School Visit

Spent the morning visiting English classes in an HTL here in Hollabrun. HTL means "Höhere Technische Lehranstalt". This is a technical school for people learning engineering and computer science. The school has about 1,600 male students, and only 60 girls. These kids really don't like to study foreign languages. They're much more interested in Math, and it shows. The classes we visited were the 4th and 5th years of English, and most of them were really not good at the language at all. Of course, there were a few exceptions. The teachers basically split us up so we could get into groups with the students and talk to them. They asked me all kinds of questions about the US... whether I liked Bush or not, what kind of car I drove, whether I had been to New Orleans... etc. One of the kids had his laptop and he had a satellite map program (Google World- free download I hear) which was really really cool, because I could show him the whole US, then zoom in on Ohio, then to Athens, and then even to South Canaan road! That was really neat, and they seemed to be pretty interested despite their lack of language skill. If anything, it was a break from their usual routine. It was interesting... the teacher introduced us in English, but she had to give most of the directions in German. Its really fascinating how different each type of school is. I will actually be teaching at two schools, one of which is a Gymnasium (the really intense University prep school) and the other is an HTL. That will be something of a challenge, as I imagine I will have to cater my lesson plans to the different schools since they are on such different levels.
What a great experience!
I'm still very anxious to get to Eisenstadt and settle in. We're leaving on Friday afternoon.
More later :)

-art