Soccer, Austrian Metal, Advent, Chorus, Dinner, Students, SNOWWWWWW

Hi everyone!

I really need to take more pictures. I have lots of things to tell, but not too many pictures to bring them to life! I will take pictures, I will take pictures, I will take pictures.

On sunday I went to go see a Sturm Graz soccer game with some of my students from the HTL and also a couple of teaching assistants. We were in the fan section, which is for all the fans who want to stand and cheer and sing songs and chants the whole time. It was really fun to learn all the songs and sing along, although the game ended up being a tie 0-0. The team they played against was Salzburg, which isn't liked very much by the Sturm fans, as far as I can tell, because they have "sold out". They are owned by Red Bull (a product of Salzburg, which i didn't know) and so they buy all the best players and have lots and lots of money. One player on the team used to be on the Sturm team, but left for salzburg because he made more money. Needless to say he was booed quite a bit by the fans. I liked the cheering but I thought all the booing and calling of the opposite team players as they were announced at the beginning "arschloch" wasn't very nice. Afterwards we had some glühwein at one of the stands in the Hauptplatz.

Ok random insert... there is an italian guy below me who plays keyboard and he ALWAYS plays the same song when he practices "Killing Me Softly". He is playing it right now which is why I mention it. Lauryn Hill did a great version of this song (originally by Aretha Franklin), fyi. Here is a link if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAEWrnOtrY&feature=related

Anyways, on monday we didn't have school because tuesday was a holiday, so we got monday off as well! I spent the morning planning a sweet trip to Kitzbühel in January to go snow shoeing and watching the 70th annual international downhill ski races! woo hoo! At night I went to a place called the Postgarage with one of my students, which had some local metal bands from Graz. One band had 3 girls which was quite exciting for me. They rocked the best as well.

Tuesday was a holiday called Maria Empfängnis (Immaculate Conception of Mary). This is a national holiday so many stores were closed and schools and workplaces were also closed. I went over to Sabine's house and saw her and her family, along with Peter and his daughter Lisa (all from the hiking trip). It is so nice to know an austrian family and get to spend time with them almost every other week. They are really down to earth and we spent the whole night talking about interesting things, like psychology and politics. They also speak the most dialect of any older austrians i know. We had some glühwein and traditional evening meal of bread and cheese and assorted spreads. They are really nice people, i should get them a christmas card.

On wednesday I went to chorus practice again. There is only one more week before our show! We sing on Saturday night the 19th, unfortunately before the fam comes :( We are definitely getting better, but it still doesn't sound amazing. We have a couple more practices before the show though, so hopefully it will all come together. Some of the songs are really really beautiful. Has anyone ever listened to Bach's Christmas Oratorium? We are singing the songs for the first 3 Days of Christmas, if you are familiar with it.

On thursday I made some dinner with Justin and Peter, a couple of teaching assistants one from Maine and one from Texas. They are also vegetarian so we made a delicious meatless dinner of eggplant parmesan and biscuits and gravy. We sat around and ate and drank wine and listened to music.

I had to work on friday which was a bit unusual, but i didn't mind since i had nothing i would rather be doing. Lately i have been teaching a lesson on football and baseball in america which the students seem to really enjoy. This week i am comparing the christmas traditions in america and austria mostly. Some teachers want me to talk about jobs in america and the economy. I also came into work on Saturday to help some students do a practice exam for their First Cambridge Certificate. This is a standardized test that many students take so that they can put it on their resumes and show that they are proficient in english. I had about 9 groups of 2 each for 15 min and had to ask them questions (from a list) and have them compare pictures and listen to them discuss a topic with each other. This took all morning and afterwards my teacher took me out to lunch at an organic restaurant. Yum!

At night I went out with some students and assistants. There was cute snow falling all around us! I was so excited. We went to a really beautifully decorated hookah bar and also to a bar called Matrix (yes named after the movie). This bar caters to young people (like...16). It is still weird to me to see so many young people drinking at bars and matura balls. The legal drinking age here is 16, which seems kind of young to me, but also 21 seems too old.

On sunday i woke up and looked outside my window and everything was snow covered!

It snowed all day and has been snowing all day today as well. It is so cool to me! This is the first time that I have lived anywhere where it has snowed, so it is really cool to experience the seasons really changing. For example here are a couple of pictures of the stadtpark on the 1st of november:

On sunday I went to the stadtpark and took a couple of more pictures. the first one is the same location as the first pic from nov

Only the evergreens stand the same!

Pretty awesome!!!

Also on my walk on sunday i saw this interesting sight:

Santa Claus on stilts and little kids have to walk up a ladder to get to him and pick a little present out from his bag. Very interesting, I will have to ask my students about this and see if this is traditional, or just weird.

Anyways, everything is going great here. I'm loving the people and even the weather!

I am looking forward to my family coming on the 21st!