Sunday, October 17, 2010

Move down from your town to avenues near water.

I'm hanging out in my kitchen again, which seems to be the theme of this weekend. Both housemates have been away, which I've really enjoyed. Not to say that it's unpleasant with them here, not by any means. But I do like having the place to myself for a while. I'm expecting it to end any moment now...

So, I suppose I should update what's been happening. Really, I'm already tired and want to go to bed, except that it's only 7pm and I haven't finished either of the things that I said that I would. The first of those is homework, and the second is to finish a plan of both an introduction to Australian culture and the first week's session, but I'll get onto that in a moment. Needless to say, the German homework is considerably easier than my other options. Which explains why I'm backing up my computer instead of doing it, of course...

No, sadly, the computer really does need backing up. Aside from the fact that there's some music and movies that are new and needing to be saved, I've been having some troubles with my computer since the virus. First it was running slowly... so I ran two full scans (one with Malawarebytes, the other with Avast) and they each found another virus. Sigh. So, those are now gone, which has made the computer run considerably faster. However, I'm also having serious problems with it suddenly freezing. What happens is that the screen is fixed (usually completely black) but I'm able to move the cursor, just unable to move or select anything. It's incredibly frustrating, and I just have to reset my computer every time. It's mostly happening when I close it - so, when it's resuming from the 'sleep' function. It never even makes it to the password screen. It's running, and I can hear it thinking, but nothing's happening. Grrr.

I'll also lament the loss of the two-finger scrolling option, which is most definitely enabled, but also unwilling to work post-virus. How did people ever survive before? I either have to click on the page and use the arrows (faster option) or use the page scrollbar (too excruciating to bother with). It definitely takes me a lot more time to read my blog roll right now. I'm hating it.

So, my backup is about a quarter of the way through. This is going to take a looong time. It might be another late one tonight, which is a little frustrating, because I've been unable to get up at my old wake-up hour lately. Something to do with a freezing cold flat and pure darkness outside will do that to me... so this weekend, it hasn't been earlier than 8am. I'm not doing well with this getting-into-rhythm thing for class. And I feel like I've just wanted to sleep so much more, lately. I've been sleeping for 9-10 hours a night before I feel like I can get up. I think today's max was about 8 degrees, and it never really became bright. I want out.

I guess I should start from the beginning of my week. Monday was the first German class - we had Frau Scheid, in a group of 22 people (thankfully only about 15 present), with all of the GII group there in the same group. Except that those who failed, of course - and I wasn't surprised about any of them. Thankfully Mona, from Iran, made it through. I was a bit worried because I know that she only ever finished A1 (not A2, so she missed out on a lot of grammar) but she clearly worked really hard to get through. (Compared to Caner, who simply dropped out when he realised it was beyond him, but got cocky and said it was a class for idiots. At least we idiots had the guts to stick with it.) I can admire Mona's work ethic, anyway, despite never needing to work hard on anything in my life. No wonder I'm so lazy.

Anyway, there were a bunch of new people in the class. I didn't really get to know them, because on Tuesday, the first thing we were told was that our groups were splitting up. Two B2-C1 classes (my group's level) were being divided into three, of about sixteen students each. They must have had a lot of people who needed to come up a group, after the first session! Anyway, the old GII group plus a handful of others got moved into the P building, which is much better, albeit further from the pub, which is where we spend the morning break. So we have a bunch of new people, now, including a very loud Georgian ex-Au-Pair-Madchen. And our new teacher, Frau Lammers, was absolutely fantastic. Usually a teacher for Oberstufe (C1), she spoke much more clearly than Monday's teacher and just excuded 'caring'. She's with us Mondays and Tuesdays, and Frau Bartsch (from last term) is with us the other three days, so I think it'll be a good semester. I'm feeling optimistic about it, which is a definite U-turn from how I felt last term. And really, last term did, in fact, suck. Sorry to be so moronic about it, but it's true. So hopefully this one will be better. Less grammar and more vocab. Win.

Anyway, we already had a discussion on class about family-types (Single parent, traditional, both-parents-working, etc) which made me realise just how traditional the upbringing of some of these students is. And how lucky I am to come from a country that, generally speaking, gives me my rights. If I were gay, sure, I'd be barred from marrying or adoption, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff (tax cuts? visitation rights? artificial insemination? who knows!) but I'm not, so really I have it easy. The couple charged under archaic anti-abortion laws were found not guilty, which gives me some hope that women's free choice is protected, or at least possible. I did, however, get into an argument with a right-wing-fundamentalist-Christian about abortion, which proved to me that I really shouldn't let religious crazies get added to my facebook 'friends' lists. Especially not when they were a teenage mother, and clearly have enough money from parents to live overseas (plus 2-yo kid) in Germany for an exchange. Ughhh, I hate when people don't see how privileged they are. Anyway, it was a pointless argument, so I got bored and ignored it. No point in being directed to the "facts" on any more Christian teen websites, hahahaha!

So, what else has been happening? Um, I stumbled into a job. Well, really, it was handed to me on a silver platter, courtesy of Matt and Manfred. I finally got an email back from Manfred asking if I wanted to come have a chat about the course, if I was still interested in taking on a cultural component. I was actually resigned to never hearing from him again, so I was quite pleased. And a bit nervous. And a bit excited, if I'm being completely honest. I didn't want to tell anyone for fear of fucking up my chances, and I'm still a bit cautious, because I don't sign the contract until Tuesday. I don't know details yet - how many hours per week, or rates of pay. It won't be much, but it's better than nothing, and should provide a good challenge for me. So, I'll be tutoring some linguistics students in Australian culture, so that they can have some context for the linguistics that they're learning from Manfred. Pretty cool - I only wish I had longer to prepare. I don't want to do a half-arsed job about it, really. My main concern is sucking at it. My next concern is also sucking at it.

So, my conversation with Manfred actually ended up being quite long (and the poor man probably just wanted to go home to his dinner! thankfully he's much too polite to tell me to sod off, haha) and it was really exciting. I have a lot of ideas about things I want to share. I know I'm all "to hell with nationalism!" and what-have-you, but I'm still more than happy to share the things that made me who I am, in the wider sense. We are a product of our upbringing. Sure, I'm a product of my parents (which clearly explains why I'm fantastic, hahaha!) but I'm also a product of growing up in an incredibly relaxed society. My language is a product of that. So I'm hoping to be able to link the culture and the linguistics with Australia's isolation, history and cultural heritage. Fingers crossed.

I think the main problem to me at this point is that I don't have the clearest outline of what I'm doing, exactly. There's a possibility that I could be tutoring a separate session, my own class, which would admittedly be much easier. Sure, it'd be longer and a lot more work, but I could get in a bit more culture and history. Otherwise I'll be confined to a portion in Manfred's seminars, which are one two-hour timeslot per week, which leaves me with absolutely no idea as to how much to prepare. I'm also not entirely sure as to whether I can set reading tasks if I'm operating out of that kind of system, simply because I'm sure that the students will be getting sufficient work from Manfred, and I know that the context-scenario is nothing but a clever after-thought.

I have too many ideas and not enough time to focus them. Still, I have several pages of notes, a head full of incredibly funny words (thanks to friends on Fb!) and a lot of helpful links to websites. Manfred gave me a couple of articles that could be student reading, so I need to re-read and make an analysis of those. They're both good articles and have a very Australian journalistic style. I've also got some good short stories, and I'm definitely going to have to find some relevant video clips. So I have ideas by the squillion. I think it'll be easier to structure it all after I meet with Manfred on Tuesday afternoon, so that I know exactly how much time I'll have, and how much I can make demands on his lazy students. ;)

What I also need to do, in the meantime, is brush up on my Australian history... because, admittedly, it's been a decade since I studied any of that. No one tell Manfred that I didn't actually take a single course in Australian history whilst at Flinders, ok? Probably also don't want to tell him that I'm still a semester away from finishing a BA. At least he already knows that I haven't taken a tute group before. Funny, that's the thing that I find the least daunting. I can only hope they have a sense of humour, else a lot of this culture is going to be totally lost on them... or, at least, any potantial endearments that I might have as a tutor will be completely lost.

So, that's the lowdown. I've spent most of this weekend on my laptop. I stocked up at the markets on Saturday, and my new jacket did, in fact, keep me dry. I found pears related to my favourite Comice pears at the Wayville Farmers' Markets... they're a cross between Comice and Conference, and yet I can't remember what they're called. Also bought the world's largest and smallest apples - separate species. And quinces. And delicata squash, and many other veg... except no cucumber, because the price had tripled after the first frost of the season. Sigh. I'm already not into Autumn, except that sometimes when I go running, all the crushed leaves underfoot smell really good. Other than that, it can go to hell.

I've been living on a new drink, in an attempt to drink less caffeine. (I've also been buying tea at uni, which is marginally better than their terrible coffee, and leaves me with less caffeine-shakes afterwards. Seriously, how do you get so much caffeine into coffee with so little flavour?) I mix water, soymilk, and a touch of sugar or agave syrup in a pot, and add a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg. I could definitely drink it with just straight soymilk, but unfortunately that would go against my health-regime, and I definitely wouldn't be able to drink so much. Being able to warm the kitchen sporadically by turning on the hot plates to heat it up is one of its charms. Sure, I could just use the microwave, but I figure that being an environmental vandal through my stove, and wearing a few extra jumpers, is better than caving in and turning on the heating. Steffi said that she plans on holding out for a few more weeks, and that last year she managed until November... I'm going to try that, too. I miss my electric blanket, though!

I'm going to do my German homework... soon.

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