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:
- communication
- inequality (ie:career)
- weakness (women)
- power and dominance (men)
- universal
- equality
- feminism
- stereotypes
- oppression
- role models
- biological aspects
- patriarchal/matriarchal
- feelings/emotions
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And "zum Schluss" we played some charades!
All in all it was a pretty good day!
