Sprachschule und Schifoan.

I woke up on Monday morning, still incredibly achy from the weekend's skiing activities, and got ready for my first day at the language school. My classes didn't start until 11am each day, so I had a nice relaxed morning, and really enjoyed the change from the 6am wake-up calls before Christmas! The language school is right in the centre of Salzburg, and so the 15 minute bus-ride there was again a welcome change from the 3 hour round trip to the school I was teaching at. The class was with an Italian woman, who had moved to Salzburg as her husband is German. In keeping with the Italian stereotype she was extremely talkative, but as there were only two of us in the class, it worked well that we were both forthcoming with speaking and participating, as otherwise the lessons could have been pretty dry and awkward.

The lessons usually followed a similar format. The teacher would ask us questions, that we would have to answer using a specific grammatical structure. The questions were all about the same topic, but focusing on the grammar. Once we'd got the grammar, we moved onto the topic and went over lots and lots of vocab and sometimes did a reading comprehension as well. There was lots of speaking, and the teacher was very quick to pick you up on ANYTHING you said wrong, so I knew my grammar would be a lot tighter by the end of the month! Once the teacher had left, we usually stayed to do a couple of listening exercises and then went home. It was a much better timetable than teaching, as it meant that I was always home in time for lunch as well, and then had the afternoon free to continue going to the university lectures, conversation classes, and do the 2 hours of homework that we were set every day for the next morning!

No longer having the stress of 'is my German improving' actually made a real difference to my everyday life. I could relax a lot more, and for example enjoy Kaffee and Kuchen with friends, without feeling guilty in the back of my mind if I was spending an hour speaking English rather than German. To break up the middle of the week I ventured with the other TAs out of our comfort zone of either traditional Austrian restaurants, or our favourite Mexican Lemonchilli, and we went to the creatively named Taj Mahal, Indian restaurant. Despite ordering far too much naan bread after a little confusion, we all enjoyed having some flavour in our food (for once), and it was nice to eat somewhere new as well. Afterwards a couple of us went to Erika's house for drinks, where we taught the American's the English rules for Ring of Fire. Needless to say, hilarity ensued and a favourite memory of the evening is Erika picking 'kitchen utensils' for her category card, despite her genuinely having limitless other options!

The next weekend I went skiing again with the family.We followed pretty much the same routine as the previous weekend, including taking our own lunches with us and eating them in the 'Chill House'. The place is hard to describe, as it's really unique, but I'll give it a go! It's a really modern building at the end of the main skiing slopes with all the tricks and jumps in Wagrain. As you go in, there's rock climbing and a skateboarding area, as well as some tables and chairs for eating your own lunches. Upstairs there's more seating which looks over all of the rock climbing area, and a tap with boiling hot water so that you can warm up with a cup of Fruchte Tee when you come out of the -20 on the slopes.

Lunch at the 'Chill House'

This time around we'd sussed out the ski-pass situation, and I managed to get away with a half-price ticket for 15 year olds (and under!). I've always known that I look younger than I am, but passing for 15 or under the year I turn 21 is quite something... Also, as both parents in my host family used to be ski instructers, I got some free lessons from them throughout the days. We did a lot of practice of going over the 'off-piste bumps' or 'Buckels' (at this point I probably know more skiing vocab in German than I do in English!), although I was still nowhere near as speedy as them going over all the quick turns.

Me doing a 'half-pipe' very slowly!

After the first week of my new schedule, I was more than sure that I'd make the right decision, and fully motivated to make the most of my last few weeks in Austria.