I haven't posted all week, but mostly because nothing terribly interesting has happend. Monday was Krampus, and one of my teachers had warned me there would be people dressed as devils running around hitting people with sticks. I was all over town on Monday night going to tutor a kid and running errands and I didn't see a single Krampus in Baden. Tuesday was St. Nikolaus, I got a tiny chocolate Santa from one of my teachers. On Wednesday I finally taught my last Thanksgiving lesson- which means that most of my lessons in the last two weeks will probably be Christmas related.
Thursday was Mariaempfangnis- which I'm not really sure what that is, except we had the day off from school. One of my teachers told me she thought it was the day the Arch Angel came down and told Mary she was going to give birth to God's son, but then we both thought that was a ridiculously short pregnancy, and then we realized that we both aren't at all religious and didn't really care what the day meant.
As my dad likes to point out, Austrians have a holiday about every-other week, and I sure don't work much! I was going through my calendar the other day and there have been a number of weeks when I've only taught 8 lessons due to holidays and/or exams (we're supposed to do 13 a week- but if we're short because of holidays or exams we don't have to make them up). I've been putting in more hours than I'm scheduled for the past few weeks just from sheer boredom. Besides I spend pretty much the whole school day sitting around at school waiting for my next lesson- I might as well do something! I went to a 1st form (10/11 yr olds) German lesson on Fairytales; it was pretty fun, the kids were all shocked that I understood and spoke German.
Since I had a long(er than usual) weekend I thought I might go down to Graz, but I sort of lost my ambition to head down there and didn't find a place to stay. Some friends from Burgenland (the eastern-most state in Austria) were coming to Baden to visit Liz, and I wanted to see them again so that also played a role in my decision to stay home. We had a good time hanging out on Thursday night, we watched some terrible TV, went out to eat at another Italian place in town, drank beers and local wine. It was about 2 am when I decided it was time for me to go home and go to bed; on my walk home I twisted my ankle, which was then swollen and sore the next day.
We had talked about hiking up to some ruins on Friday, but everyone at Liz's got a late start, so by the time they left for their hike I was busy tutoring. I met up with them in the Christmas market when they came back into town and we walked around checking everything out again. There were a lot of people out, and a bunch of musicians were out singing carols. We all ended up with Feliz Navidad stuck in our heads- not what you'd think we'd hear in the streets in Austria. After some Punsch and Glühwein we went to a Heurige for more wine and a rather large delicious dinner.
So that's pretty much what I've been up to this week- nothing too terribly out of the ordinary or exciting. I'm looking forward to meeting up with a friend in Vienna next weekend and going to a few more Christmas markets & my parents will be coming over soon too! It's hard to believe Christmas is coming up though, we still don't have snow here, and this weekend it's been in the 40s F (4-7 C).
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