In contrast to the excitement of
Christmas and New Years with my family, January was quiet. For me
this was wonderful since it left a lot of time to start some new
things (and get back into old things) I never really made time for.
At my time at New College we had
something called an ISP, or Independent Study Project. Between Fall
and Spring semesters was about a month where students would work on
their own projects, internships, or what-have you. With a large
percentage of campus gone elsewhere, it was usually a nice quiet few
weeks. For many people (depending on their project and things outside
of school) it was also a time for trying new things or reorienting
oneself.
In the Austrian school this year there
was also about four to five weeks between Winter Break and the
technical end of the semester. For me this was a nice parallel to my
life for the four years before this. I think I used these well (even
if it meant being less immersed in German than I originally expected)
Things I did
Fitness
Like countless people I decided to
start “getting in shape”. My goals probably weren't defined
enough to help me stick to this the rest of the year, but I
definitely made an effort to get a little healthier this January. I
discovered the website and videos from FitnessBlender and started
doing workouts along to them. I think they're really well-done, and I
hope to keep referring to them throughout the year. The opportunity
to do some hiking once it gets warm is at least a small motivation.
Spanish
Even though I am in a German speaking
country, for some reason, I decided to get back into Spanish. I had
already learned a lot—5 years of high school Spanish, Spanish
conference in said high school, and a few refresher courses in
college. It was my first of several foreign languages I started
learning, so it holds a special place for me. I spent a good bit of
time on Duolingo refreshing a lot of the basics, and just signed up
for a Spanish conversation class starting in February here—can't
wait!
Travel in Carinthia
So I don't think I left my state in
Austria at all this month. Which is fine because I already have plans
to make up for this as early as next week. However, I did check out a
few interesting places while here.
Warmbad
Warmbad is still technically part of
Villach and is absolutely beautiful. The area is famous for its warm
springs (hence the name). There's both an inside swimming area and
outside springs and light hiking.
I went here with other TAs on an
unusually warm January day and walked around. Next time I'm
definitely bringing a bathing suit.
(photo from:Wikipedia)
Of particular interest to me is that
the area has a really long history of settlement, fromf the Bronze
Age to the Celts to the early Christians to (obviously) today.
There's even ruins of an old church right on the hike!!
Gurk and Schloss Strassburg
(pictures
courtesy of Anita)
Another weekend I went on a somewhat
spontaneous roadtrip to a very rural and different part of Carinthia
all together. It took over an hour up a bunch of mountain roads to
reach these places but it was so worth it!
Gurk is a pretty small/sleepy town
today, but wasn't always this way.
In 1043 years ago Saint Hemma of Gurk
founded a monastery here—which didn't last long.
The inside of the church was also beautiful--and some of the painting on the wall was such a contrast to what I'm used to seeing here
The Archbishop of Salzburg of the time
wanted influence over the area for himself and his archdiocese (as
all Archbishops of Salzburg seem to want to do...). In 1072 he
dissolved the monastery and replaced it with the Diocese of Gurk. For
those at home keeping score of the political drama of the Investiture
Contest, Gebhard was a major supporter of the Pope and huge opponent
of King Henry IV.
We also visited the town and fortress
of Strassburg. The main attraction for us was the Fortress just above
the town, built in 1147. It served as the seat of Prince-Bishops of
Gurk until the 18th century. Its presence made Strassburg
the most important town in this little valley.
Exploring the castle was a lot of fun.
An earthquake badly damaged the castle in the 18th century
and it has only been partially rebuilt. In the summer, there is a
restaurant open for business, which would have been cool to check
out.
I'm hoping before I leave to do some
other little trips to get to know the area. It's such a different
type of travel from visiting all the big, famous cities here.
Beginning Coding!
In addition to traveling and moving
about, I also discovered this month I really really want to learn to
code. I spend so much time on the computer and internet, and really
like more mathematical/logical tasks even though I majored in pretty
much the opposite of that. I've also been missing systematically
learning and studying new sets of things since leaving school. SO why
not go all out with a field where I have no experience?
This month I did a crash course
introduction to HTML/CSS (not programming languages but still kind of
necessary) on codecademy and it's really inspired me to do a little
bit more with those skills.
I think I decided I am going to learn
JavaScript REALLY well over the next few months. There's a
codecademy course, other learning to code sites, + a giant book for
much more theoretical background to fill in any gaps. Even if it's
not as much of a server-side language as some and still technically
more of a scripting language, I think I can get a LOT of use out of
it.
This year will also give me a change to
practice and integrate programs I write into my lessons. So maybe now
I'm just sorting cards, or vocab words for students alphabetically
with JavaScript. But one day, I'd love to create something more tangible and useable in my and other classrooms.
In a perfect world, I would also love to
combine these skills with my anthropology knowledge and training. One
of the biggest issues I see with anthropology today is creating a
dialogue with the public. (I noticed now how much easier it is to find good
interactive teaching materials on science, and rote-memorized civics,
etc for my lessons that more critical social science and humanities
topics). And also the ability for people anthropologists study to
access and respond to that research/those publication when it's
trapped in books that usually just anthropology students read.
There's so many much more active interfaces and ways of representing material and engaging people I'm just now finally
itching to explore.
So maybe my scripting and programming
knowledge is limited to putting lists of vocab words in alphabetical
order or making websites from scratch that look like they're from
1995. BUT, I have so many ideas and things to look forward to.
I never thought learning
all-the-computer stuff would start to take over parts of my year (or
more?) in Austria, but there you go!
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