Eine gute Woche

Oh, the things I have learned this week!  First, in my teaching internship, the children are learning their prepositions and the difference between do and do not.  To emphasize these commands, I played a game of Simon Says with them.  I said things like "Simon says stand besides your chair" and "Simon says do not sit on your chair"  I'm not sure who liked the game more, the teacher or the children.  She thought it was a great way to engage all the students in the lesson.  The children are about ten years old and so I'm trying to make most of my lessons active in some way.  The 15 year olds are trying to expand their adjectives and vocabulary in general.  So we picked an ordinary piece of furniture and brainstormed all the different words that could describe it.  I'm not sure who learned more...I think I picked up more German than they did English!

In my music class, we entered the mind of Bach.  What an amazing composer Bach was!  He wrote so many pieces and at one point was writing two to three concertos a week!  This is incredible!  He also had a bit of a playful side.  He had a student group that played in a Kaffeehaus once or twice a week and he composed for them silly songs like the "Kaffee Aria".  At those times, composers could not live off of composing alone.  There were no royalties or copy right laws.  Most worked for the nobility, the church or taught in schools.  Bach performed all of these jobs at some point in his life.  Because of this, composers did not always have the freedom to compose as they pleased but rather had to please their patrons.

This week in German, I learned some colloquialisms.  Some of these are really funny and translate well into English while others are just ridiculous.  For example, 'Du schaust aus wie ein Schwammerl' literally translates to 'you look like a mushroom'.  This means that the person appears to be not very bright, or dumb.  Another is 'Wir brauchen einen Tapetenwechsel' which translates to 'we need a wallpaper change'.  The colloquialism in English is we need a change of scenery.  My goal next week is to work these colloquialisms into my everyday conversations.

My psych class is really interesting.  I'm not sure how much I agree with all the theories seeing how it is a soft science.  I like research and facts, not case studies.  In my opinion, anyone with a certain theory in mind can find characteristics during a case study to fit their ideas.  It's all about perspective.  Everyone sees what they want to see.  The best part of this class is that the professor encourages my skepticism and always asks then what my "scientific opinion" is.  He knows I'm a biology major you see and he likes it when I add a biological reason for behavior and case studies.  I'm known as being the devil's advocate, which is a role I thoroughly enjoy, so no problems there.  Most of you know that I never turn down the opportunity for a good debate! 


Karlskirche

While here in Wien, I joined a chamber choir.  This Friday was my first rehearsal with them.  It is a small group that is singing all original pieces from composing majors from both the IES program and Universität Wien.  It was a lot of fun just singing with a group again.
 

On Thursday night, I went to Karlskirche (Charles Church) and saw a performance of Mozart's Requiem.  It was amazing.  The orchestra played on period instruments and the choir sounded beautiful.  Since it took place in a church, acoustically it was what was heard during Mozart's time.  

We told the realtor we'd take it lol

On Friday evening, I went out with some friends and a good time was had by all.  On Saturday, we spent the day exploring the Belvedere, a beautiful palace that is now used as an art museum.  The grounds around the palace were wonderful and we had the perfect weather.  I was amazed that there were beautiful gardens in bloom since it has been cold and rainy the past few weeks.  Unfortunately no photos were allowed inside the museum, but it was equally as stunning.  Afterwards, we went out to dinner at this Indian restaurant.  It was tasty.  It was a low key day but also fun just spending time with friends.

The Belvedere




gardens and fountains



On Sunday, I did some baking.  Living here has taught me how to improvise and guesstimate.  There is not access over here to all the ingredients I am use to and so I basically wing it.  While unnerving at first, it's actually pretty fun.  I made zucchini bread cupcakes.  I am taking these tomorrow morning for my class of 10 year olds.  I'm teaching them about harvest and I found out that they have never heard of zucchini bread.  They laughed at the idea of putting zucchini in the batter, but I assured them it was good.  So now I'm going to prove it to them.  Sunday night I had dinner at a friend's and I offered to make an apple crumble (more like I made it once and now everyone demands it for every dinner we have.)  Oh well, I don't mind.  It's a compliment really that they like it.  Elizabeth's boyfriend is visiting and he is from a large Italian family from New Jersey.  He reminds me a lot of my friend Jarret back in Denver.  They both say 'coffee' the same way :)  Anyway, he wanted to make a traditional Italian meal for everyone.  It was delicious!  What a great end to an excellent weekend.