and we're off...

I'm slowly but surely learning the beauty of "save as draft."

So my job as an English Assistent is to give the students a chance to improve their conversational English and that will usually invlove lots of lessons talking about current events. At the end of the year the students take a test called a Matura and if they pass, they are free to go on to any university within Austria or to apply for jobs. If they fail, they repeat. The two schools I teach at are the Gymnasium, where students hope to go on to University, and the HAS/HAK (Handelsschule und Handelsakademie), a business-oriented school which prepares students for the business world after graduation, but also prepares them for University as well.

I have a cell phone. The number from the U.S. is: 011 43 680 211 9209. Yeah, have fun dialing that one. For you Europeans, you probably know how it goes, but just in case, it's: 0680 211 9209. I have a pay-as-you-go deal, a SIM card called Sprich Mit Bob. After buying and trading back three phones with a sketchy guy who runs a sketchy used phone shop, and many inquisitive looks when I asked stores if they carried this Sim card, ('Bob?' 'Yes, Bob. Sprich mit Bob. Haben sie diese Karte bitte?' 'Bob??' 'Ja, bitte!' 'Ahhhh...Bob!' apparently 'Bob' is hard to understand if you don't say it in a very particular way...) I finally got Bob to work and I learned some new phrases at dinner. My new favorite phrases are: Bob saugt. Bob blaest. Ich hasse Bob. (Bob sucks, etc.) Anyway, I finally got it to work and I look forward to recieving many phone calls. Remember, if you call using Skype, it's only 1 cent/minute.