The end of my blogging career

Well, I think this is my last post now. To be honest, in the beginning I had quite big problems to get into the thing with blogging, but now I got used to it and it was ok. My problem is that I hate working with the computer particularly if the weather is like it was today. But sometimes it was really entertaining and it was also varied. We had the possibility to do things that we want to improve our English and this was great.

So I say good-bye to everyone who has read my blog!

other blogs

Yesterday I read some blog entries from a Carinthian girl who was in America during this semester. Indeed she writes mostly in German but there are also some English entries. She expresses her feelings and her thoughts in a very entertaining and funny way and it is really an amusement to read her entries because she wirtes about everything. She was in America for about four month and worked there on her degree dissertation. She studies in Klagenfurt and came back only one week ago.
This blog is interesting for everybody who wants to study abroad for some time (so it is the right one for us) and if you read the entries you can see that is not only fun but also depressing and difficult.

If you want to check this posts you have to go to the following website (I hope it still exists although she has already come back):
www.kleinezeitung.at/inamerica

stress, stress, nothing but stress

To be honest, at the moment I am not sold on being a student. But probably it is the same for everybody currently. At the end of every semester it is the same. You have about four exams a week and furthermore you have to do presentations, homework,... .
Apropos presentation, today I had to present, together with a friend of mine, three very comprehensive and complicate topics in our proseminar-classtime. The preperation for this presentation occupied the whole, long weekend. It was about the following topics (I am not sure if you are interested in it, but anyway, I am going to tell you): The first one was "translation and power", then it was "feminism in translation" and the last one was "translation and postcolonialism". Isn`t it great? I know it sounds quite interesting but it sounds also easier than it actually is. The biggest problem of the topics was probably, that nearly every single page was in ENGLISH. Of course, I like English but with these texts I had my problems. Really, I had to struggle a lot that I could understand them and that I was able to translate them. I had about seventy pages to work through and I was the luckiest and most satisfied person when I finished it on Sunday at 11 p.m. To sum up, I am simply really happy that the presentation is over.

But this is just the beginning of two very stressful and nerve-racking weeks! We have to hang on, and look forward to the three month which come afterwards!

The "Gailtaler Speckfest"

Hi everybody!

I have to tell you something about my funny weekend. I was at home, in Carinthia, and there have been taken place the fifteenth "Gailtaler Speckfest". Maybe some of you have already heard about it as it is quite famous. There come tourists from all parts of Austria and it is really popular in Italy. About a third of the guests are Italian as they love our "Gailtaler Speck".

It takes place every year on the first weekend of June in Hermagor which is in the south of Carinthia. There are about seventy stands where people from our valley and also from other parts of Carinthia present their deliciousnesses. As you would expect the "Gailtaler Speck" is the thing which comes to the fore but also cheese, wine and home-made schnaps are important parts of the festival. Most of the presenters (is it the correct word for "Austeller"?) are farmers who live in our valley.

One of the most important meals on the festival is probably the so-called "Frigga" which is made of potatoes, onions, Speck and cheese. It is served with polenta and is really favoured. But you have to be very careful: As it is extremely fatty you can get an awful stomachache if you eat too much! Believe me, I speak from my own experience! :-)

The festival starts on Saturday at ten o'clock with the traditional "first cut" of a huge Speck.
During the whole weekend there are bands from Carinthia, Italy and Slovenia who make particularly folksy music. Furthermore there are different light entertainment programmes for children and also some raffles for the young and the young at heart.

This year it was the culinary aim for thousands of visitors who bought about five tons of Speck and 3,000 salami which is quite a lot.

On Saturday I visited the festival and we had a lot of fun there. So, if you have never been there until now you have to come to Carinthia next year, I think it is really well worth seeing. It is a different sort of festival but a special one. :-)

On this picture you can see some "important" persons from our valley, like the governing mayor of Hermagor, during the famous "first-cut" of the Speck which opens up the festival officially.

Hungary's tooth tourism

All of us want white and shiny teeth, also the British people are dreaming of "Hollywood teeth". Therefore this year, 25,000 Britons will take cheap flights to Budapest for bargain dental work. There you can regulate your teeth for a quarter of the price. Another few thousand will come for cut-price cosmetic surgery or lasik corrective surgery. Someone reported that he had needed a couple of fillings and a crown replaced which costs about 750 pounds in London, in Budapest it is quoted 266 pounds. With the return flights and car parking it costs about 352 pounds, which is still a bargain.

The clients come mainly from the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia and Holland. In 2004 the clinic treated about 16 Britons a month, which is quite a lot in my point of view. Three years later, work-of-mouth recommendations have pushed that to more than 100, with similar numbers arriving from other northern European nations.

But the British Dental Association warns that anyone who is thinking about treatment overseas must make sure that they are aware of the potential risks and the hidden costs. There can arise difficulties if there are problems with the treatment when the patient returns home. But the Bedfordshire-based dental travel agency Perfect Profiles ensures that if things go wrong, they fly their patients back to Budapest, put them in a hotel and resolve the problems - at their expense.

I read also some personal experiences of patients and nearly all of them were fully satisfied with the treatments in Hungary. But to be honest, I am a bit skeptic and I think I don`t want to be under medical treatment in Hungary although it is much cheaper as in Austria.

What you eat is very important for exam success

As now the stressful learing period for us poor students :-) starts I have some tips for you to boost brainpower and keep stress at bay. I found an aricle during I was exploring the web which is called "What to eat for exam success". I think everyone of us know how the feeling is if you are under learning stress and how difficult it is to stay alert and to be concentrated during the long, long learning process. Sometimes we try to learn the whole night and for these times we need something which keeps us alert, the solution for this problem is COFFEE. At least we think it is but there are other things which are more useful and also healthier.

First of all one of the most important meals is breakfast. It is an old rule but a golden one. Studies have indicated that those students who eat breakfast have better recall, better problem-solving skills and improved scores in math tests, which is not so important for our studies. :-)

Wholegrain cereals such as porridge and sugar-free muesli, garnary toast or some fruit with a yoghurt or formage frais are the perfect breakfast. The milk, which you should add to your muesli, provides protein which helps to keep you full and aids concentration.
With this sort of breakfast you will have a good start and you will make an enourmus process during the morning! :-)

Secondly you have to know that lunch is as important as breakfast. You should avoid fad-laden, mayonnaise-based sandwiches, pizza and chips because otherwise you will have the feeling that the meal is sitting uncomfortably in your stomach all afternoon.

Protein, as I mentioned before, seems to help us to concentrate. Therefore you should eat tuna, turkey, lean beef or ham and eggs which make ideal basis for lunch. These things can be accompanied by small pitta bread, tortilla wrap or a slice of rye for example.

Furthermore have a plenty of citrus fruits, berries and vegetables, which are great for vitamin C. It is needed for a robust immune system as well, these fruits and vegetables may also help to reduce the risk of being laid low with a summer cold that could upset your revision and exam performance.

Finally try to replace some of your caffeine-rich, sugary drinks with sips of liquid or camomile tea.The active plant constituents can help to reduce stress.
Coffee, tea and energy drinks such as Red Bull might seem to help in staving off sleepiness but overdoing these beverages can overstimulate the nervous system, elevating blood pressure and heart rate and putting you more "on edge". Stick to no more than five or six caffeine-containing drinks each day.

Well, I hope you have read this article carefully and if you will try some of these tips you will have the best exam results ever! :-)

I wish you a good and stressful learning period and good luck for all the exams you have to sit.

presentation

The previous week was really stressful for me, as I had an oral exam in "Kulturschwerpunktthemen Italienisch" on Tuesday and the Jaywalking presentation on Thursday. I had the presentation togehter with Alexandra and we dealt with the following topics: Gaelic Athletic Association, alcohl abuse in Ireland, Bloody Sunday, Good Friday and crime rate in Ireland. It was quite difficult to find some interesting facts about the crime rate and unfortunately I couldn`t find any comparison to Austria. Alex had some problems with the topic Bloody Sunday as David Monagan mentioned in his book that it was in 1921 during a Hurling match and Wikipedia said that it was in 1920 during a Gaelic football mach. So Alexandra was a bit torn but at the end she decided, together with Lisa, to mention both, to avoid misunderstandings.

All in all, in my opinion the presentation was quite interesting and our colleagues were really attentive. Furthermore it was great that they really cooperated when it came to the discussion point.

To be honest I am quite happy that it is over now as I am not a fan of presentations.