So viel Freizeit!

Week Three

After a busy weekend, it was straight into my second week of teaching (third week overall here in Austria.)

I'd sorted out my timetable with the secondary school the week before and it's a little complicated. 'Week A' I'm at the secondary school on Mondays and Tuesdays, and 'Week B', I'm there on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. As this is now 'Week B', I had the day off on Monday, which was my first (of many) experiences of how much 'Freizeit' we'll get here due to only teaching 13 hours a week. I had a long lie-in, read a bit of my book, caught up on some TV (mainly TOWIE... the shame...) and after only one day could already feel myself going a little stir crazy. In Paris, I was busy from 8am-7pm most days, longer if I was meeting up with friends in the evening, so this is quite a contrast! I had to go into town to meet my teacher at the Abendgymnasium (evening school) for the second attempt of planning my timetable, so arranged to meet a few of the other assistants for dinner and drinks afterwards.

They had put together a provisional timetable for me, where I would be teaching on Tuesday and Friday evenings. I am quite keen to go travelling at the weekends in order to take advantage of being so central in Europe, so Friday evening didn't sound ideal. Luckily they were very flexible with the hours and we were able to pretty much completely re-do the timetable. Instead, I'll be teaching Monday evenings every other week, and Wednesday and Thursday evenings every week. All in all it was a very positive discussion.

I met up with the other assistants after, and we went to an Italian restaurant in the Altstadt. After dinner we went to a cocktail bar and then Jody, another assistant, and I, went on to an Irish bar in the town. We got chatting to a couple of Americans there, one of whom was weirdly similar to Jason Segel (from the Five-Year Engagement among other films) but also awkwardly hilarious. They'd flown over to Munich for Oktoberfest, not realising it had ended yesterday, which we, quite frankly, found ridiculous. You'd think they would have at least had a little Google! After they'd gone we were approached by a fat, balding, middle-aged man who handed us a flower and then was pretty insistent that we dance with him. As Jody put it, we were 'offended' that he thought he had a chance with us, and so made a swift get-away. I waited for the last bus home, which never came, so ended up getting a taxi instead.

Tuesday was another day off work, and I was again struggling to fill this new-found Freizeit. Every Tuesday and Thursday there is a Deutsch-Konversationskurs at the library. I was keen not to waste the entire day so tried to make my way there. So far I've been coping reasonably well with finding my way around a new town, but unfortunately this afternoon got the better of me. I did eventually make it there, but it was over half-way through. I took note of where it was and resolved to come back next week.

By Wednesday it was back to the 6am starts. I was still doing introduction lessons, but by now had got the hang of them much better. I knew which questions were getting 'yes or no' answers, and which ones opened up more of a discussion. As another 'icebreaker', I played '2 truths and a lie' with the class. I split the class into groups of three, they had to come up with their stories, come up to the front of the class and two of them would tell the truth, one a lie. The rest of the class then had to ask questions to work out who was the liar, which went down really well. Back in the staff room, I was still having issues with a lot of the teachers talking to me in English, despite me answering in German. I ended up having a horribly awkward discussion with one teacher, who asked me quite forcefully to stop speaking German and repeated that she'll only speak English to me, which made me feel really quite uncomfortable. However, I tried not to dwell on that too much as so far it is the only thing I can pick a fault with of my time here. In the wake of this conversation I went to the university that afternoon with another assistant, Rachel, to try and register for some German classes.Unfortunately the classes are all full until next semester, by which time I'll be in Spain. I'll carry on looking for something similar though, as I'm keen to make the most of my time here and speak as much German as possible.

Wednesday evening was my first time teaching in the evening school. The classes are a lot smaller, sometimes only 4 or so students. Also, they're all here voluntarily, and so the atmosphere is very different. They are very keen to learn, to ask for help, and also seem genuinely interested in a lot of what I have to say. I think this might be because we are all similar ages, so they can relate to it a lot more. They made the lesson very easy as they didn't hesitate to contribute. I stayed to have a cup of tea and a chat after my lessons with one of the teachers who seems really nice. Although she's Austrian, she spent 4 years in Ireland and so speaks English with an Irish accent, which I definitely wasn't expecting. I'm glad to be in two schools, to get to see the best of what both have to offer, and I would say that it makes for a more interesting overall experience.

Thursday was more of the same, with an early start, more introduction lessons, and followed by lessons at the evening school. I know I might regret saying this a month or so down the line, but I was starting to feel as if I've done enough introduction lessons already, and am ready for the real teaching to begin. Although this will mean that I've got to prepare the lessons myself, they should also hopefully be more varied and potentially quite exciting.

On Friday, I had a lesson with the teacher that had flat out refused to speak German to me on Wednesday. I was quite nervous about seeing her again (it was a very very awkward conversation). I'm not sure if she'd had some time to reflect on the reasons for me wanting to speak German in the staff room or what had happened, but she was speaking away to me in German and even invited me bowling with some of the staff on Saturday evening. I was glad that I didn't need to worry any more  and as a bonus her lesson went so well that the children clapped me at the end of it, result!