Servus from Eisenstadt, the capital city of the Austrian province of Burgenland! To catch everyone up, I arrived in Eisenstadt almost exactly two months ago, on September 18, to settle into my new home before I began work as a teaching assistant (TA) for English classes in two local high schools on October 1. Time that would have usually been spent in orientation and training was spent in a state of shock that was quickly replaced by anxiety about the fact that I had really just up and moved to a different country in the middle of a pandemic. What was I thinking??
What I had been thinking was that it would be fun and cool to live in Austria and try my hand at “teaching English,” she says in quotes because the role of a foreign language TA is more akin to that of “cultural ambassador” (to quote, I’m sure, just about every dutiful Fulbright applicant since the program’s founding) than to an actual English teacher. And it has been fun and cool! I’m not expected (nor should I be entrusted) to explain English grammar rules or grade tests; rather, I’ll often teach a lesson about some aspect of American culture, my most important duty being getting the students to talk in English and exposing them to a native speaker’s accent and colloquialisms—one teacher’s tactic for this is to simply write down phrases and words as I say them and then type them on a Word document projected on the wall. This has included, quite embarrasingly, my profuse use of “like”.
So far I’ve taught lessons about American high school, American foods, and, one of my personal favorites, about addiction and American anti-drug and messaging, where I got to shock my students with some anti-smoking commercials I saw on TeenNick growing up that I can still recall quite viscerally, as well as some clips from the TLC classic “My Strange Addiction.”
*I should note that Austria is currently in its second nationwide lockdown and has been since November 3. It will last at least until the end of November, but I can’t imagine we’ll be in a good enough place by then to lift the restrictions much. All of the classes I had been teaching were in what’s called the Oberstufe (upper level, students 14 and older) and switched to distance learning with the onset of the lockdown, so I’ve been joining classes on Microsoft Teams and appreciating just how hard it is to teach compelling and engaging lessons online. Kudos to all the teachers who have been doing this for months!
Of course, at least this fall, one cannot talk about America without talking about American politics and the general election, especially the presidential race. Some students are really interested in politics and I’ve been able to fill three or even four classes on the topic, while others couldn’t give two s***s about it and, frankly, I am impressed by that degree of indifference. In most classes where I’ve broached the subject, we spend at least one 50-minute class on the actual process of the election, since I can’t even begin talking about the damn red-and-blue map I’d been refreshing all last week without explaining what the Electoral College is, realizing that, in fact, it doesn’t suffice to just say that we were waiting on results from, like, Nevada to determine who the next president of the United States would be.
Almost always the students are exasperated by the complexity, and I for some reason try to play devil’s advocate for the Electoral College. It’s nearly always in vain, since, even though I come from a state that undoubtedly, disproportionately benefits from the racist system, I actually don’t think it’s a good thing!!
If I get past the Electoral College, I have to do some quick thinking. Do I talk about Congress? State and local politics? The parties? The two-party system? Voter suppression, gerrymandering, or any of the slew of anti-democratic measures plaguing our country? (I envisioned teaching a whole class all about problems with American democracy, but I simply don’t have the time, which is unfortunate for many reasons.) Before the election I tried to touch on a lot of these, but after Saturday’s news, I focused on the results, sharing my screen with the electoral map pulled up and telling my students about the record voter turnout, made possible by the years-long, tireless efforts of Black, brown, Latinx, and Indigenous organizers and activists in states like Arizona and Georgia. For a moment, I realized I was actually proud to be American.
Some of my students, having seen photos of boarded up windows in cities across the country, rightly expressed concern about the potential violence, even civil war. Others were shocked that, despite everything, over 70 million Americans voted for four(+) more years of Donald Trump. (There seems to be a consensus among my students and Austrians in general that Donald Trump is awful and, even more so, laughable, which of course he is, so disparaging him in the classroom is not controversial.) But what this tells us is the U.S. isn’t miraculously different now that we have a different president-elect (one who is, in truth, not so different at all—just another kind of moderate old white man). But despite everything that is still terrible about the United States, I spent Saturday afternoon wishing I could be there to join my friends and family as they cheered and danced in the street, and I’ll admit that I teared up at Kamala Harris’ speech when I watched it first thing Sunday morning. And as I joined my classes over Teams Monday morning, armed with a new presentation filled with exclamatory headlines and pictures of joyful celebration, no one was going to rain on my parade just yet. (It’s not quite a coup, right?)
How I imagine this newsletter will work
This week is a little unorthodox because we had some catching up to do, but usually I’d like to start each newsletter with a quote or anecdote from that week of classes, hence the newsletter’s title. (Since I only came up with this idea today, Friday, I don’t have one for you this week. Sorry!*) This will hopefully serve as an entry point into the things I taught about that week and what I, in turn, learned from my students. To once again quote every Fulbright applicant ever, this job forces me to reflect on things I take for granted about English and America, and I find it both rewarding and disorienting at once. Since I now have some extra time because of lockdown, I figured this would be a nice way to record those thoughts and do some writing, which I’ve been putting off since I’ve been here but would really like to get back to doing. I don’t really anticipate this to be the kind writerly, professional newsletter lots of journalists are starting lately—theirs are impressive, totally independent platforms for original reporting, and some are really quite good—but more like a blog. I low-key hate blogs (except food blogs) and the idea of blogging, and starting a Substack felt different for some reason though you don’t need to tell me it’s really not.
To further bastardize this newsletter and all but cross the border into blog territory, I’m also treating this as a way to update loved ones back home whom I talk to all too infrequently (if I told you I’d call but haven’t, I apologize, and I’ll still want to do that). To this end, I’ll share some of the other things I did/read/watched/cooked/ate that week, just for kicks.
No promises that this will come out every week, and no promises what day, though I’m guessing it will usually be Friday. I may get bored or distracted or busy or unmotivated (we’re already there, and have been for months now), but if you like this and want to read this screed from me regularly, please let me know. I’m like Tinkerbell, but, really, aren’t we all?
What I watched this week
The Good Place. Like, all of it. I started watching it after finishing Schitt’s Creek about two weeks ago, in search of a new sitcom with 23-minute-long episodes I could watch before my free VPN timed out every 30 minutes. The third and fourth seasons were definitely not as enjoyable for me as the first two, but the way they left me hanging at the end of every episode, I couldn’t NOT see how they plan to save humanity from eternal damnation. Plus, it did give me some hope for the intrinsic goodness of people, even if that goodness is only brought out by an unrealistic scenario in which a person seeks out lessons in moral philosophy to become a better person (seriously, who would do this?)
What I bought this week
As in the first lockdown, any excursion feels important and productive, even if it’s just to the grocery story. I made a few trips to various grocery stores this week, including to Interspar, a store that reminds me of a Target (color scheme and all) in its large store size and selection, and it makes me feel at home. I didn’t just buy groceries this week, however; I treated myself to a little birthday gift in the form of these slippers (very typical in Austria and Germany for people to have designated slippers—called “house shoes” (Hausschühe)—that they switch into every time they get home), and I’m obsessed.
What I cooked cooked this week
If you know me, you know I plan many (if not most) things in my life around food. And you know I almost always keep a running list of recipes I want to try, sometimes in the form of tabs I refuse to close until I find a better place to save the links (like, uh, a Word document, which I’ve started keeping). Some recipes from that list that I made this week:
this tuna and white bean casserole, which ended up using two pans (the only oven I have access to here is a toaster oven) but was nonetheless relatively quick, comforting, and not even a little bit heavy;
a tender greens, beans, and pasta situation using some about-to-go-bad salad greens, chickpeas, and (don’t hate me) tri-colored halloween-shaped pasta that I impulsively grabbed while waiting to check out at the grocery store. What? It was on sale! This combination of ingredients was riffed (as it was meant to be) from the incomparable Sohla El-Waylly and her new series on food52, in which we learn (if we didn’t know it already) that Sohla is not only an immensely talented and smart chef but also a great teacher;** and
this chocolate-olive oil cake, because it was my birthday on Monday! Yes, I baked my own birthday cake, but if you know me then you know this isn’t sad and pathetic (well, ok, maybe just a little), but actually exactly the way I would want to spend my birthday. Once again restricted by my kitchen situation here, I sought out a chocolate cake recipe that could be made with minimal extra ingredients and equipment (shockingly, no one living in a student dorm has a stand mixer they want to share!), but now I wonder why anyone would make a birthday cake with butter and eggs and frosting anyway, when this cake is exceedingly moist and flavorful (dare I say, the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made!) without them.
Something I didn’t cook, but definitely ate, was a bulgur-vegetable soup made by one of my friends (! I have those! Who woulda thunk) on Tuesday that was so simple and had so much flavor (Lida, the friend who made it, is from Afghanistan and stocks up on spices when she goes to Vienna) and was so clearly the result of simple muscle-memory and naturally-occurring good taste that it put my Word document to shame. Eventually I’ll wean myself off my crutches and try improvising, but not before I make this child of all that is good and kosher. I mean, seriously, who gave Deb Perelman the right????
Til next time!
Emily
*Okay, since you made it this far, I guess I can reward you with one teensy anecdote: In one of my classes today the topic was education, and they were reviewing vocabulary with the teacher. The teacher asked, what are some things a teacher does? For example, grades tests, assigns homework… and the students started coming up with answers, starting off really positive and inspiring—“encouraging students,” “motivating students,” “making a positive impact on students” (one dreams!). Then one student said simply “yell.” The teacher wasn’t too thrilled, but I thought it was hilarious.
**And speaking of Sohla, you should definitely read this Vulture profile of her!!!