Day 1: Friday

WELCOME TO SOAK IN SEMMERING!

Everybody arrived safely today in Semmering. Our hotel (Hotel Zauberberg) is nice and we all have shared rooms. The area is really beautiful, with lush green trees and tall mountains. There is something offered here everyday, from golf to jogging, swimming to soccer.

 [The view from the hotel]

After the opening ceremony we had an hour of ice breakers with our new classes. We played a nice ice-breaker game, where one simply writes numbers on the white board, and the rest of the class must guess what these numbers mean to the person who wrote them. Pretty successfull! 

 [Monika at the board]

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Our Numbers Game:

Monika:         1984 = year she was married

                           4 = number of children

                         8B = her favorite class 

                          2  = how many siblings she has

Alysha:               1 = sister, Amy

                  98372 = postal code of Seattle, WA

                          8 = age of her cat, Jamie Katze

            11.6.1983 = her date of birth (Nov. 6) 

  

Julia F.:               2 = pet cats, Susie & Mollie

                    2214 = postal code

                          8 = day in July when she was born

                    1993 = birth year

Annika:            442 = number of books she has

                          62 = number of dvds she has

                     39/40 = shoe size

                    -15.12 = her bank account balance      

Lena:                   4 = years old when she moved from Bhutan

                           5 = number of instruments she can play

                        7Ai = her class (i = instrumental)

                            3 = number of sisters

Lukas:                     1 = one brother, Ben

                 7/30/1993 = date of birth

                      A2753 = postal code

                           308 = his room number here in Semmering

Caro:                      3 = number of languages she speaks (french, english, spanish)

                      04121 = Area code

                            15 = age of her brother

                              7 = number of years she's played the guitar

Tara:                      3 = number of instruments she plays

                            38 = pairs of shoes

                        2830 = songs on itunes

                          169 = her height in cm

Julia S.:             0 = she's an only child

                         5 = number of musicals she's been to in Stuttgart

                         4 = day in July when she was born

                 72379 = postal code

Julia B.:            22F = seat in airplane on the way to Vienna

                          18 = age

                            1 = grandma

                          23 = age of her sister Ann

Anna-Lena:            3 = how long she's known her friend from Spain

                              4 = number of times she's been on the NYC Harlem Gospal tour

                              9 = bus number where she met her best friend 

                            18 = age she'll turn on July 20th

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After we had a good lunch of soup, salad and pasta, we rejoined our class and played a drama warm up. Since our topic is about gender, the students were asked to find a partner and then think of one phrase that often comes up between partners. Then they took turns both repeating the phrase with different emotions. The phrases they chose were:

• "You never listen to me."
• "We need to talk."
• "Shut up."
• "Where were you last night."

Very intersting that each group came up with a phrase that had to do with communication between the sexes. It goes to show just how important good communication is, no matter the relationship! 

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We also brainstormed what we thought of when asked about the theme: "Battle of the sexes." We came up with these suggestions:

1. communication
2. inequality (ie:career)
3. weakness (women)
4. power and dominance (men)
5. universal
6. equality
7. feminism
8. stereotypes
9. oppression
10. role models
11. biological aspects
12. patriarchal/matriarchal
13. feelings/emotions

We will compare this list with one that we draw up at the end of the course. 

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And "zum Schluss" we played some charades! 

All in all it was a pretty good day!