soon discovered another band also playing classic rock near the Hauptplatz (city center, where the town hall is). They were much better. Here's a short video of the guitarists solo for "Hey Joe":

It's pretty crazy how when they sing they sound american but when they speak they have such heavy Austrian accents. There was a cute little girl dancing to them. Video:

They also played "Sweet Home Alabama". 2 times in one day is 2 times too many to hear that song. I also went out to a bar with the Italian teaching assistant Martina and there was a classic rock cover band there too! I really need to find somewhere that has some good austrian bands....

The day of the marathon I also saw this strange sight, someone surfing in the Mur river from a bridge:

Here's a random building near my house that I like:

Here's one of my teacher's apartment buildings:

So this past weekend I went to the Czech Republic (specifically the city of Cesky Krumlov) with a group of teachers from Leibnitz. They called this trip a "Lehrausflug" which basically means a vacation for teachers. On friday Monika picked me up and we went to the bus station where a private bus for us all picked us up and drove us to Krumlov. The ride there was nice, there was actually quite a bit of snow in the mountains in upper austria, not much in Czech though.

The ride there took about 4.5 hours. (we stopped for about 50 min for a break though). Many of the teachers were drinking beer and champagne the whole ride up, which meant that there was a lot of loud laughing and talking, which was kind of entertaining. I talked to different teachers including one named Pauli who teaches Biology, Physics, and Chemistry (many teachers teach multiple disciplines, not just one like at our schools). When we got there we had dinner at the hotel which was pretty good. For me they had baked cheese with breading, potatoes, and a salad. Then we went out for a beer at a local bar (the beer they had was Eggenberger, a local beer from a brewery we visited on Saturday). Some of the teachers (including Barbara, the teacher I was sharing a room with) went out for more drinks, but I didn't really feel like partying with my teachers, especially since I didn't feel like talking about who i was and where i came from and how i liked austria and so on anymore. My roommate came back at 3am and in the morning told me she had too much to drink. lol.

On Saturday we went on a tour of the city. Heres a couple of teachers on our tour, the one on the left is one of the young english teachers I work with.

Among other buildings, we saw a church:

We also walked by a torture museum which seems to be compulsory in old eastern european cities (remember estonia?) This one was weird though because when I looked into the window I saw this:

Why is a big michael jackson head in the torture museum? Dunno...

The museum was right next to horni street

Tee hee...horni. Oh god, I feel like my students.

Here's the main square:

Here's a local shop with cool flames on the doors. I saw a few shops with flames:

We also visited the Castle and the Baroque theatre in the castle that one of the kings had built. Here's a view from a bridge towards the castle:

It's pretty cool how it is built into the rock like that.

Heres me from one of the castle bridges, behind me the city of Krumlov:

Here's the castles main tower:

The Castle actually has bears on the grounds underneath a bridge (they didn't come out while we were there though). The bear is important for Krumlov because it is the symbol for the Rosenberg family who ruled Krumlov. So we also saw bears around the city in different places like this one guarding someones backyard:

And this one creepin in an old wall painting on a building:

There were some pretty cool wall paintings around the city like this one which reminds me of old alchemical art:

The baroque theatre was the coolest part of the whole trip. There are only 2 in the world (one in krumlov and one in sweden). We watched a video where they showed how the scenery could change from looking like an endless forest to an endless ballroom.

Isn't that theatre fucking awesome!!! I loved it.

There were people underneath the stage turning wheels to make this change fast and seamless. It was awesome. We got to see underneath the theatre too. It would be cool to see an actual performance there. After this I went with some of the teachers to see an Egon Schiele exhibit at a museum. He is an important Austrian artist, although I had never heard of him. To me he was more historically interesting than artistically interesting. He was condemned by many because he drew naked pictures of women doing some pretty vulgar stuff and so he was important for transcending certain cultural taboos. He was even put in jail for it. But even so, the pictures weren't that great to me. The museum did have some really cheap posters from older exhibits so i got one for a Mucha exhibit they had back in '98 for 1 euro to hang on my wall! I had about an hour between being done with the museum and going to the Eggenberg brewery so i just chilled and read for a while. The tour of the brewery was mediocre because nothing was really running since it was already 7 pm, but the brewery is hella old so that was cool. We then had dinner at the brewery which was delicious. I had broccoli with cheesy cream sauce and potatoes and salad. and of course beer which was tasty as well. I was pleased with my food on the trip, it was much better than some signs I saw around the city for traditional czech cuisine:

Mmmmm....pork knee!

We left after breakfast on sunday and got back to graz around 4pm, which was when a Sturm Graz vs Wien soccer game was starting. I really want to go to one at some point. There were a lot of police men around the stadium.

I've spent the last few nights doing lesson planning and also waking up really early to take the train to school (about 5:30). The students seem to like when I talk about holidays and play patriotic american songs and talk about the school system. I also did a lesson about gay rights and gay marriage in america with the oldest students (18-19 years old) since Obama just gave a speech to the Human Rights Campaign and there was that march on washington. I thought that it would be interesting for them and they would be willing to discuss the issues but I was overwhelmingly faced with students who seemed to care less. Theres one class i have with mostly all girls and they were interested it seemed, but the classes with boys were like laughing when i said the word "gay" and also many of them said to me that they didn't care either way, and that they werent gay so why should they care? Some of them said that they think don't ask don't tell is valid because they would feel weird being around gay men in the military. Since there wasn't much discussion by the students about this issue I asked them what they would rather talk about with me. One student answered "general things about america, not specific laws" and the teacher said "aren't you planning on being a lawyer?" and he said "yes, but (muffled)." I was suprised, but I guess I can understand tht they would rather talk about sports (like american baseball) and the daily life of a teenager in america than civil rights issues. I felt a bit bad though cuz i don't want to bore my students. Oh well, I think I'll just plan some more games and activities and music lessons, maybe some stuff about prom since they have their Matura Balls coming up and a couple students have asked me what prom is like. Also Austrian National Day is coming up so maybe we could talk about that. Another fun idea maybe would be to show a clip from a german film and have them translate it into english, or have them do some writing activities. Does anyone have any ideas for me?

Last monday I did a lecture on Columbus Day and made a little chart on the board about it. The teacher suggested to her students that they write it down to learn it. They asked her if they could just take a picture of it with their cell phones and she let them. I tried to get out my camera and quickly snap this funny moment. There were a lot more students doing it than this and sorry for the blurriness!

One funny story from teaching for you: I was going around the class asking the students what their names were and what they liked to do, and one student said that he like to sing and I asked him if he sang in a band and he said yes he did, in a punk band. I asked him what his bands name was and he didn't want to tell me but I heard one of the other students say it and it was "Hodenwachstum". Hoden means "testicle" and wachstum means "growth". So I thought that was pretty funny.

Soon to come: I will have pictures of my room and I'll go around Graz and take some pictures of important places/places I like as well as my schools in Leibnitz and Kaindorf. Maybe I'll get some pictures with teachers for you as well!