Day 68 - 80: Deadlines! Deadlines! Deadlines!

I think we're just gonna have to admit defeat, guys. :p Because honestly, I doubt I'm going to get any better at this in the last 2 weeks that I'm staying here. :p

Huh, two weeks. Feels so strange. On the one hand it feels like I've been here for forever, and on the other hand it feels like flying in (in that awful weather!) was only yesterday. :/ And don't even get me started on whether or not I wanna go home. :p

Fair warning, I can't really guarantee for the interestingness of this post, mostly now that the end is in sight, it also means deadlines! deadlines! deadlines! :( My life so hard. :(

Day 68 - 69: Saturday, May 2 & Sunday, May 3

Now, let me check Facebook to see exactly what I did those days... :p What, my memory's shoddy, okay? :p ...Ah right! I don't even know why I'm still surprised. The biggest part of Saturday was spent doing (wait for it. wait for it....) HOMEWORK! Hah, bet you weren't expecting that! :p I have to shamefully admit that it will be a recurring theme, though for once NOT because I slacked off during the year and now have to sacrifice sleep to get everything done in time. :D Simply because I only got the assignments and/or material v. late. :( My life so hard. :( (A catchphrase? What's this catchphrase you speak of? :p)

Saturday eve I made plans to go out with housemates (because of course I have to decide to be all social when I don't have TIME fot it. >_<), but due to some miscommunication, we couldn't find them. :D So in the end Kevin and I went out for a drink by ourselves, which was also nice. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to do when I'd been having phenomenal headaches due to lack of sleep through the whole week before and they'd only disappeared that day. But then, when am I ever known for doing the right thing. XD

On Sunday Kevin and I ambled over to a housemates place for an assignment we were supposed to do together. :) After that I enjoyed the lovely weather and did some more homework. Multi-tasking ftw! :D

Day 70 - 73: Monday, May 4 - Wednesday May 6

Monday was spent once more, studying. I had a text/exam-ish thing on Wednesday and though I only had to study 5 sheets, it was (firstly) 5 sheets of gramma theory (which I am phenomenally bad at! :D) and (secondly) 5 sheets of confusing grammar theory. No, seriously, half the time I couldn't understand what I had to do, simply because I didn't understand what she was asking! How am I supposed to know what the goddamn accusative in English, is, I barely even know what it is in German! :(

Monday was also spent arranging some things with KHBO who finally realized that, oh, hey, I'm not going to be there for classes. (Nevermind the fact that I told them this.) Excuse me my bitching, but I can't help being here and they were supposed to know so getting pissed off at me is not going to help anyone! >:(

On Tuesday I had Praxis in the morning, where the trainee once more stood up the teacher. How that woman doesn't explode I will never understand. :/ Anyhoo, after Praxis we had a little break and then another Erasmus activity: Tirolean singing and dancing! Lol, you guys, I learned how to YODEL. XD

The dancing was neat. The singing? Not so much. Though it reminded me of The Sound Of Music: High on a hill was a lonely goatherd, Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo, and so on and so forth. :D Damn, I need to watch that movie again. :D

Tuesday evening was spent once more studying, as was Wednesday morning when I didn't have any classes. Wednesday was a pretty busy day actually: studying in the morning, then off to school to print out a load of tasks, hand them in, go to class and go to the test. I'm not quite sure how I did but, meh. We'll see, right? I think I passed but then again, you never know. :(

After that I was so pleased it was over I celebrated with ICE CREAM! There's this ice cream parlour nearby? Homg so good. (For the Bruges people: better than the Da Vinci! :D) After that, us girls went to a 90s party, while the guys stayed at home and watched soccer. (Barcelona - Chelsea, historical match, bla bla)

Day 74 - 77: Thursday, May 07 - Monday, May 11

Of course, of all the days I was NOT allowed to oversleep, I overslept. Cue a lot of cussing and feeling bad. :/ Because I had an obligation that morning and not being there meant I would have to move everything a week, which meant that I'd be skirting it really close to the deadlines for some things. :/

But alas, nothing I could do so, yknow, I just sucked it up and dealt. :D I'm getting rather good at that, even if I do say so mahself. :D

In the afternoon I had an interview with one of the most important ICT dudes in Tyrol, so that was cool. He explained loadsa things to be, but the gist is that people here don't seem to be as fond of technical progression as folks are at home? Some of them prefer their overheadprojectors over a beamer, for christ's sake! :/ Anyhoo, after that he let me into one of their computer rooms and boy! Boy!

They have this interactive whiteboard that's completely different from the ones we have at home (Promethean is the brand) and BOY! He let me play with it for as long as I wanted to and it was amaaaaaaazing. :D Seriously, Promethean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SMARTBoard, imho. :D (For the full report, I can send you my ICT report about it! ;) )

After Thursday started the Weekend o' d00m. No, seriously, I can't tell you anything aside from "I watched some films for entertainment." and "I did homework." :/ We're inching closer to the end date of my stay here and it's pretty much unbelievably busy. :( Portofolio's, tasks, reports, etc etc. Great fun. And, of course, the pile of assignments for school at home. Thank you for that. *angry face* The only good thing was that over the weekend, the weather was pretty much amazing, so I always sacrificed my evenings to schoolwork to be able to lounge in the sun/get an icecream in the afternoon. Y halo thar, tan. :D

Oh, and I got my grades for the exam from last Wednesday! I passed! Giddy-up, hooray! :D Seriously, that exam was. UGH. Someone should teach that woman how to make an exam because OH HAI YOURS SUCKED. And the BEST PART? On MONDAY she e-mailed us that we were gonna have another exam on WEDNESDAY. Like "Please study 3/4 of your course by heart in less than 2 days. :D :D". I am not in the habit of insulting my teachers (try to avoid it, actually), but if I could? I would have "BITCH" tattooed on this ones forehead. AND THAT'S SAYING A LOT! Retarded old bat.

Day 79 - 80: Tuesday, May 12 & Wednesday, May 13

Tuesday morning: done done doooooone with history praxis! HOORAY. :D Ok, I will admit that I learned a lot and by the end of the ride I barely had problems understanding the teacher's German, but stilll, it felt good to actually be finished with something for a change! Small blessings, and stuff. :)

After that, twas back to the books for the literature exam on Wednesday, sadly. Interspersed with working on other assignments. :) I'm actually pretty on top of things re: school at the moment. (Note that I say pretty on top of things, I'm still me. :p) By which I mean: not on the verge of mindblowing panic. Yet. :D It's nice. :p

Uhhhh, Wednesday was the busiest day of the week. :) Get up, revise revise reviiiise like the WIND and then go do the exam. Which, by the way, was EQUALLY RETARDED as the other one last week. I mean, what's the point of teaching your students to analyse literature if you're not gonna give them the texts on the exam! Then you're just making them learn their course by heart, not giving them any skills whatsoever! The test was a joke. :( But hopefully a joke I passed! I suppose I'll know soon enough.

After the exam Kevin and I went back home to work on a presentation we have to give on Thursday (ie: tomorrow). Crime in Belgium. The excitement, it is killing me. :p

In the afternoon we first had a meeting with one of the teachers and then we went to cook! :) Remember how a couple weeks ago, I told you about us cooking Tyrolean dishes? Now we cooked dishes from our home countries. Which, of course, meant Belgian Fries. What else? :D And everyone LOVED them. :D (All together now: DUH!)

After that it was homeward bound and back to the crime presentation and now, I'm so off to bed. :) My apologies for the dullness of this entry, darlings, but time's short and all. :/

For the sake of being informed: you should probably only expect one more post. Maybe two? I have about a week of school left, then my parents are coming to pick me up and then it's HOME. Jesus, gonna be weird to be home again after all this time. :/ I dunn wanna. :(

But, I'll wax poetic about why I want to stay here and why I don't another time. :) I am so looking forward to next week's Monday. I promised myself that I wouldn't do any school work for my whole last week, mostly because 1) I won't have the time to and 2) for most of the week my parents will be here and it would be rather crass to ditch them for school, right? :p

ANYWAY. I'm out. :) Wiedersehen, Schatzi's. :D ♥

Fia/Lindsey

Day 57 - 67: Homework, cooking, homework, teaching, homework, hiking (!) and oh! more homework! :D

And to think I used to update this every 2-3 days. :/ Now I keep telling myself "Oh, it's only been a week! I've still got time!" XD Onwards!

Day 57: Tuesday, April 21

Very uneventful. In the morning, the trainee that was supposed to teach didn't show up (for the second time in a row. :| And without notifying the teacher!) so Prof. Wohlgemut had to, pretty much, pull a lesson out of her, er, magic hat. :| And you couldn't even tell! My hat's off to her. :)

In the evening there was a cooking adventure! :D I cannot for the life of me remember what it was we made, but there were 4 dishes and, lol, teachers came to eat it! XD It was pretty fun though, being able to cook in a huge and professional kitchen with every utensil you could possibly need! :D And the food was good! Impartial sources said so! And nobody puked and/or got poisoned! :D Win! :D

Edit: I found the menu! Here's what we cooked:

Spinatknödel (something difficult to explain with spinach)
Kasnocken (something equally difficult to explain with 4 kinds of cheese)
Schlutzkrapfen (Some kind of big ravioli with vegetables inside!)

Gemischter Salat

Apfelradel mit Preiselbeerschaum (so so good HOMG. :D)

Day 58 & 59: Wednesday, April 22 & Thursday, April 23

Wednesday was sleep-in-late day, as it usually is. :) I only have class at 1:45pm, so. ^-^ I also had a bit of a scare in the morning because, omg, my INTERNET wasn't working anymore! :o :o Cue panic! Luckily I was able to fix it. Or, rather, it fixed itself, cos when I came home from class it was working again. :D

During class, Kevin and I had the unfortunate duty to announce that, hey, next week's lesson (you know, the last one where you have the exam?), we can't come! :D Naturally, Mrs. Katzlinger wasn't very pleased about that and as such frowned a lot. But, the silver lining, this means that due to scheduling difficulties, we don't have to do the exam. :D We got a v. big replacement task, though. :( Which I am getting at. No, really. I am!

Thursday was probably the most productive day I've had in weeks! :D I was so proud of myself! :D Of course, I countered that by doing nothing at all over the weekend. Oops?

Anyhoo, Thursday! I taught! And it was cool! ...Okay, honestly, it wasn't the best lesson I've ever taught, but mostly that's because the kids were YOUNG (like 9-10years young!) and they barely knew ANYTHING! I mean, when one asks where France is and they point ount the UK...YEAH'S ALL I'M SAYIN! :p But all in all, it was okay. :) I taught them at least something and the teacher said I was really natural in front of the class, so. :D

After teaching I: went to the store, did laundry, cleaned my room and did a lot of homework! :D Mostly when I write on here that I did homework, I mean "attempted to do homework and mostly kind of failed a little." :D But on Thursday I didn't mostly kind of fail a litte! :D Go Team Me! \o/

Day 60 - 62: Friday, April 24 - Sunday, April 26

Since I wrote a novella about the twodays above and since this is going to be a long as hell journal entry already, allow me to some up my weekend in a sentence. :D A sentece I was pretty much thinking throughout the whole weekend, even! :p

"Ooooh boy, I should really do some homework. ...Ah well, let's laze about and read instead!" :D

Because, and you should know this already, that's how I roll. :)

Day 63 - 65: Monday, April 27 - Wednesday, April 29

On Monday, my second Kreativmodul started! You may remember, I did one before, we made toys, etc etc? That one was fun. Three half days and the week was over! \o/ This one was also rather fun, but less easy. :p We went to a couple of nearby villages to explore the geography, history and biology of those places. :)

On Monday we went to Thaur, which is this really cute village nearby! :D It mostly survives because it is home to the largest vegetable farm in pretty much the whole of Tyrol. :D So, a cutesy little town surrounded by farmland. :D Was almost like home. :p We started with a walk through the town and then we hiked up the mountains. :D It was nice, if a little tiring. :) Gorgeous view and all. :) I have some pictures, I'll try and post them here soon. ^-^

On Tuesday we went to Hall in Tirol, which is a very old town and v. v. beautiful. It became important in the 1100s or so because of the salt that can be found in the mountains very near. :) It reminded me a lot of Bruges, actually, though it's a lot smaller. (Which is saying something because the old town center of Bruges? Not very large!) In the morning we walked through the town, talking about the history of it and such. V. interesting though probably less so for all the geographers in our party. :D

After the walk, we paired up and had to make a city search thing! You know, like, you put numbers on a map and every number has a question attached to it and then you have to go all over town, trying to solve the questions? :) (We didn't get to do the searches until the next day, but making it was fun too! :D Even though Manuela and I were practically sleeping and our questions weren't great. :p)

After that, we changed teachers and in the afternoon we went with this crazy Biology professor, doing things like sketching the mountains and walking along the river, identifying plants ("This plant is especially known because you can also smoke it!" "Is it pot? :D" "...no, it's not.") and composing a poem about the river since it was "Kreativ"modul, so we had to be creative. I know. :p

Pretty funny is also that it turns out that the afternoon professor, Professor Hofer, came to KHBO (my school in Belgium) last year! :D So now I'm under oath to bring across "Liebe Grüsse für die Miranda" when I get home. (I'm assuming Miranda is the Bio teacher. :p)

Wednesday started again with the crazy Bio prof, prof. Hofer. We were supposed to go hiking again but the weather was ghastly so we stayed at school, teaming up to make a report on the nature surrounding the river Inns and how the salt ended up in the mountains. (Unfortunately, as all the reading was in German, I only caught about half of it. My German has definitely improved a lot since I got here (hooray!) but not that much. :p)

In the afternoon we first exchanged the city searches between groups (you could hardly do your own search, after all) and then set out to solve them. :D Ours was pretty easy, and we got everything right! After that, we went to the Bergbaummuseum which was about the salt mines. Which, in all honesty? Was pretty much wasted money because I couldn't understand A THING that guide was saying. :| Of course, afterwards, when the prof. asked us how we found it, we smiled nicely and said we caught most of it. :p After the museum we went for a drink and an Apfelstrüdel (which, homg, yum! &hearts_♥) and then homewards!

Day 66 - 67: Thursday, April 30 & Friday, May 1

On Thursday (yesterday) I woke up with a horrible headache. :( I'd been having them all week, possibly because I'm chronically bad at going to bed at a decent hour. Painkillers are my friends. :D Anyhoo, on Thursday, it was pretty bad. :/ Woke up, took a painkiller and went to bed again. Sleeeep, glorious sleeep. When I woke up properly again, it was about halfway in the afternoon and I felt better, so hooray for that. :) Did some homework, read some and went to bed rather late again. I will be better at that. I WILL. *resolved face*

And this morning, I was promptly woken up by the fucking town orchestra? Idk what else to call them, they're the "fanfare" in Dutch but in English... It's like a group of people walking around playing instruments? Often seen at important events?

Well APPARENTLY, May 1 is an important event here. It seems they go around and play the same diddly in front of every house and then expect to get MONEY for it. Most awful way I've been woken up since, pretty much ever! >:(

In other news, I can't believe it's May already. :| May is the month I LEAVE. :| :| It feels like only yesterday that we first arrived here. :| Very odd.

Plans for the day include making that replacement task for Mrs. Katzlinger. If I can finish that today (and I SHOULD be able to, if I work at a decent pace), I'll be happy. :) Then I can start worrying about all the other stuff I still have to do. :D

Oh, and happy May Day, Schätzis. ^-^

Wiedersehen!

Fia/Lindsey

Day 50 - 56: Uhm. Well. That's to say. I'm sorry, okay! :p

You know, if this were my LJ, I'd use this icon. Because, basically it is how I roll. :p To procrastinate: to put off till another day or time; delay. Yup, me in a nutshell. :p

Yeah. IN MY DEFENCE, I didn't think you would all be entertained by daily updates going "todayyyy I slept late! And then I did homework! And then I lazed around and read! And then I tanned! OMG!" Heavy stuff? Not so much. ;)

Day 50 & 51: Tuesday, April 14 & Wednesday April 15

...were pretty much those kind of days, actually. :D What, I blew half my holiday off to Vienna, I had to make up somehow? And I'm rather pleased to say I did quite a lot! :D Of course, I didn't do as much as I'd hoped, I am She With Impossibly High Expectations, of course. But I figure, I only ever do bout half of what I plan (whether I plan a lot or not) so half of a lot > half of not a lot, right? Right. :D

The only thing worth noting? Wednesday night I didn't sleep. Like. At all. It was horrible. :( By the time I could actually sleep, it was so late that I kept thinking "omg must sleep have to get back up in 2 hours must sleep must sleep aaaaah panic!". Which, obviously, didn't help at all. :( So in the end it was 5:30am and I decided that I should just not sleep at all, rather than sleep for 50 minutes and then wake up again. It was awful. :(

Day 52 & 53: Thursday, April 16 & Friday, April 17

You should have seen me on Thursday, oh my god. XD I felt like I'd just gone through an entire exam period on only 5 hours of sleep averagely a night. :p And the awful part was, on Thursday, Kevin and I were supposed to teach! About Belgium!

Luckily, we were supposed to teach together so I just went over and asked him if he'd feel up to doing it by himself, please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top? And he did! :D I wouldn't ask, normally, but I think he could see how awful I felt. By lunch I was, like, swaying. :| I was a little scared I was gonna get run over on my way home or something. :p

In any case, Kevin's lesson was fine and next week it's my turn. :D Well, next week or May 14 (angry teachers, holidays, looooong story.) It was nice. :) Though we started out by singing the national anthem and, I swear, they looked at us like we were insane. XD But twas good aside from that. And they all agreed that Belgian chocolate > anything else, ever. Well, duh. :p

On Friday I was supposed to go to Salzburg, but even an afternoon nap hadn't been able to make me feel human again, so I overslept and missed my train. So instead I did homework! Yay! :p

Day 54 - 56: Saturday, April 18 - Monday, April 20

Saturday: Salzburg day! I will admit, I didn't stay very long. I visited the obvious places, though! (Exception: I didn't go into the Mozarthouse because a) a, uh, load of tourists queuing up and b) pricey for just a house.)

So I walked around, took pictures, got accosted by random bums (WHY does that always happen to me? Seriously!) and then! Then! Then I found this cute little bookshop that MADE my trip! :D

The thing is, I've been looking for calendars, right? Because a decent calendar has, like, 12 good pictures in one and if you cut them off, you can use them for decoration of your walls! It's the cheapest way, really. So I looked in Innsbruck: nothing, zip, nada. Looked in Vienna: nothing, zip, nada. I realize, April is rather late for a calender, but COME ON! And then, in that cute little bookstore: 2 EUROS APIECE! :D

So of course I bought 5. :D And now my room is all decorated, it's awesome! :D You might say overcrowded, but I say come have a look at my room at home, you'll die. :p






Anyhoo, when I came home, I sort of redecorated and now my room feels awesomely homey. ^-^ Yay!

Sunday was the last day of the Easter hols! Technically they ended last Tuesday, but since we only had that tiny thing on Thursday, I counted Sunday as the last day. :) And I spent it doing, well, homework. :p You'd think that after having had a whole 2 weeks, I would NOT do my homework for Monday on Sunday, but. Well, clearly you don't know me well. :p

And then Monday was back to school day! :( In the morning we went shopping for ingredients. You see, on Tuesday eve they expect us to cook Tirolean dishes. Me. Cook.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can feed myself no problem! BUT following recipes? Not my forte. I EVEN MESS UP PANCAKES, OKAY. :p So obviously that's going to be a disaster and you should probably check the newspapers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for, like, "Mass death of Erasmus students in PHT kitchen." cos I might poison everyone. :D

After shopping there was lunch and then class! And, yknow, it was nice. Ish. A presentation in both classes so, yeah, the ish is warranted. :p AND THEN. HOMG.

After the last period, we went to see Mrs. Pietersteiner who will as of now be known as The Evil Bitch Monster Of Death™ (TEBMOD™)(This isn't actually swearing, okay, it's totally a Buffy reference! Pop Culture! But she kind of deserves the title.) And she told us that we'd been handing in our corrected assignments wrong. AND WE HAD TO DO ALL OF THEM OVER AGAIN! Seriously! SERIOUSLY! You could not have told us this AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TERM, EBMOD! [insert pissed off swearing here, because I'm at least trying to keep this clean :p]

So. The day ends on a rather PISSED OFF note. Who'd have thought. Of course, by now I've rather calmed down, but still. Ugh. EBMOD.

I'm gonna go shake and shimmy my bad mood off, y'all. :D (another Buffy reference! ...sorry, I'll behave. :/)

Ciao! :)

Fia/Lindsey

Day 42 - 49: Christ, has it really been that long?

I know what you're all thinking right now: Oh hey, look, it's Fia/Lindsey, SHE'S ALIVE! And.

Well.

...okay, fine, you have an EXCELLENT point. I am, in fact, still alive! Surprise! :p

But IN MY DEFENCE, I was in Vienna for days! Where I, okay, had Internet, but only for 20mins at a time which I used to spam my Facebook, obv, and e-mail my mom like the dutiful daughter I am. Shut up, I can see your incredulous looks, I AM! :p

Anyway, enough spazhattery (this might be my new favourite word), on with the reportz. :)

Day 42 - 45: Monday, April 6 till Tuesday, April 9

Which was basically my trip to Vienna!

Points of note:

- Vienna is, apparently, the only capital city in Europe where people still meekly wait for the light to turn green before crossing the street. :)
- Americans from Chicago are very nice. Just tossing that out there. :D
- Still a Starbucks groupie.

And I'm sure there's more but I can't really remember, so I'm just going to direct you to where my pictures with comments are, you can follow the trip through there. :)

This way for the Pictoral Story of Vienna! :)

Day 46 - 49: Friday, April 10 till Monday, April 13

Now, I know y'all going to think I am cowardlying out of writing things out all detailed and rambly, but actually, it is like this. I am on holiday! I don't really do much!

Things Fia Has Done These Past Days:

- Read stories.
- Marathoned Season 2 of Veronica Mars. Ah, Neptune High, good times. ♥
- Done homework
- Lounged in the sun
- Lazed around.

No, really, It's kind of embarrassing how much I'm not kidding. :p This is how I roll.

So, I guess that's it, then. :p This must have been the shortest blog update ever, huh.

See you 'round, folks. :)

Fia/Lindsey

Day 37 - 41: Short short short, Fia's in a hurry!

It's gonna be a v. v. quick entry, you guyz, because I completely forgot to do this and now it's late and I have to get up at 6 AM tmrw. Pity me. :(

Anyhoo, I used to do this all the time on LJ, so let's see if it works here too! My week in bullet points:

Day 37: Wednesday, April 1

• Homework in the morning, English in the afternoon.


• Mrs. Katzlinger remains to be filled with... Well, I wanna say spunk, but that would be gross. :| Boundless energy? :D It's nice, mostly, but she never seems to have time for anything. This is less nice, sadly. :(


• Fia ♥ Metric!


• Metric's a band, you see, and I got their new album and it is amaaaaaazing. And of course they are playing Belgium while I am in Austria. :( Just like, oh, say, 436245736743657236 of my other fave bands. D: MY LIFE, SO HARD! :(


• Fia also ♥ Lupe Fiasco, who is a rapper. :D


• In conclusion: Wednesday = musicday!


..


• WAIT, I forgot something! Wednesday was also the start of the amazing weather times we've had here since. :D I lounged in the sun after class, till it was too cold, finishing The Golden Compass. And it was glorious. :D The weather. The book was only okay? :p

Day 38: Thursday, April 2

• Praxis again in the morning. The kids had a test, was interesting to see how this works in other countries. :)


• We made more agreements about the teaching that is supposed to occur after the break. Teaching German kids about Belgium, should be a whoop! :D And we don't even have to fill a full 50 mins. ^-^


• More lounging in the sun. Our terrace is almost windfree, and ok, the chairs aren't the most comfy thing in the universe, but, sun! Books! Music! Tis Utopia, indeed. :D


• Also of note: There are, apparently, no commercial movies in Innsbruck that aren't dubbed. :( Meaning I won't get to see Fast & Furious until it comes out on DVD cos it's dubbed here and by the time I get home it'll be out of theatres. Sulk.


• I also watched an old Queer as Folk epi on my iPod thursday eve, and 'lo and behold! Rekindling of the love! Ahhhh, good times with Brian and Justin and their Epic Gay Love. :D ♥


• Afternoon: last German class! I do think I will miss it, Kate was a fun teacher. :) And the field trip ended up being to McDonalds. Lol. :p It was neat, though. ^-^


• Oh, and. HOOOOLIIIIIDAAAAAAAY! \o/ :D

Day 39: Friday, April 3

• Friday morning: sleeping in. What, you're surprised? :p C'mon. :p


• Friday afternoon: desperately looking for a printer in school, due to the need to print things for my trip to Vienna. Not finding anything or anyone there. Eventually half begging the gruff man in the library. Victory! \o/


• Also Friday: groceries! I walked, since the weather was so. unbelievably. awesome. :D Hoooonestly, I love it. *thrives*


• Friday Eve: Birthday party for Elina, another Erasmus student here, from Finland. :) Wine was served, conversation was exchanged, fun was had. \o/

Day 40: Saturday, April 4

• Picked up the camera Cristina lent to me for the holidays! It will henceforth be known as My Precious. :D :D Yaaaaay. :D


• Went for a loooong walk talking a bazillion pictures along the way. ^-^


• Weather still awesome.


• Basically, what you can say is I walked around and enjoyed the weather and the sun. Muahahahahhaha. :D May be boring, but meh. (I may have also bought Queer As Folk DVD's. Sorry Mom! D:)


• Oh, and woke up to fantastic news! In case you hadn't heard yet: Iowa legalized same-sex marriage! I'd dig up a link for you, but I'm lazy. Also in a hurry. ;) But this is good news! :D Go Iowa!

Day 41: Sunday, April 5

• Which is today!


• Which started with finishing the Queer As Folk DVD's I bought the evening before. Ahem. A full season in about 24 hours. Obsessed, who, me? TV-show-athons are awesome, okay? :p


• QaF put me in a great mood, which continued for the rest of the day! Yay, happy days! :D


• The rest of the day: shower, decadently late brunch, ironing, skypeing with aunt-sister-mom, packing my stuff, updating blog! :D Soundtracked by my happy playlist. :)

So basically, that was my week in bullet points. :D I shan't be around for the next couple of days as I am GOING TO VIENNA! Yes, this warrants caps. Trust me. :D I'm really excited! :D The weather's predicting up the 20s (Celsius, obv) and sun! HOORAY! :D I have a camera (sadly not Cristina's, but I'm not taking that expensive thing with me to Vienna, srsly. What if I lose it?!) so expect a lot of pictures when I get back! :D

Until Friday, Schätzi's. ;) Wiedersehen!

Fia/Lindsey

Day 34 - 36: Dullsville all 'round, guys. Sorreh. :/

Day 34: Sunday, March 29

What did I do on Sunday, hmmmm. Mostly dull computery things, actually. Can be summed up into 3 words: Read. Write. Study. :D (Well sorta on that last.... I'm kidding! :p)

Oh, and I spent a while helping everybody getting their MAC-address. Turns our the Hausmeister was just a liiiittle bit too optimistic in thinking that everyone would find it easily. :p And as the only resident IT-student... (Thank you, IT lessons, for teaching me what it is and where to find it! :D)

I also spent some time selecting pictures to print out and send home. It's horribly expensive here, € 0,70 for one picture! Comparison: at home it's € 0,10. :p So I'm sending a load of pictures over the interwebz, to be printed at home und meine liebe Mutti sollte diese Foto's nach mir zurück senden. Or something, you get the gist. :p Liebe Muttie is the only important part anyway. ;)

And when I get them, the walls of my room will finally NOT be so bare anymore. White? Not my colour!

In all honesty, my life is sort of...dull here. :D Aside from the daily wild parties, of course, but this IS a school blog, so I can't really mention them... :p (Joking, obviously. :p)

Day 35: Monday, March 30

Exceptionally, my German teacher couldn't make it for the lessons on Monday morning, so I slept in 'till in an obscenely late hour! :D As I am wont to do, actually, I feel decadently lazy sometimes... :/

After that, it was off to school for English class. Arrived there well on time for class, only to realize it was CANCELLED. [insert grumpy face here] It was a little flash of home, sweet home. :p

All in all, it wasn't that bad, because it turned out Kevin and I had to do a presentation in the lesson afterwards. A presentation we hadn't really prepared. :/

In the end we were left off the hook anyhow, mostly because the teacher (who is just. plain. weird. seriously. :/) had given us an assignment which was basically the same as 2 of the other groups. >.< So we'd go to the front and basically say the same things that had already been said. Uncool, Mrs. P. So we asked and got a new assignment, yay!

In the evening we had class till 7pm! Kate couldn't teach in the morning, so we put it in the evening. :) We've moved on to grammar now. :( It's hard. :( RESPECT for Frau Plovier, my highschool German teacher, because a lot more stuck from her drilling than I expected. :)

Kate also told us that she got a job after Easter Break, meaning we'd have to try and put all our remaining lessons this week. So a v. v. busy week for me! :)

Day 36: Tuesday, March 31

Tuesday was Praxisday as usual. Meaning it was hard to get up, because I slept horribly. :( I also had to remind myself 6737459435836959 times that I WASN'T allowed to forget leaving my sheets out. Every three weeks, the Hausmeister's wife washes them. I forgot last time. :( I didn't this time though! Y halo thar, fresh new sheets. :D

Also today: observing lessons. Shan't regale you with a report this time, I'm sure you're not interested. (It was pretty bad actually. :/ Rather painful to observe. :/)

And in the afternoon we had: more German! And we're doing die Fälle now. (Nominativ, Akkusativ, Dativ and Genitiv) It is horrible. :( BUT for our last lesson on Thursday, we're going on a field trip to the store and the bar. For educational purposes!

In conclusion: MY LIFE, SO HARD! (Not really.)

I hope everyone everywhere is still doing okay! :) Easter Hols are about to start and everyone's going home here, so it'll just be me and, like, 2 other people here. Will be odd. :/ Have a nice break, and you're always welcome to come visit me! :p

Ciao! :)

Fia/Lindsey

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