burn after reading

My teaching job this year has me assigned to two different schools (both have students that are about the age of American high school students, but the systems are so different I don't really like to translate it to "high school"). Last year my school focused on giving students a practical training in agriculture. This year I'm in a tourism school and a fashion school. For the tourism one, I have to wear a suit. I look like a Mormon missionary bopping around Innsbruck in a suit on my bike (even more so because this year I'm wearing a helmet). I bike to the base of the mountain, lock up my bike and then start my uphill climb. It's a nice way to start the day, but that appeal will fade soon when the snow and ice come. The types of lessons I'll be doing look to be just the same as last year. One teacher asked me to teach a lesson on the "differences between Austrian and American museums." (?) I convinced her to just let me introduce myself first and maybe I'd talk about museums in general if there was time left. Who would have guessed - there wasn't any time left. Another teacher said to me an hour before I was to go to her class, "Why don't you limit your introduction to about five minutes and then spend the rest of the time talking about the financial crisis?" I brought my absentee ballot and instead talked about the election.

The students, especially at that school, are really engaged and interested in international issues. It's exciting for me to be able to talk about things I'm interested in and have a captive audience! Being back here has also reaffirmed my support for Barack Obama. Although I support him mainly because I agree with him on more issues than I do with McCain, I am also very impressed by his popularity over here. That isn't my sole reason and I know it's not most important, but living here, one almost can't help it. I get judged because of my citizenship and questioned about America and Bush on a daily basis, some of which is ill-founded and ridiculous, some of which isn't. And a lot of the time I get the feeling that it's really as if people here deep down want to like America, but can't. Countless people have told me that they could, with Obama, have faith in America again- as a force of good in the world. That gives me so much optimism, hoping that him getting elected could better our country's image abroad. My friends here, without exception, don't see how America elected Bush a second time and could possibly now pick McCain.

I'm nervous though, becaue many people here, like a lot of Americans, aren't all that informed about U.S. policies. While Clinton sits on a pedastol here, most people don't know enough about about issues (i.e. Kosovo) where, if informed, they probably wouldn't be happy with him either. Bush is the devil in their eyes and Obama will come and overnight mend all problems with American-European relations. That's impossible. Not only can those things not be fixed overnight, but there are some things that I don't think Obama can do all that differently from Bush. He's still going to be presiding over the U.S. and although I'm confident he'd go about things in a better way, Europeans are still going to be mad about some of the things we Americans are up to, regardless of who's in charge. People have such high expecations for him and I think it's going to be an incredible challenge for him to live up to them.

I had a nice weekend and went to see Burn After Reading with some friends last night. There is a movie theater just a few doors down from my apartment that plays a lot of independent-type films and the best part: they're all in their original language! The other cinemas here all play American movies dubbed in German and that drives me nuts. I prefer subtitles to dubbing any day!

On a random note, fridges here are so small compared to American ones. For the five of us in the apartment, we have one fridge just slightly bigger than the fridges Americans have in their college dorm rooms. The grocery store is just around the corner so we buy things as we need them instead of hording food, which is a system I like better anyway. It forces me to haul my lazy ass to the store and then haul my lazy ass into the kitchen to do some cooking... or eat the food prepared by my roommates.