Day 30 - 34: Dullness, trouble in the house and Vienna

I'm afraid this week has been rather... dull. :/ But, it is my duty to inform you, no matter how dull, so here I am! :p

Day 30: Tuesday, March 24

On Tuesday morning there was Praxis in the morning, as usual. It was pretty interesting, there was a trainee teaching, a first year. His first lesson wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. Kind of neutral. Funny to see, though, how he made the exact same mistakes I remember making. :)

Also quite amusing was that the advice the teacher gave him during the meeting afterwards was the same that any teacher at home would give. :D It could have been a comment one of my lessons, except for the fact that it was in German, of course. ;)

Luckily the guy had 2 lessons, so he got another shot at teaching the same lesson, and the second time was much much better. :) Yay for improvement!

That lasted till around lunch and the afternoon was, unfortunately, homework time. That's been the theme of the week, pretty much. It's just like home, teachers realize that Easter holiday is coming and poof! Let's cram as much assignments as possible in there still! :D

I also did some research on Vienna. I'm usually not of the "plan trips out in detail" sort but I can't quite go there and wander for 4 days, I'm afraid. I don't think I'd see much besides the inside of the local Starbucks. :p My choices so far are:

- Schönbrunn Palace
- Belvedere Museum (Featuring Klimt's The Kiss, among others!)
- Wiener Staatsoper
- Stephansdom

I'm still looking. :D Of course shopping will be necessary as well, so I've already made a handy Word doc listing the major shopping streets. :D And I've looked up all the Starbucks in the area and how far from my hotel they are. :p

Day 31: Wednesday, March 25

Wednesday morning was spent reading, as per usual. :) Classes only started at 2:45pm so there was plenty of time in the morning. I had wanted to go to the trainstation to pick up my ticket to Vienna, first, but alas. Slept a little later than expected and then read far too long. :/ But class was only till 4:15pm, so I could easily go after! :D

Which I happily did. :) Got on the bicycle, headed towards the trainstation and, after some very confused railway service employees and some rather bad German from my part, I had my ticket! :D YAY! After that, I foolishly decided to take a stroll through one of the shopping streets. I passed by my favourite coffe shop for a Double Hazelnut Shot Hot Chocolate (quite a mouthful, but SO. GOOD.) and ambled on. :D Unfortunately, at the end of that particular shopping street is That Bookstore I've surely already mentioned before.

Anyone who's ever been been shopping with me and who has seen my...preoccupation with bookstores, will understand why this is bad. :p Yup, I went in, and yup, I came out with more additions to my collection. XD I cannot help it! They shouldn't be so cheap! The choices this time were:

- Book 1 and 2 of the Twilight Saga. (I know. :p Shut up. :p)
- A Tale Of Two Cities (Dickens)

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to resist the place until the rest of my stay here, so I've made a deal with myself. If I can wait until the first of May to go back, I'm allowed to buy the other 2 Twilight books. :D

After That Bookstore, I felt quite inspired, so I came home and I wrote quite a bit more of my story. Of course, by 'quite a bit' I mean about 4 pages in Word, but SHUSH. :p

Coming home, there was also an unpleasant surprise. It turned out that the housemaster had finally had enough of some of the people here being unable to do their dishes. :/ There was a sheet on the door of the kitchen that from that night onwards the kitchen would be locked at 9pm. And if that didn't help, then the common room would be locked as well... :/

I can kind of understand why the housemaster would do that (the dishes thing was *really* getting ridiculous) but on the other hand, I really don't think that this is a good way to solve things... We'll see, I guess.

Oh, and Mom and me booked my hotel room for Vienna! YAY! :D

All in all, it was a very normal day and honestly, it didn't even register that I'd now been in Innsbruck for exactly one month. :)

Day 32: Thursday, March 26

Thursday morning was off to a very conspicuous start. Kevin overslept! (Too much partying the night before, perhaps? :p) I went to knock on his door at 7:50am and he opened all bleary-eyed and pissy, wondering what I was doing, it was quite amusing. Also funny was the look on his face when I said "Praxis?". (I mentioned that quite nicely for that time of morning, even if I do say so myself! )

The problem was that he knew where we had to go and I didn't. He, apparently, also knew we had to go earlier, but he didn't tell me, so we arrived late. Luckily the teacher wasn't angry at all. :)

The Praxis on Thursday was also given by trainees and since it was English, it was a lot easier to understand! It was a good lesson, and the meeting afterwards was nice too. Our opinions were valued and our suggestions appreciated, which is always a plus. :) Also, the teacher asked us if we'd be up to teaching a lesson about Belgium after the Easter break, so that should be fun. :D We'll get to introduce our chocolate and our fries, hooray! \o/

Over lunch break I went home and wrote and planned quite a bit of my story. Yay for writing and yay for people helping me. ^-^ I might even actually finish this thing. :D

After lunch we had German class again. Which was, unfortunately, really really damn confusing. Most of us were sitting there, going "O_O ...huh?". Which Kate (the teacher) felt pretty bad about. :/ So she's gonna try another approach on Monday, which will hopefully clear things up a little more. :D

Day 33: Friday, March 27

Friiiiday. Hmmm. Right, in the morning, we had a meeting at the Pädag, about Erasmus Activities. Turns out they're going to make us COOK. That'll be a disaster on my part, I'm sure. :p But hey, it could be fun. :D We're cooking a Tirolean dinner. And they're expecting us to make a typical Belgian food thing as well. :/ :/ :/ Any suggestions? :p It's supposed to be small, so we'll have to rule out steak and fries. Fries alone might work, though... Hmmm. Something to ponder.

By the time we were home again it was about lunch, I think, and I had to do some homework, sadly. :( But the weather was so so nice, and I just couldn't resist! Me and Cristina took our books and some blankets and went out into the backyard to read in the sun. :D And it was glorious. :D

There was another rather unpleasant surprise when we came back inside, though. :( The Internet here works through proxy settings and everything, I'm not going to explain it all, but the gist of it is that you have to enter your room number into your IP address and that every room number gets 1GB a day of bandwith. Which is quite a lot, much more than I was expecting, to be honest.

But as the observant among you may see, you have to set these settings yourself. Meaning that it's quite easy to change the room number and use someone else's Internet if 1GB a day isn't enough for you. (Meaning: if you're an ass and want more.) And some people have been doing just that. The problem is that if a certain room goes over 1GB, then the internet is just closed off, no matter who downloaded too much. So if you're using up someone else's Internet, then at some point in the evening, they won't have any internet anymore! Very uncool.

The housemaster obviously wants to control this, so now everyone has to write down their room number and the physical address (MAC-address) of their computer. That way he can identify who is downloading from which room and can see who is downloading from a room that isn't theirs. A good solution, I think, but I do wish it hadn't been necessary. People can be such dimwitted losers sometimes. :(

In the evening, we had a little mini-party in the common room and some tomfoolery (I love that word) occured. :D Due to privacy issues, this information can sadly not be disclosed. :p (Bet you're all real sad about that! :p) But fun was definitely had. :D

Day 34: Saturday, March 28

Which is today. :D I got up at 8, very unusual for me, indeed. IDK who sleeps above me but apparently they're very fond of getting up early on certain Saturdays and waking up those who sleep below. :( But, on the other hand, it means that I could do quite a few things before lunch, hooray. Finished my book, updated this blog, and went downstairs only to discover the kitchen was still closed!

I do hope that the housemaster isn't planning on leaving it closed till after noon, my food's in there! And the only things I have in my room are crackers and peanut butter. (Dutch peanut butter, btw, I had to buy a new jar. It's not bad, but *very* sweet. Clearly the Dutch have strange tastes. :p)

Plans for the day include: shower, homework, reading. May go outside because the weather is very nice once again, but then again, wind is going insane so maybe not. :)

That's it! Up to date again, and I should really try to not let this thing get out of hand so much. :/ But in my defence, it was a reasonably busy week!

Anyhoo, auf wiedersehen, Schätzis! :)

Fia/Lindsey