Wordless Wednesday: The View On The Drive Through The Italian Alps
May 14th, 2008
May 6th, 2008
I am just busy showing my parents all that Germany has to offer, while still putting in a full teaching load today and yesterday!
BUT the best way to find out the greatest insider tips is not to buy a travel guide, but to enlist your students help as an English lesson. 
So Much To Do, So Little Time!
April 27th, 2008
I am going mad with everything, so maybe this was not the best time to start a new blog. My parent arrive on Wednesday, I am still working flat out, and of course there is the motorcycle licesne. SO while I try all this there barely seems to time to sleep!
So as I will be AWOL a day or two I leave you with this clip from Dylan Moran on Germany. It is from a segment when he takes the piss out of every one, including the Irish. It is well worth a giggle. 
April 20th, 2008
This is a great little story from DW that I have saved and use for when my lesson plan comes up short and I still have 15 or 20 minutes left to a lesson, too short to start something new, too early to let them go, and too long to just sit there and inanely chat till the end!.
The full article can be found here Deutsche Welle Squirrel Goes On Bloody Rampage:
A squirrel with aggression issues acted out in the southern German town of Passau, injuring three people before his last victim finished him off with a crutch.
The Bavarian town of Passau, on the Austrian border, is usually a fairly quiet place, with man and nature living in relative harmony. But this week, the bucolic balance was thrown off when a squirrel went berserk, terrorizing three in a biting rampage that ended only with his death.
His first victim was a 70-year-old woman, who was sitting peacefully in her living room when she was surprised by the sensation of small claws on her back. The squirrel had jumped through a window and onto the woman, soon sinking its teeth into her hand. Acorns weren’t on this little guy’s mind, arteries apparently were.
Terrified, the woman ran out into the street in a panic, managing to shake the squirrel off.
But the creature, whipped into a frenzy, immediately found another victim. He jumped onto a nearby construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm. The fellow was finally able to fight the furry demon off with a measuring pole.
Still on the hunt for blood, the tiny terror then ran into the garden of a 72-year-old retiree.
“The squirrel massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” said a local police spokesperson. So the senior citizen used the only weapon at his disposal — his crutch.
He clubbed the ruthless rodent to death.
How the squirrel obtained his bloodlust is still unclear, although experts have said its behavior could be linked to the mating season or the squirrel could have been diseased.
April 18th, 2008
Sent to me by a friend, I thought this was cute. 
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby
English will be the official language of the European Union rather than
German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that
English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year
phase-in plan that would become known as ‘Euro-English’.
In the first year, ’s’ will replace the soft ‘c’.
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favour of ‘k’. This should klear
up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when
the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with ‘f’. This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which
have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent ‘e’ in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing
‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘v’.
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords
kontaining ‘ou’ and after ziz fifz yer , ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten
styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi
tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey
vunted in ze forst plas.
13 Things About Equal Goes It Loose
April 17th, 2008
2.
Having taught English in Japan, Korea and in England to Italian kids, I am aware that false friends and literal translations are bound to cause embarrassment. But in Germany it appears that they are particularly so. Here the word “geil” is used to mean cool, awesome, excellent, etc. However its original meaning was horny. My friend Samara teaches at a school here, and a student tried to compliment her by announcing (in English) that she was a “horny teacher.” The class went silent before erupting into laughter, and both Samara and the student went a little red. The class then had to explain to him that the proper translation of geil in that case was not horny, but cool. You can find the full story here, but it was treasures like that I wanted to save and so I began another blog.
3.
To be fair however the embarrassment works both way. The first time I met my German partner’s family had its fair share of blushes. Halfway through the afternoon I bit into an apple that was less than crisp and I declared (in English, as at this point I spoke 4 words in German) “ugh, this apple is mushy!” The was followed by shocked silence, and a tentative “what did you say.” I explained that the apple tasted mushy. And my partner laughed so hard before explaining what mushy in German was. Think the term for female genitalia that we have that means a little cat.
4.
In addition to such treasures of mortification I also wanted a place that I could try to keep some of my own ideas for teaching English on. I know myself that I am forever finding great places, and then forgetting what they are or were. So I hope that with this blog I can keep track of some of my favorite links and places, and lesson ideas.
5.
I travel, I love to travel, and if I could I would do nothing BUT travel. And so I do take paid posts on my other blogs (I have two, Sticky Apple Kisses and Confessions of A Gypsy Princess). It means I can travel and get paid without having to have a regular job that requires me to actually BE somewhere at a set time. The problem was that I noticed Gypsy became a little too saturated with paid posts. BUT I liked the income that meant my debt was decreasing and my travel stayed the same. So I started Sticky, but after Gypsy was google slapped Sticky is the only blog that brings in decent paying posts. I dont want to have the same thing happen to Sticky that happened to Gypsy. Yet I dont want to lose an income that lets me travel. The solution? Another blog with a different focus so that I hope between the two I can eventually have the same income without losing the quality of the blog.
Wakeboarding in Switzerland: having the time and money makes blogging worth it!
6.
I love to write, I have always loved to write. But I never have the time. Blogging gives me that time. While I will not make time for other things, I will make time for blogging, it is like online journaling. And with Equal Goes It I hope anyone thinking of working ESL, or wanting to, can read it and ask questions, as I think its a great idea, but not the easiest one. So helps me, helps someone else, hurray!
7.
Videos! For some reason I could never get videos to work on my wordpress blogs until recently, and another place to post them is a good excuse as any!
8.
Other bloggers! It seems like with each blog you start you get a different readership. Sure some of the people are the same, and thats awesome too. But with Gypsy I met different people in the blogsphere than I did with Sticky, and despite Equal being less than a month old I have already found some new blogs I never would have found otherwise.
9.
And since every blog has a blogger, the last couple will be directly about me! I am an ESL teacher who just can not seem to escape. This is one of the better lives for those who have a Gypsy heart. And I am quite the Gypsy at heart. This is the first time I have renewed a VISA, and I already have itchy feet, despite taking off for another destination for travel every month.
10.
I am slowly learning German (I am in a class), but really I wish I could speak Spanish and Russian. But they won’t exactly help me here, and besides Oma would murder me for learning another language first.
11.
I want a pug. Badly. So badly my friend sent me this link, and I do sometimes pop it into my browser just to whimper and sound pathetic in an effort to get one. But in all honestly we do travel too much for a dog, but even if we didnt, though I have broken my partner down to the point where a dog is ok, he could have written this article.
12.
I have learned not to use the “pop” in the German classroom. It is another one of those words that translates with sexual connotations.
13.
And last, but not least, no matter where i go or where i live, the center of the world for me will always be Newfoundland!
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. (leave your link in comments)
April 17th, 2008
My WW post this week is from my time in Japan. I find myself missing Japan more and more each and every day. However at the moment my life is in Germany, who knows what the future will bring!
But while living there I learned what a land of contradictions Japan could be. On the one hand you could throw a handful of change into the ATM for a direct deposit into your account, on the other you better do it before 8 pm at night (sometimes 6 depending on your bank!!!!), your toilet seat plugged in so you could have a toasty warm bum, however there was no central heating so the rest of the house was freezing. And then there are the vending machines which are everywhere, which means you are not without beer, smokes, candy or eggs (yes eggs) anytime at night!
