Merry Christmas - for everyone!!!

Hello out there in the void of ever so hectic last minute arrangements and present gathering! I hope you´re all coping with the pre- Christmas stress that has become a ritual for so many people that it´s very unlikely anybody out there still considers the traditional ideas of Christmas as a welcome time of peace and quiet! Anyways, to all of you, have a Merry Christmas with all your loved ones and enjoy the restful days afterwards, when business has died down and people slowly get back to normal activities! Also, enjoy your New Years Eve, wherever you decide to spend it or wherever you might be at the time - I hope your new year will be a successful and exciting one, just as the past few years should have been!
Today, I had something like a small first Christmas present already! I went to Hinterstoder to watch the World Cup Giant Slalom there with my and my colleagues classes! It was fantastic, a truly enlivening experience - frigging cold but really cool! The winner, Aksel Lund Svindal from Norway, you can see on the pic below - there´s a lot of training ahead of me if I ever wanna get near their skills - actually, it´s too late for that now!
Anyways, enjoy your days and have a rest, take care and talk to you soon, probably in the new year!
Cheerio, XXXXXmas,

ERF

Long time, no see!

Hi everyone - well, there´s not many people out there, following my life I guess, but still, you know...
Sitting here in a little room behind the conference room and using the time to give you some info about life´s progress while a student of mine is concentrating on her exam - life´s unfair sometimes!
Has been good lately, though! Parties at home, an invitation of a friend on Wednesday to watch the Champions League, great feel in our flat.... life´s good!
Hope everyone out there is ok and too cold, as winter´s coming up - but also the Christkindlmarkt and so on - yeah! Well, mind you, you don´t get that anywhere besides in Austria or Germany - what a shame!
The pic shows AMrtin Jech, an old friend of mine and me having a drink at Alex´ farewell evening before she left for France - and returned with a little Jonas and a tall Jeff... groovy!
Ok, gonna go, talk to you again soon,
ERF

Pictures!!!

wow, what a beautiful kitten!

ERF

Alwin and I

This is my blog, I´m showing it to Alwin!

Back to the roots - not!!!

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Hey people,
I have just organised a new internet connection for my laptop and it´s just about the grooviest thing I have ever seen - in comparison to the one I had before it´s just too fast!!! Wow, I like it a lot and I´m hoping to be able to play on the net more again - so, today, I want to give you one picture, showing a sight in London: it shows the caviar counter at Harrod´s of London, a beautiful and luxurious shopping centre in the heart of London, amazing there!
Well, the rest of our stay was really groovy, too, obviously there are many things that I still have to learn and change for future visits, but oeverall I was quite pleased with the outcome of our trip - the kids who tried really got something out of it, too, that´s the most important thing, if you ask me!
So, I´ll leave you to it - check out my flickr page also to find some more new pics!
Our flat is basically finished, we just need to get the rest of the decoration sorted, so that everything is perfect - but it´s great the way it is!!! Talk to you guys soon!
ERF

Back to school, back to business!

And busy-ness it is! Having to cope with a bunch of pre-pubertarian pupils or the ones that are just about trying to cope with this state of growing up does not always fulfill people with the greatest of pleasures! But I have to admit that, although I feel I´m far behind schedule, I still am enjoying this routine of standing in front of the class very much! It´s lovely, school is just the place where I can see myself for quite a while still!
Apart from that, there´s not a lot to tell - having returned from England the other week where I spent a week with my oldest group of pupils, I´m still recovering from the aftermath of too many sandwiches and unhealthy eating, meaning that my bowel activities needed somewhat more attention than I wanted to give them.
Well, that´s over so it´s time to horse around again!
Next, I´ll put some pics on again from London, we did a lot of sight seeing, good fun!
ERF

Explaining ernst how a blog works...

Hi this is me explaing to Ernst how a blog works - funny that!
ERF

Finally done - it´s heaven!

Hi there, Rita and Ernst productions proudly present their new flat!!! It has taken frigging long to get there, but we have in the end! Today, our kitchen arrived and we managed to get it sorted - well, apart from a leaking tap that needs to be looked at! Pity, but cannot be helped right now, is a real bad leak, too, so there´s no chance we could use it right now - but the dishwasher, a fridge, storage, ... wow, it´s amazing what you can do with a kitchen, I can tell you... I´ll put some pictures on Flickr.com in a minute!
ERF

Hi there this is me showing Barney how to make a blog...

Our new flat is nearly finished!

Hi there, people!
As you might have known, Rita and me have recently moved in together - we have rented a beautiful 70 m² apartment, totally new and unfurbished, and have been decorating it since - well, it´s about to be finished! On Tuesday, the 12th September, we´re getting the kitchen! That´s it then! Scary thought, actually having brought together so many new things, arranging them and so on - not looking forward to building my own house at one point! Well, pics will arrive soon, so stay in touch! Oh, and if you can, write a comment every now and then, ok?
ERF

Here we go again...

I want to try again and send a picture to you guys... so there goes... this pic shows me and Karl getting there, well, we were trying anyways! Before that we´d been taking pictures with Amando´s MAC, which was great fun cos he has this distortion thing goin and it was just a laugh to see Karl look like a big monkey!
Ok, gotta go, its really late! if the pic isnt here, dont worry you ll find it on my flickr.com page---
ERF

Back from GB - and it was groovy again!

Hi everyone, I´m back - and it was great to be in Benenden again this year - 2006 was a lovely Benenden, with a heap of brilliant people and more than fun to spare all around! So, here I am, back from the Crusades, what a programme: London 3 times, Brighton, Canterbury, Leeds Castle (not Leeds!!!), Chessington fun park, loads of lessons in between and so on and so forth - stress, hectic periods, altogether just an amazing experience with friends from all over the world and amazing and motivated students - THE IT for any teacher I can tell you!
Back again, after having to fly from Heathrow with 3 kids with an expired ticket who managed to get on the plane just on time, I used the last two days to relax and start getting Rita and my flat sorted - all the stuff from IKEA needs to be put together, so there´s a lot of work - luckily enough I had Evelyn and my dad to help me with a few things, thanx a lot, fellas!
Ok, gotta go, pics from the apartment to be online soon! ERF

One more today - Zidane´s Summer "HIT"

This is just too hilarious - check this out: the French have created this song, meant to become this year´s absolute all time summer HIT - Coupe de Boule... Too good to be missed, ERF

Long time no see - and there´s more to come...

Hi there folks!
This time, well, it´s been a while again, I´m sending you a post to let you know that I´m leavong for England the day after tomorrow, that is Wednesday, 2nd August! Yeah!
Will be teaching at Benenden again, so lots of fun is to be expected! Check it out here
In the past 2 weeks, I have been havbing quite a bit of fun, except that sometimes I have had one drink too many and had to suffer from bad hang overs a couple of times... this should be over now, as the "holidays" are nearly over now!
I have one pic for you, taken at the tennis tournament in Neustift, that shows me with my mate Christian - we didn´t have to play against each other, but I lost in the quarter finals, well.... practice makes perfect... check it on my flickr.com page
In my next entry I will send you some pics of Rita and my new flat... yeah! Talk to you again soon, cheerio, ERF

My new blog - check it out!

I have created a second blog now - a blog for students and others interested in English who would like to impprove their knowledge of grammar and other things about English. It´s called English for you and you can get there by clicking here.
Check it out, it might help some of you, obviously it is something for the younger ones - but there also will be links to more advanced sites, where you can find information about writing essays or how to create presentations...
Who knows, maybe t´ll help some! ERF

Many a day is spent in the sun!

... but not the one when we went to the Upper Austrian Schools Tournament for Beachvolleyball... WE WON - well, the girls did! Check my flickr Page for the pics... But, as it seems now, they cannot go there, they are busy... Maturareise, yeah... volleyball tournament respectively!
Well, the pic you can see here was taken at Lake Garda! Yep, I was there at the end of April with my English class and my colleague Orti, sitting in the centre... great fun was had by all and we were sorry to have to get back to realitiy after a fantastic week in Southtyrol! Wanna go again! Wait, one more month of school and then I´m off to ... ENGLAND... to be continued! ERF

Happy birthday!

Hi there, everyone...

This is just a wee note that goes out to all the people that have recently celebrated their birthdays: Marlis, Mathew, David... well, tomorrow! I have tried to get in touch with you, guys, or rather will be trying to, so Happy birthday!, all the best and all the rest, too... Hopefully your parties will be as blissful as the rest of your time throughout the next year!
On another note, I have lately been rather lazy, or so it seems, to get on my site and produce texts here on my account - this is due to several aspects of my life - ten million tests, seven hundred presentations, the organisation of a school trip to London next year, which is taking up a considerable amount of my time right now, and the general unsuccessful attempts to fix my laptop, so i can use it in school - would be grand but isn´t working... pity, really, could really do with it sometimes, life would be so much easier. But I´ll be back shortly! ERF

What´s happened so far...

Hi there, this is just a wee note to keep you up on things; lots has happened since I blogged you last! As you might remember, we were in Paris and then returned - afterwards, there was school, school school... well, not really, actually, I was in Italy with my sixth years, that was amazing! We went canyoning, mountaineering and climbing around Lake Garda in South Tyrol, an amazing place, as pictures of it will prove for sure. See my pictures for that.
Then, when we had returned, there was the first chance to play a bit of beach volleyball, which I opted for the second I could - only played for a bit but already it´s getting to me again! But this week there´s no time for that: I had two exams with my first years in school, midterm test at university and I did a grammar check up with my 6th formers so they wouldn´t forget that the essence of learning a language actually is learning for the language - well, sometimes anyways!
Ok, gotta go and do some correcting, as you might understand... look at this though: That´s Rita and David in Paris; we´d waited for David in a Café and there we had a drink - it only cost 9,70 per beer, that was alright! ERF

Hi there,

back from the crusades, sitting in my brothers flat in Vienna again, I thought I might as well just write another short blog to tell you how it was! Well, it was fantaastic, what can I say... soon, I´m going to show you some pictures, I´ll put them on my photo account, but for now you´ll have to bear with me and my short memories... Thanks David et Emilie for taking us up and treating us well (You´re a great tour guide, David!) and the twins for partying! Thanks Paris for just being there... as last part of our journey we went to se Pere Lachaise, the oldest and most beautiful graveyard in Paris, last resting home of many a famous wo/man, among them Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, LaFontaine, Rossini, and, of course, Jim Morrison. Here a pic of his grave - it don´t look like that anymore, though, there´s been problems, a pic of now will be on Flikr... that´s it for now, am gonna have a second beer with my bro, dere! to be continued, shortly. Au revoir, ERF

Vacation in la ville d´amour!!!

Easter Holidays, yeah!!!
Thank god it´s Easter holidays now, time to relax and enjoy daylight outside school for more than the 15 minute ride to and fro school! ;-) And, guess what - Rita and I are going on a holiday! To Paris - city of love! Hopefully, we´re going to have the brilliant time that we´re looking forward to having... I´ll send you some pics as soon as we get back.
Right now we´re in Vienna at my brother Christoph´s place, a new flat, very nice, man! And tomorrow, very early in the morning, we´re of to France! Lots of my friends who live their are having babies just now, so this seems to be a dangerous trip - but it´s only for two days and to visit a friend, so it won´t be too exciting in that respect, I guess... to be continued!
Besides that, we had our first match yesterday, and won 6:1 - great result, though the game itself was not exactly what we/I had been hoping for... I scored the second, that was alright, nice header... the night was a laugh as well. Ok, gonna go and have some wine with Chris and Rita now, cheerio! ERF

Carnevale Lentiae

The Fasching has been the funniest thing for quite some time this year - and thank god it´s all over! It´s been great but you got to move on and do new things at one point or another as well, so here we go - I want to show you some of the things that happened during the past fortnight!
There was the Narrenkastl, which I had mentioned earlier in my blod, check out the page again for updates.
Then there was the Fasching at school, which was very funny and luckily unspectacular apart from Trixi´s Rocky Horror Dance, and then we went into town with eighth graders to go bowling - see my flickr.com page for details of these shows!
Well, that´s about it really - I just wanna give you one pic for today on here - that´s me in my disguise as a Kasperl - that´s a children´s puppet in Austria at the Narrenkastl. Also, I´ll provide a link to a page where you can download mp3s of the Narrenkastl... that´s very funny, too! Well, that is, if you understand German, naturally! See yas, ERF

Here we go again - eventually!

After not having been able to go online - well, to go onto my blog - for a while now, I´m gonna try to sum up the last few weeks in a few sentences: thinking about it, I only need one word: MENTAL! Totally stressed from having to grade millions of students, correcting loads of papers at uni and at school, checking out pupils as well as parents to make sure everyone is alright and happy with their results and their kids... I´d like to become a teacher one day, I´m telling you, they´re supposed to have a real low stress job! ;-)
Then there was the Gymnastics Competition for my class, which means, they all participated in a tournament like gymnastics day, where they had to show various skills on different apparatuses. They did really well and I was pleased with their results - one of the girls would have come 5th in the whole school! She´s only in year one now! Cool, hein?
And last Friday I went to the Hochficht skiing resort in Upper Austria where we had our county´s skiing competition for schools! It was freezing cold, the snow was just pouring down like mad and the conditions of the slope were awful - but, although the kids didn´t do very well we had an amazing time and it was a fun experience for most of us. There´s a pic of Lukas, Petra and me waiting for Luke´s start. Good laugh, he didn´t make it, though, didn´t finish the race. Check out my photo page and you´ll find photos of these events!
Well, anyways, it´s been really great, too, and rewarding, coz´ when it comes down to it, all the students I have to deal with are really fantastic in their own ways and I´m still loving it! So, that´s the good news!
What´s ahead, you´re probably saying?! Well, there´s the end of the first semester and then, straight after, the Narrenkastl starting next Friday, so there´s plenty of work for me to do anyways, yeah, baby, won´t complain about getting bored! It´s a groovy carneval festivity with loads of different interprets trying to be funny - some of them hilarious bacause they´re just frigging awesome, others for opposite reasons - overall a great show, performed live in Oberkappel at the two following weekends - be there or be square! Check it out under: www.narrenkastl.com

Hallo Manfred, danke für den Kaffee!

My class in the snow

Today I only have a couple of minutes, but I would like to show you two pics of my classes´ trip to Hinterstoder, Upper Austria, where we spent two days snowboarding and skiing. Good fun, the kids loved it and us teachers enjoyed ourselves quite a bit as well! The first pic shows the kids on our torch procession and the second one shows me with two of my mates, Trixi and Markus - thanks for helping, guys! ERF

Skiing with 6A at Hochficht!!

This is a post in which I want to tell you about a great three days we spent at Hochficht, a small but lovely skiing resort quite close to where I live. We went there with a year six group, a groovy and very enthusiastic bunch of students and did some marvellous skiing/snowboarding as well many other things like a torch walk or a games night - good fun, really. The pics show us playing two games - the first one is the "Moose Game", which is actually an English drinking game. One person is the mousse and has to have antlers, the people sitting next to him/her have to lift the closer hand and make antlers as well.


The second pic shows my two colleagues, Herwig and Karin, after a pretty funny game they´d played with the Bavarian group staying at the same hostel - fun people, wow. Cheerio Peinty, is all I can say!



The third pic shows me telling one of our snowboarding beginners how to get into the right position... they were amazing and really talented, managed to get going after the first day - very impressive!
so there you go, this is what an average school day looks like for me - isn´t that nice?! :-)
ERF

Benenden is fun - as every year!

Hi there, everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays and made it through to the New Year as smoothly as I did. We had a little get together at my sister´s place, lovely, really, and everything was well relaxed and cosy - the best thing is that I didn´t even get drunk this time round, so there you go! ;-)
The picture I´m presenting today is a lovely one. It shows me and my colleagues/friends from last year´s Benenden Language Camp - I go there every summer to spend three weeks speaking English and teaching kids how to do so as well - great fun and well worth checking out, in case you have any relatives aged between 10 and 18 who would like to have some extra input over the holidays. My mates are Kerryn, Lisa and Jean Paul, called J-P. We made up a fantastic team and had just as brilliant a time as the students did - hopefully, anyways!
See yas, ERF