Woki mit deim Popo- or preferably, don't woki...

So I've been slacking on the blog front... which I seem to do from time to time.  I've been reading a lot of other people's blogs, and it seems like so many of us bloggers write about nothing, but we don't want to see it as "nothing" so we try to put an interesting, funny, social commentary or anthropological spin on it... and I just haven't felt up to the task.  Not that I think I normally put such a great spin on my posts, I haven't gone through and read many of them after I posted them, and this is probably because I'm afraid I come off as some all-knowing (but really closed minded and annoying) harpy.  I've also read a fair number of blogs lately that just got on my nerves because of the over arching labels and ideas that the bloggers are putting on the people in their town/state/country/continent...  So because I don't want to come off, or be accused of (publicly or privately) of doing any of these things I've just been avoiding the blog.

It also may have something to do with the fact that my post about Cafe 27 has gotten way more hits than any previous post, and who knows what I'll ever post again that draws that much attention and feedback!

Anyway, nothing terribly interesting has been happening, life is going along like usual.  I got my contract to work at Waldsee again this summer, so I'm pretty excited about that.  I also booked a trip to Istanbul over Easter break with my flatmate Liz, which should also be a lot of fun- and will lead to an interesting blog post I'm sure.  In less interesting news I bought two new pairs of shoes- I've found that I love shoe shopping, but as I'm a size 42 here it's hard to find shoes that fit!  I finally found a pair of healed ankle boots that I like a lot, and I also ordered a pair of Birkenstocks from Amazon (at about half the price of what you would pay in the US).

In school news I taught my first totally solo lesson last week.  Although we're not supposed to teach on our own here, but it wasn't really a big deal for me, in fact it was sort of nice that I didn't have to worry about what the other teacher was thinking.  The lesson went well, and I had them (8th form, 18 year olds) twice more on my own this week.  I also taught a 6th form on my own, and they had already done the listening test the teacher asked me to do with them, so we played scategories for the hour- thank goodness I always have a back up plan!  We started reading The Hunger Games in the English elective afternoon class I teach in Bad Vöslau, the kids are pretty happy about it, except that they have to read it pretty quickly.  We're going to the movie at the english cinema after Easter break, and most of them will be gone in England for a week, so it doesn't leave much time for reading.  I told them that I would read the German translation in the same amount of time to make it fair, but of course I have to read the book in both languages, so it's really twice as much reading.  At least I don't have much planned for this weekend!

To add a bit of interest (I won't dare to say culture) to this post - here I go trying to make things more interesting - here's the song that will be representing Austria in the Eurovision 2012 contest.

I don't even know where to start with this... First for those of you who don't know Eurovision- it's a competition to have the best song in Europe, it's not taken very seriously (but at the same time it is, if that makes any sense).  Each country selects a group to go and represent them at the contest.  Austria has picked the Trackshittaz- Woki mit deim Popo (Shake your bum).  It has to be the most ridiculous song, really sexist, lyrics that make little to no sense... especially if you don't understand dialekt (there are some translations into Hochdeutsch and English out there).  Sure it's a good under 21 club song... but this is how Austria (or at least the people who watch ORF) have chosen to represent themselves... I really hope they don't take the stripper poles with them to the contest, but they probably will.  As one of my teachers said to me, "The real question is, will they get last place, or just second to last?"