Thanksgiving Day : an annual one-day holiday to give thanks (traditionally to God), for the things one has at the close of the harvest season.



i thought i would write another entry before i passed the two-whole-months-with-no-blog-entries mark. today was thanksgiving in america, and in the last two weeks i have taught about eight lessons to austrian teenagers about the thanksgiving holiday and traditions. we discuss the history of thanksgiving, what americans eat, what activities americans do (eating, cleaning, football, movies, n'est pas?), and compare it to austrian holiday foods and traditions. austrians don't celebrate thanksgiving because, unlike america, they had no pilgrims and have a slightly longer history than just the last 400 years. just slightly longer ;)

although i missed friends and family immensely and could almost taste the corn pudding, boxed mashed potatoes, that weird green-bean casserole with funions, and the homemade pumpkin cheesecake, this thanksgiving will definitely go down as one of the best i have had in a long while.
reasons being:

- i came home this afternoon at one o'clock to find our landlord in the bathroom and a plumber on his back under our bathtub fixing the broken plumbing of our shower. without too much teeth-pulling, the landlord fulfilled his side of the contract and repaired our bath in a somewhat-timely manner. a housemate and i sealed the bathtub to the wall with silicone tonight, and once the internal plumbing sealants harden, we should be able to take a normal, western, first-world hot shower as of three o'clock tomorrow afternoon :)

- after the plumber and the landlord left, i spent the rest of the afternoon shopping at vienna's british/american grocery store and purchased overpriced-but-worth-it goodies to cook the rest of the afternoon for our evening thanksgiving dinner. i whipped up a batch of mom's twice-baked cheesy potatoes and a bowl of cranberry jello fruit salad, and celebrated the evening with great food, good wine, and in good company . at one point we - a group of british and american TAS - found ourselves up on the host's terrace overlooking the city's rooftops, and i felt an overwhelming sense of gratefulness for the opportunity to work and live here, the people i have encountered, and the small hurdles i have managed to hop over unharmed :)

- once the dinner was finished, the counters wiped down and the dishes put away, i thanked becky for hosting and hopped on the u-bahn (the subway) to head home. i reached into my pocket for my cellphone, and found - much to my delight - a text message from an apartment i visited last night telling me that they picked me to live with them starting december 1st. as of then, i will be living with two students - one from salzburg, austria and the other from aix-en-provence, france - one 25, the other 20, who enjoy cooking together, dancing, photography, and studying different languages and cultures. the room, while not as big as the one i am living in now, is much quieter and already furnished, and the apartment is very centrally located in the fun 6th district of vienna. basically, i will be moving into the type of apartment that i wanted to move into in the first place! so yet another pick-me-up slash relief during the day of giving thanks.

all in all, this thanksgiving turned out to be a day of one positive thing after another. first the resolution of the plumbing situation, then a wonderful thanksgiving meal, followed by acceptance into a new apartment with new, hopefully more like-minded housemates.

at the end of this harvest season, i couldn't be more grateful :)

the gods must be crazy
a life-necessities update: money, food, warmth, & love ((with excerpts from an email to dad))


So I got home today around 2:00 and, like I've been doing for the past week, hopped online to see if my American bank balance was still the same and not dropping... After clicking on "Check My Balance", I was surprised to find that, instead of a low, one-digit number, I had an extra $400 to my name! Dad had gone to the bank this morning and repaid some money I had given him before I left (originally borrowed from my brother), and threw in a little extra to help solve our apartment's plumbing problem. Needless to say, this $400 just made my day, week, and the rest of the month.

I quickly calculated how much $400 was worth in Euros, minus the 2% "transaction fee" that National City charges for every International ATM transaction, and ran across the street to the bank to get it in cash. With said cash, I skipped over to the nearest grocery store just before closing and bought bread, cheese, yogurt, and bananas to supplement my stash of rice, toast bread, and canned kidney beans.

I also came back home today to find a snake running down into the shower drain, and a frustrated housemate sitting on the couch. It looks like tomorrow or the day after, we will end up a) going to the landlord/landlady and asking him/her to fix the problem, or b) banning together (with my extra "plumbing spending money" in hand) and hiring a plumber. I'll let you know how the situation resolves itself.

More good news - the secretary at school came up to me this morning with a UPS package in her hand, containing the two checks (together worth around $1500) that Concordia Language Villages reissued to me. I stopped by the bank after school and, although it will take up to 30 days to have them processed, it will mean an extra $1500 put back into my account, right where it belongs.

And even MORE good news - In addition to depositing my two Concordia checks, finding an extra 400 dollars in my account, and getting closer to resolving our two-week-long plumbing problem, I ALSO recieved a package slip from the Austrian Post saying that I had a package from home waiting for me at the local office. The package was my feather comforter and a pillow case from home, which will be very welcome with the dropping temperatures.

A warm comforter, a full stomach, financial peace of mind, and love sent in small, cross-continental packages... I should sleep very, very well tonight.

((taken from a draft five days ago... i started an entry, then got distracted. for five full days.))

saturday night and i ain't got no-money

i believe the last time i wrote was on monday, my first day of school. since then, i have had three days of teaching (tuesday, wednesday, and thursday), and am still not convinced that this is where i should be right now, but... oh well. there have been some really good classes, and some really not-so-good ones... mainly depending on whether the teacher gave me direction or not, whether the kids were engaged or not, and how badly i wanted the school day to be over.

most of the classes i taught were "introduction" classes, meaning i introduced myself - either through personal objects that i had brought, or through an introduction of "America". i wrote the word "America" on the board and asked the students to say what words came to mind. answers were anywhere from "hollywood" to "children with guns". after writing on the board the words "Americans are...", answers were anywhere from "fat" to "rich" to "friendly" - good to know that Austrians don't have ENTIRELY negative impressions of America(ns)!

on a side note, i just found out tonight (after having my credit card rejected from the machine twice) that i have no money left in my american bank account. nada. zip. zilch. i knew i was pretty low, but had no idea how bad it was. i blame this on the following:
a) i still haven't recieved two out of three checks for this summer. that's almost $1000 missing from my account
b) the austrian school board refuses to pay the teaching assistants until the beginning of november, and
c) the first month came with a lot of big expenses: deposit on the apartment, payment to keep the apartment furniture, a cellphone, the plane ticket to austria, 100 Euro here and there to get registered, etc. etc.

not that anyone cares about my financial situation except, well, my stomach and i. and my parents, i suppose. anyway, i figure if a week of rice, stale bread and soup mixes doesn't kill me, it will only make me stronger (and slimmer!). and thankful for the months to come when i will be making a comfortable living for relatively little work.


my dinners come from boxes: split-pea soup and knoedel/dumplings

have a good night - i hope you're eating well :)

first day of laissez-faire teaching, the bare necessities

after much anticipation, i went to my first day of teaching today at the HAK III/HAS IV Vienna Business School in the eighth district. worried that something freakish might happen that could cause me to be late - a mugging? an earthquake? the apocalypse? i don't know - i hopped on the bus at 7am, and arrived at school a half an hour early. like preparing for a bad blind date, i circled the block twice, watching kids wander one by one into the building. i finally came to my senses, checked my reflection in a nearby window, and went in.

after meeting the secretary, who was very bubbly and overly excited by my presence, i ventured into the teacher's lounge, only to discover that my Betreuungslehrer - my advisory teacher - was not even at school that day. another english teacher, professor tunkel, took me under her wing for the day and tried to find things for me to do. instead of visiting classes (i went to one of hers, quickly introduced myself to the kids, and sat in silence while they discussed a novel), i instead was asked to copy down the classes of all the english teachers, then type it up in a legible format for scheduling.
... for some reason, i guess i assumed that this would have been done before i got there. ...i suppose not.
anyway, after a few classes, professor tunkel said that i might as well just go home for the day, and come in at 9am tomorrow to start working with the kids. it was a startling beginning to the school year, since i had brought with me an introductory lesson and was prepared to do it with three or four classes on the first day. instead, it was like they weren't prepared for my arrival, or they just had a really laissez-faire way of welcoming the new assistant teacher. oh well. at the end of the morning, professor tunkel gave me a pat on the shoulder and said "we're glad to have you", and i went home satisfied.

since i had the entire afternoon off (i could really get used to this schedule!), i headed over to the Meldeamt to register with the authorities. apparently this is not as complicated of a process as the Fulbright commission made it out to be - all it took was a signature and a flash of my passport, and i was registered to live in Vienna.
after that, i bought a good 20€ ($25) worth of groceries, stashed half of them on the bottom shelf of our pantry and stuffed the other half into various nooks of the fridge. in case i haven't mentioned, i share a fridge with five other people... a waist-level fridge that, by american standards, should be used by a single college student. still, it seems like the housemates manage to respect each other's food, and shift things around when it gets a little crowded.



i have discovered, especially in the last 24 hours of living in a strange room, that there are certain things that i cannot avoid purchasing. a pillow, for example - something i have taken for granted all my westernized life, and last night i slept without one. sheets and a blanket, also, are some necessities i picked up today, having slept on a bare mattress with no covers. tomorrow definitely involves a little bus ride to IKEA on the north end of the city, where i will invest in the simple things like:
- a table lamp so i can read at night
- a cover for the naked lightbulb hanging from my ceiling
- a cup and plate... maybe i'll splurge and buy a bowl, and
- a trash can to put shit in.

it's the little things like these that i always assumed will be there, until i moved into a naked viennese apartment room with all of my bare necessities sitting in ohio. i leave you with the lyrics from a childhood song that pretty much sums this all up:
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

shopping with socialists

so there's a street in vienna called "mariahilfer strasse" that is, i'm guessing, more than a mile of stores and boutiques offering everything imaginable. not being an avid or enthusiastic shopper, i was reluctant to check it out, but knew that it might be my one-stop shop for clothes, groceries and whatnot.
...
i made the mistake of going on a sunny saturday afternoon. for those of you who don't know me as well, i get a little anxious being in crowds of people who are all on a mission (i.e., places like crowded sidewalks, shopping malls, the bank, amusement parks, etc.), and BOY were these people on a mission. if i had stretched out my arms, i could have easily touched about eight people - there were that many people on the sidewalk, bumping into each other and jostling each others' dogs and baby carriages. i tried, i tell you, i tried to stay with the crowd as long as i could, and stopped for a breather at gelatto places and quiet bookstores.

while shopping today, i ran into an oompah band in traditional austrian garb. they had been playing for a while, and didn't look very amused to be marching down vienna's shopping mile, but i - the tourist with a camera - took their picture anyway.



later on in the day, after a good three hours of window shopping and tourist-dodging, i treated myself to a gelatto cone of coconut & hazelnut flavors and collapsed against a tree. just in time, since i heard a loud group of people from up the street yelling and drumming in rhythm. as the crowd got closer, i recognized their sea of red flags and "revolution" stickers: this was a demonstration by the socialists. it makes sense, since the austrian national elections are tomorrow and the SPÖ is one of the groups trying to get votes (SPÖ = Socialistdemokratische Partei Österreichs, or Social-Democratic Party of Austria). i snapped a couple of pictures of the demonstration, and caught a little boy walking with his mother holding a red SPÖ balloon on a string.



as i walked further, at the same pace of the demonstrators, i began to listen more carefully to their various chants - some of which were in english, but most of which were in the austrian german that i sometimes can't recognize. "Re. Vo. Lu. Tion." was one of the first, and i smiled and walked happily alongside them on the sidewalk, amused by the confused faces of passersby. i probably identify with socialist politics more than many other forms, and their chants and drums were energizing.



the tone changed for me, though, as i heard "No. No. U.S.A.". how strange, i thought, to be an american woman walking along vienna's shopping street in 2006, hearing her home country being verbally bashed for the sake of local politics. "George. Bush. Te.rro.rist." came next, and i could only agree with the crowd, holding their red "revolution" signs and handing out bright red socialist balloons to young people. if we are going to make change in the world, we need a revolution - not necessarily socialist, but humanitarian. even if the global revolutionary changes start within local austrian politics, on local streets such as mariahilfer strasse, it could make a difference.

Seminars, Sturm, and Schloss St. Martin

for the past five days, i've been attending an english language TA training seminar just outside the second largest city in austria, Graz. population? less than 300,000 people. i found out, too, that the entire population of austria is somewhere around 8 million, which just blows my mind. there are 11 million people in the state of ohio alone! (can you tell i've been researching on google?).

the training seminar/orientation was fairly amusing, and a good break from my usual routine of checking my email all day and taking myself out to movies at night. there was a colorful mix of american, british, irish, and scottish TAs, most of whom spent the week giggling and poking fun of the way the others spoke english. i tried my first (and second... and third...) glass of "Sturm": new wine that is only available for one month during the whole year. my first impression was that this "Sturm" tasted much like a liquid Jolly Rancher, then Jungle Juice, then a fizzy Christmas punch. if you find yourself in austria within the next few weeks, be sure to order yourself a cup.



the orientation took place in Schloss St. Martin, a castle on a hillside overlooking the city of Graz. the castle, complete with courtyard, tiny rooms, and a small garden, was much nicer than any venue i had dreamt up in my head. i was anticipating living in a hostel or dormitory situation, and instead was given a single room and three hot meals a day. ... it was a sweet deal.



on friday, i took the bus back to Wien Südbahnhof/Vienna South Train Station with several others who are teaching in Wien and the vicinity. it was a little odd watching a group of people bonded by four days of community-living and long seminars all hop onto different trains going in different directions, all about to embark on the same adventure but dispersed all over the country. although i didn't feel that i absorbed a whole lot from the seminar, it was helpful most of all to know that there were more than 200 other people who would be sharing many of the same experiences.

boy, do i feel silly

to think that the last time i wrote on this thing, i was having minor panic attacks about finding an apartment...

i actually just secured one a few hours ago, and it's AWESOME. a-w-e-s-o-m-e, awesome. if anyone has ever seen the movie "l'auberge espagnole"/"the spanish apartment", it reminds me a lot of that. i'll be living with four other people: a guy from germany, a guy from austria, a girl from austria, and a guy from columbia. we had a little interview/slash/introduction tonight over some darned good tea, and i think i charmed them into letting me stay. the apartment itself is on reinprechtsdorferstrasse (longest. address. ever.) on the edge of the 5th district, just a two minute walk from the vienna canal. it's very central, and in a pretty colorful, multi-cultural area with lots of shops and whatnot.
the best part? the door up to the apartment is right next to an ice cream parlor :)

as for adjusting, i'm heading off to graz tomorrow at noon for a week-long orientation with other teaching assistants assigned to eastern austria. it should be pretty fun, in that i'm meeting a bunch of people who are just as nervous (if not more nervous) than i am about teaching english to a bunch of austrian high schoolers, and about living in a new place for a year. hopefully there will be some like-hearted folk at the orientation, and i might meet a friend or two to hang out with.

so, in brief, i finally have an address:
Leah Steiner Suter
Reinprechtsdorfer Strasse 43, 10-12
1050 Wien, AUSTRIA

and a real phone number: +0043 699 81425484

i am getting settled. :)

apartment hunting, i have discovered, is a very long.. tedious.. drawn-out... complicated process. i have been on a search for only a week, and already i am in over my head in things called 'deposits', 'furnished/unfurnished', 'square meters', and 'non-refundable'... but everything in german. if this had all been in english, it would have been one thing, but the fact that every ad is in german, every e-mail that i write is in german, every set of directions is in german, and every interview is in german, well... is a little overwhelming. there's something to be said for language immersion. heck, instead of sending kids overseas for a year, just send them apartment-hunting in a foreign country. that'll get 'em learning. :)

so far, i have made appointments to see sixteen apartments, and gone to see seven already. a few of the appointments i made fell off the face of the earth, either because i decided the apartment wasn't in the right district (how i decided this, i'll never know... i don't know which districts are nice!) and sent the owner a 'thanks but no thanks' email, or i went and the person plain didn't show up. i've sent enough emails to various people that if i had a dollar/Euro for every email sent, i could probably pay for one month's rent already. tomorrow brings three more appointments, and the weekend should give me some time off. ... or more time to check the internet's various apartment databases. all i have to say is, i will be glad when i can look back at this particular week and laugh at myself.

enough with the apartment soapbox. i'm done. one thing that HAS been nice about this whole search process is, that i've been able to see lots of different corners of vienna, from the 2nd district all the way out to the 18th. with my handy Marco Polo Vienna Street Guide in hand, and a vaguely good sense of direction, i've been touring around places that, had i found an apartment right away, i never would have seen.

as far as the city goes, it definitely has a different flavor than berlin. it's a little more quaint, a little more 'gemütlich', a little more... well-preserved. the city wasn't bombed nearly as badly during the two world wars, so many of the buildings here are still very well intact. the streets are generally narrower, and wind around much more, which can be fun... but confusing for walkers like myself :)

since my wrists are a little tired from typing, i will leave you with two lists:
things i could probably do without:
having to sit in a bathtub every morning with a one-foot long, hand-held shower attachment (juergen hears me on that one)
going to three different stores to buy three different things (instead of going to an american one-stop shop)
all of the smoking
tiny sidewalks with people who are incapable of walking to one side
grocery stores with a limited variety of food
walking everywhere

things that i have missed dearly:
walking everywhere :)
the german language
efficient public transportation
good coffee, ice cream, and baked goods
environmental awareness
fluffy feather comforters
culture with a capital C: opera, concerts, film, art, theater, etc.
open-air markets
big city life