that thing you do.

I've been asked a few times now about the actual teaching aspect of my life. I seem to mention my free time a lot more than my actual real-life work time. I suppose that's how it usually goes, though. It's easier to write about the things that bring me only joy. (like shopping, traveling, eating, drinking, dancing, etc.) Teaching is a tri-faced monster: sometimes its wonderful, delightful and all laughter, sometimes its  just okay, varying from good to not so good in one day but manageable, and other times its long, exhausting, frustrating and not my cup of tea. 

Here's a general layout of my week:
- 13 hours in class (around 18 spent at school)
- 1 day off, varying each week
- ages 14-19, divided into 5 years
- 6 very sweet, female English teachers whose classes I visit
- various themes per lesson (Health, Social Media, Travel, Teen Heartbreak) you name it, and I can make a lesson. GOOGLE IS  MY BEST FRIEND.
- 1st hour begins at 8. 
- 30 minutes to get from my door to school
- lots of time to do whatever I want

Despite generally enjoying myself at school, I honestly don't think I want to have a career in teaching. At least, not at the high school level. At least, not in an Austrian public school. Maybe I could be a cool AP teacher somewhere. Or a hip young professor of German and the history of Comic Drawing. But, you won't see me subbing at Stockdale High School any time soon. I've been working for almost 3 months now, and I know that's nothing compared to most of you reading this, but I've learned or at least observed a lot in this short about of time. Here are some of those things:

- in Austrian schools, the teachers change classrooms and the students, for the most part, stay put. THIS IS AWFUL. The teachers never know where they have to go next (as rooms get swapped on a daily basis) and they have to lug everything with them. And stairs are involved. STAIRS.
- Language teachers are always grading something. And that something always looks really time consuming.
- There is no lunch break. Just one 15 minute break between 3rd and 4th lesson.
- My school is not divided into varying levels of difficulty. All kids take the same English, math, chemistry, art, etc. classes.
-Teenagers really don't need to drink coffee. Ever.
- There is no dress code.
- Teenagers can either have as much energy as a pack of gerbils, or as little as a sack of potatoes. Its always the luck of the draw.

Now, of course there are cool differences in the school system here (kids can specialize in fields they know they're interested in, every graduate of my school can work immediately afterward, their english is better than a college freshman's german, etc.)  but it's just easier to focus on the differences that irk me or don't make sense to me or are just..different.
The teachers at my school really want their kids to do well and be useful members of society and all that. But, so far it seems to me that the input of the teachers doesn't seem equal to the output. It's a taxing job and one that probably doesn't get as much gratitude as it deserves. (I think every teacher I know just mumbled "here here!")

Most of my days are good days, and I've been told by many of my teachers that the kids love me, I did a great lesson, they love listening to me, they're so glad to have me, etc. etc. The praise is wonderful. It makes me feel good about my work and makes me feel like less of a plan-less post-collegiate slacker. Students want to speak English with me (some) or hang out with me or add me on facebook….I get a chorus of hi's in the hallway, or giggles or smiles. It's a really pleasant feeling knowing you're good at what you do, or at least good enough not to totally suck.  And I will probably apply to do this for a second year(!) It's fun, I love the lifestyle it affords me, and I think I can hold most of the student's attention for 50 minutes.

But when that 2nd year is up, I don't know where the wind will take me. I don't want to get a teaching credential, I don't want to get a degree in teaching in Austria…Lord knows what I'll end up doing.

thanks.

I'm not normally one to spew sentimental mush all over the place, but I suppose if I were to do it, Thanksgiving would be the perfect day. In honor of this tremendous American holiday (and as a classic tool of procrastination) I've decided to make a list of crap I'm thankful for. It may be long, it may be incredibly short. I'm doing this as I go; would be made better with a bottle of wine but, oh well. Oooh, drunk blogging...this could be my new thing!! Anyway. Here we go. THANKS A MILLION.


1. I'm thankful that I can draw better than this

I mean, c'mon. He doesn't even have a beak! And he's bleeding from an open neck wound. And there is no way those legs could support his lumpy, sagging body.

2. I'm thankful to be living here in Graz, Austria. I'm mostly thankful to be abroad again, surrounded by a version of German I can sometimes understand, with like-minded worldy people. It helps that Graz is also pretty great.  Oh, and I'm thankful I GET PAID TO LIVE HERE.

3. For a well-brewed pot of tea, I will be eternally grateful. Loose leaf? You're my soulmate. Chai latte? Earl Grey? BLACK TEA BLEND?! Without you, my caffeinated, not coffee friend, I would be lost, cold and sleepy. Thank you for existing. Thank you, China, Japan and the surrounding countries, for perfecting the art of this beautiful beverage. England helped too.

4. I guess I ought to add my family to the mix. I'm thankful my family spoils me (just a little), that my parents have interesting lives outside of me, that the Heinrichs and Lozano/Mendez clans are spread across the world, that I grew up on Mexican food, and most importantly, that they let me explore this big open world of ours. I couldn't imagine a life stuck in Bakersfield, CA and I have my parents to thank for helping get me the hell out of dodge.

welcome to my life

5. I'm so thankful this happened

6. I'm really thankful for bears. I mean, they look so soft, fluffy and snuggly. AND YET THEY COULD EAT YOUR FACE OFF. A creature with such a high cute factor plus deadly force is clear proof they are the superior species.

7. I'm thankful not to have the social skills of a petulant 13 year old, and for all the wonderful friends I have, new and old. Thank you for laughing at my jokes, for letting me be mean to you for the sake of comedy, for buying me drinks, for having a cup of tea with me, for listening to me talk endlessly about boys, for meowing with me, for prrring with me, for letting me sexually harass you in our kitchen (Megan) and for all the other weird shit I sometimes do. You guys are keepers.

get it?! oliver wood?! HE'S A KEEPER.

8.  I'm thankful for the ability to stop this list whenever I please because it's my blog. Also on that note, thanks for reading, whoever you are. If you're family, friend, foe or some guy who googled "thanksgiving" and got this----thanks.

Liebe Grüße aus Graz,

Kat

wild thing.

I don't think I have had a more adventurous, alcohol-filled, delightful weekend in quite some time. Basically, my life is the bees' knees. (Or is it the bee's knees? How many bees are there? Bees don't actually have knees. Bee is a really strange word. Bees. Bees. The more you write it, the more peculiar it looks. BEES BEES BEES.)

worst. nightmare.

 Erm. Right. WEEKEND. This week, Thor blessed me with a mighty gift, the gift of a four day weekend. I mentally sacrificed many goats and things in his honor. HAIL THOR! (and Odin.) Needless to say I went out with friends Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mama had to take a break come Saturday. One can only go to bed at 5 am 2 nights in a row---3 becomes excessive.

I tend to shy away from going out midweek, as I have a tendency to get very stressed about time and things of that like. But Wednesday involved shopping at H&M (obviously), an afternoon drink, giant bowl of ramen, more drinks, followed by more drinks. Then bedtime. My lessons were already prepared so there was no morning panic or anything of the like. It felt very adult, home by 10.30, bed  by 11 kind of thing. …Thursday and Friday were entirely different stories. Thursday involved ending up at an Erasmus party and dancing until 4 am. It was a bit odd being around so many exchange students all getting out of their minds drunk…Some Italian grabbed my face and kissed my forehead as I walked by, all the while chanting "bellisima!" or something to that effect. Latins.
Friday involved stuffing our hungover faces with massive burgers, beer, wine, long islands and whatever else we could get our greedy paws on, and ended with ridiculous dancing in the city park in a circular shaped bar. Cool, non? Also several rounds of showtunes may have been sung…Friday was also spent at a HUGE MALL outside the city. Shopping heaven. You all know how much Mama likes shopping. SO GREAT. Also..

WE GOT PAID THURSDAY HALLELUJAH! Man, money is awesome. I'm like, employed and stuff. Weird.

On Saturday, my greatest achievement was buying groceries and making tamale pie round two. Just as good as round one, don't fret. I also gave myself a haircut. Not just bangs trimming but full blown, all around my head haircut. Its relatively uneven but kind of edgy? I don't look homeless or bald so, I'm not complaining. NEW CAREER OPTION?!  I'll probably be finding tiny purple hairs all over my room for the next month, but whatever. I'm so hip. …Anyone need a trim?!  Heh heh heh…

not too horrendous

Boys have also played a relatively large role in this week's events. Oh, Austrians! So peculiar yet intriguing. Quite different from American lads. I think. I don't know. The whole male species baffles me to no end.

am i right?

And last, but not least, I spent today in SLOVENIA! For just €14 I had a to and return ticket to the delightful little city of Maribor, Slovenia. I LEFT THE COUNTRY. It took exactly 1 hour to do this. EUROPE IS MADNESS. But, I will devote a full entry thing to all things Slovenian at another time. GET PUMPED.

it wasn't sunny today.

I know you're all waiting with bated breath.

lawl.

ketchup.

I suppose this is the point where I should recap all that's been going on in my cozy little world here in Graz. I'M BEHIND WITH EVERYTHING. Because of this, I'm going to be a lazy sack of potatoes and use bullet points instead of real, fleshed out paragraphs. DEAL WITH IT. First, we need to go back to the beginning. Well, not the real beginning but 2 weeks ago.  (Oh God it's been two weeks already?!)

    ▪    Halloween: because I'm something of a genius, I hosted a Pre-Halloween party for all my pals who didn't have anything better to do on a Tuesday night. I hung jack-o-lantern bunting, placed autumn candles here and there, served candy corn and alcohol, and crammed in about as many people as my apartment can handle. Nearly had the police called on me but NARROWLY AVOIDED THAT HASSLE. only due to noise, and probably an open window. woops. So, people paraded into my home with an assortment of 'stumes (short for costumes, obvi.) We had Wednesday, Pugsley and Gomez Adams, Princess Bubblegum, Don Draper, Katnis, two body suits, two animal onesies, a lumberjack,  Shaggy, some others, and of course myself as a zombie cat princess. After thinning the crowd to about 10, we scampered off to a club and danced the night away to salsa. At one point, some random fellow grabbed me by the arm, posed with me for a photo, then let me go. ..So I'm in some rando's picture. Cool. (I was totes into it.) Naturally didn't go to bed until 6.30 am but, hey, I had the week off. LIVING LARGE, MY FRIENDS! The next night I went to a friend's Halloween party and danced the night away, well, until 1 am because I was snoozy and danced myself home.

    ▪    Then Munich happened.
    ▪    Before I left for Munich, I decided that I was going to take part in NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month. It's now an international thing, but whatver. In this month one must write a 50k word novel by the end of November. Now, i happened to be traveling for the 1st four days of this month so needless to say I'M SO BEHIND GOSH.  But! I have nearly 5k written, and so far it has made two people snuffle with laughter when they read it, so I'm doing something right.  I'm not too worried about the deadline, because I haven't really even tried to arrange my life accordingly for this project. (I spent last weekend talking about boys and being drunk in the city so, there went 3 more days of writing!) Here's an excerpt:

    "She had a bad habit of losing track of time, just like now. She'd managed to walk the last 15 without realizing she'd reached her destination. Autopilot was in full swing and even when the familiar scents of grease and mayonnaise drowned her nostrils, she didn't quite register her surroundings. Not until she was confronted with the reality of two things: one, she was caught talking to herself by her "superior" and two, a small boy was licking syrup off the counter. Wren swallowed a sudden buildup of bile and did her best to walk past the child in question without projectile vomiting. Why did people reproduce again? Beside the boy sat a balding, egg-shaped man of roughly 40, who seemed to be chewing his French Toast as if it were a cow's cud.  Clearly the pinnacle of human evolution. Wren wondered how many stomachs he had…She walked past the disillusioned shell of a man that was Mr. Walkins, senior manager of the Jump-N-Jive Diner! (Yes, the "n" was capitalized, and yes, there was an exclamation point.) Both of these facts were speeding the process of Wren's loss of faith in humanity.  And unfortunately this was a process that needed no help. She walked past the grotesquely fascinating father and son pair, past an elderly woman stirring spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her coffee and finally reached a door that read 'Employee's Only.' "

    •    Last Weekend: My friend Teresa, whom I met at orientation, lives in an itty bitty village about 2 hrs away and as it was her birthday today, she came to Graz for the weekend for some pre-birthday fun times! We spent Friday catching up, shopping for snacks, eating pizza and playing story cubes. Don't know what story cubes are? You're missing out. Of course we spent the evening talking about life, the universe and everything. She even gave me sage boy advice. Can never have enough sage boy advice. Saturday was spent eating the food we bought, roaming the streets of Graz and buying presents for ourselves because a) it was her birthday and b) I get paid Thursday! That evening we attended a birthday potluck for our friend Jen, from Scotland. SO MUCH FOOD. Teresa and I made a most successful tamale pie. TAKE THAT AUSTRIAN INGREDIENTS! I plan on making it again. Soon. After feasting and drinking lots of wine, the night went on to include 4 more bars. YEEHAW. Now that's how you turn 22.  Sunday was spent being generally hungover, but happy. We tried to watch the rugby game at a pub in town but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Instead we ate lots of cheap schnitzel. What else are you supposed to do on a Sunday?

And that brings us to now, more or less. I'm currently planning on going to Bratislava, Slovakia this weekend and WAS INVTED TO MAKE PARTY with the younger teachers this Friday. MAKE PARTY YES! I am so pleased! I hope it pans out :D There are some other things I hope pan out but, we shall see. Fingers crossed and all that..

On that cryptic note, TOODLES!

Or, as they say here in Austria: Ciao, Servus, Pfirdi, Baba!
yes, that's one round of goodbye...

munich

The Bavarian countryside is currently rolling past my window in a blur of green, brown and blue. Chiemsee is to my left nestled between orange trees and blue mountains. Fall is officially here in the south of Germany (despite the occasional pile of snow here and there) I'm sitting in one of the rear-facing seats. This train ride feels like a carnival ride. I'M FLYING THROUGH TME AND SPACE. I wish. Ha.

There's something very comforting about both the Austrian and German landscapes. Even the little smatterings of towns and houses seem friendly and welcoming, although perhaps a little sleepy. I'm headed back to Graz after a long weekend in Munich. München. I grew a lot during my time there: a year in a foreign country is a petri dish of adventures, mild trauma, confusion, life lessons and adulthood. And alcohol. :) Sometimes I find myself longing for the carefree days of studying in Munich, with all my friends, the familiar streets, smells and sounds…But now that I've been back, it's clear it would never be the same. I still love the beer and pork-laden city with all my heart. I love wandering the streets, hearing the people, watching everything…And I still have friends there, a few. But after a year in Portland and now a summer and a half in other parts of Europe, the size of Munich has become alarming. Not so much the actual distances between points but rather the amount of human (or cylon, we're not sure) bodies roaming from place to place is INCREDIBLE. I can't believe I adapted so easily to so much going on. So many shoulders to bump into! Tiny Graz no longer feels too small but rather comfortingly cozy. I definitely notice the 1.4 million person difference between Graz and Munich… I think this means that I've once more adapted to my surroundings, adopted a new city to call home. Just like Portland will always be a kind of home, one that will no doubt feel a bit different upon arrival, so too is Munich: It's a home I can always come back to, but one that will not wait for me. It will keep on living its life, greet me with open arms when I come back, but not miss me when I'm gone. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the way time stops for no one. I couldn't bring myself to visit my local student haunts in Stusta. It was just too much…Maybe next time I'm in the city of monks I'lll brave the cheap, dimply lit student bars that I once loved so dearly..

I would certainly call the visit a success: I saw Monica and Jan <3 two of the most delightfully odd people I know, I understood what every German said, I saw my dear elf-friend Leo, had a long afternoon with the English Garden, drank beer that made my mouth and heart happy, rode the familiar rails of the U-Bahn, and watched more German tv than one really should. I cannot complain! It wasn't the sight0seeing filled romp some people might have had. I didn't need to do anything necessarily, just being in a place I love with people I love was quite enough for me. Don't worry, the next time I find myself in Munich I'll get really drunk and stay up until 6 am and watch the sunrise. Next time. Ahhh, just like old times….