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

Rita´s stand at the Christkindlmoakt Volksgarten in Linz!!!

Be there or be square is the only thingI can say about my cousin Judith and Rita´s stand at the Volksgarten Christmas Market in Linz, Upper Austria. They sell the most wonderfully smelling soaps, bath pearls and body butters/creams you could ever dream of, all of them natural and hand-made by a famous company in Vienna and then sent directly to Linz by train, so they have fresh products nearly every day, too. Innit great? Well, I believe it is, and if you don´t want to be square you´d better get there before Christmas. Actually, even on Christmas Eve there´s still time to get your sopas and little presents for valuable AND worthy friends, as they´re open until the early afternoon on the 24th as well... see you there then. See Rita conversing with a beautiful customer, well aware of the need for a good skin - make over (peeling, bath and body butter) - and she´s such a good advisor, too!

Don´t forget to check it out: www.allesseife.at

Damn, just realised I didn´t take the pic with me to work, will renew this page shortly, then with the pic! (It´s Volker, a good friend, really, she´s selling the products to... ;-))

This is my class in AHS solarCity

Hi there, long time no see, time is flowing too fast, can´t keep up with life right now! Anyways, this is my class in my second school - a really nice bunch of ten/eleven year olds, as lively and lovely as they come, as you might say. They´re really funny, every time I am there, there´s a major upheaval about someone getting hit by a ball or water bottles splashing around the gym - cute, they are, and still relatively handy, these boys. The pic shows them doing an running exercise they enjoyed very much - obviously a competition then, right? ;-)
Cheerio, and check out Rita´s stand at the Christkindlmoakt, too. www.allesseife.at
ERF

A test for the best! 70ies party in Neustift!!!

Strange feeling, I am actually just having a test at university and yet I am sitting here, checking my page! WLan is really an amazing thing, I have to admit! The students are taking the whole thing very seriously, that´s fantastic, and therefore it´s going great - for them and for me, too, I think, it seems a manageable test and the whole test is making good progress, so hopefully, it´ll turn out all right. The ball was good fun, by the way, and there´ll be pics on the web soon, I suppose. Also, last weekend, there was the 70ies party in Neustift, organised by my volleyball team back in Neustift! Eric´s costume was the most outstanding one, as ever, one might add, knowing Eric´s indistinguishable fantasy and spirit of the Seventies. But more about that as soon as there are more photos and stuff on the website of the Volley-Springginkerls! ERF

Dancing Stars live at the Peuerbach Ball on Saturday!

This Saturday in the Palais Kaufmännischer Verein, there will be the highlight of Linz´ ball season, when tout le monde of fashion and the haute couture of VIPs of the GVP is having a gathering at the ball! Everyone is gonna be there, including lots of teachers and students from other classes than the ones organising the ball! Check out the ball homepage to find out about the details of the festivity! Should be good fun, maybe you wanna come, too? Go get your license to chill and show up!
And now for something completely different! We had a dancing lesson today in school, in order to get ourselves all hyped up and ready for the ball, so I can now positively dance with you - mostly the girls checking this page, hopefully - I can dance the slow waltz and Chachacha, which is one of my favourite dances anyways! Good laugh, real good fun!

Also, check out the picture of my class! They´re such a laughly bunch, there´s only one or two who start a ruckus every now and then - and you wouldn´t believe who it is mainly! There´s one boy. the devil in disguise I can tell you! So sweet and such a "criminal"! They´re really good kids, and I look alright amongst them, don´t I? ;-) ERF

Here we go again!

After having dealt with many a dead person in the last couple of days, we´re back at school, a bee hive full of busy little ants doing this and that constantly - not many of them manage to listen to the teachers at the same time, though! ;-) Just joking, it´s not bad at all, looking forward to the next lesson already, when I can see my "own" little buggers again. They´re just so cute! You can find a picture of me and my class here soon, actually, but not right now, as they´re still not online, damn! Anyways, life´s treating me well, my remote controlled areoplane has been mended by Volker, my flat mate and yesterday´s little accident with my nephew Markus has not harmed him majorly! I let go of his tram and it fell over - he screamed like mad but just because of the shock! Thank god, was well worried for a second! Life´s full of dangerous moments, innit?
The person I´m showing you today is Alex, one of my best friends, who has just gone to France for a year as a French assistant, she´s a French and sports teacher! Great girl, always up for a laugh and very enjoyable company, too! Missing her quite a bit actually, she would have been teaching in Solar City with me... Gotta go!
See ya, wouldn´t wanna be ya!
ERF

Broken arm in school - still the winners of the last match of the season!!!

Despite a tragic little accident in school Friday afternoon, where one of my boys in the solarCity grammar school broke the radius of his left arm, I still managed to go ahead as planned with my weekend - and we eventually won the last game of the season against Ulrichsberg 2:0 which means we ended the season in second, 6 points ahead of our opponents and 2 behind the leaders! Not bad, and thank god it´s all over, most of us really can do with a break right now, everyone was getting really really tired. But it was another great and intense match and I think we can be quite pleased with our result. Anyways, Armin´s injury is not that bad after all, he´s gonna have a cast for a few weeks and that´s the end of the story. Thank god, it was my first injury in school and I didn´t like it all that much! Talk to you again soon, gotta go - it´s Rita´s final orals tomorrow and she needs my mental assistance desperately! I´ll tell you how it went in a couple of days... ERF

Final game of the season brings final decision

After having recovered from the tragic loss against Niederwaldkirchen last week we´re facing the team in 5th tomorrow. They are a young side, and hopefully we will be able to beat them with our cleverness and experience... check out the details here the day after tomorrow. It´s 2. Liga NW... apart from that, I was in school today with two of my colleagues and we went on the trampoline. What a laugh, I hadn´t done it for a while but it´s such a ´fantastic sport! I have a couple of videos, don´t think I can put them on here... I´ll try one day! ERF

Loss against Niederwaldkirchen: N/O is not top of the pops anymore!!!

Sad result in our last home game, not only do we lose the match but we also lose the top position in the league! Good game, we could have scored a few but had to accept defeat in the end, too good was the opponents defense, too weak our effort to score goals. Nevermind, there´s more to come and eventually, we´ll be showing them who we really are!
Anyways, life goes on and so I´m back at school, giving tests and exercises, and at uni, where my students are becoming more and more insecure about their English! .... They´ll be having a self evaluation tomorrow, so we´ll see how it goes after that! But look at them, they seem to be having a good time in school, so that´s alright... tbc

Title race final show down on Sunday in Neustift!!!

On Sunday, 16th October, we´re play ing our fiercest opponent in footie! the team from Niederwaldkirchen is only one point behind us, having lost one out of 9 games so far, whereas we have drawn the match against St. Stefan, the then leaders of the league.
Although we´ve been on a winning streak and scoring lots of goals there might be some problems we could face in Sunday´s match. Grise Wundsam has got a knee injury, so he´s not sure whether he can play, and some other players are also slightly hurt, including me and my bruised knee from the match against St. Veit a fortnight ago - stay in touch, I´ll tell you about it next week.
The picture is from the match against Arnreit, thanks to Bernhard for sending it to me (was that before or after I did them in with my goal? ;-)) ERF