Here's the counter-intuitive key to winning thumb wars: when you get pinned down, what you have to do is push down, not pull up. You only have a ten count to do it, so listen up. When you push down, you create some cushion between your opponent and the top of your thumb, and you can squeeze out if you slip to the outside. If you pull up, you meet your opponent's strength directly, like trying to get through a wall by sprinting. It doesn't matter if you have way more talent, or you're far stronger, or even if you have beaten this same person a thousand times before: it's not about skill, force, or precedent. If you act like a poor tactician, then you are. You pull straight up, and you might as well waste your time praying. Sometimes thoughts like these get to me when I'm working, but I'm not the one in charge.
So what we did was, we went to Munich last weekend. And it turns out Oktoberfest is pretty fun.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Active
I start my day before the sun does. It's a rare thing for me to be able to say that, which is no surprise to anyone who actually reads this thing. I often say that my three favorite things are sleeping, eating, and napping, and the Austrians certainly make sure I eat well; but as for sleeping, well, my nights are thinner than a butcher's dog. This is a metaphor my headmaster dropped on us in our first week. It's precise.
Sunday is the only off-day that the school provides the students, and it was still as packed as a day of rest can be. Breakfast is at 8, and it was pancakes, and it was fruit and yogurt, and it was hot cocoa, and it was delicious. We then had cakes and coffee at Dallman's, a pastry shop up the road owned by the husband of one of the administrative gurus at the school, a lovely and smiling woman named Natascha. That's how things are in St. Gilgen; everyone is related to everyone, and the fashionable spread of news and secrets very strictly underscores that fact. Then just after noon, we cooked four pizzas the size of Vatican pulpit bibles, and we rode mountain bikes. That is, some of us did: I napped. This is also how St. Gilgen is: we are frenetic in pace, or we are power-switched off. This is the way of the restaurants, of the kids, of the weather coming over the mountains.
The first full week of school is over now, and I finally feel like I can update something worthwhile. This case proved impossible last week for two reasons. First, I knew that I would be way too busy to concentrate on something that calms me down. And second, I figured that most of what I said would have been nonsense, because it would simply change again this week. Both reasons were proved right, but those are no bother now: I have something of a schedule, and even though I'll be ragged come December, I'm glad I finally have a routine. On Mondays and Thursdays, I will take out a team of kids in the quad skiffs that the school reserves, and we'll be doing some rowing around Wolfgangsee. Tuesdays and Saturdays will be football. Wednesdays and Fridays, we have rehearsal for a stage adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes tale, which we will be putting on at the end of the term. Hopefully I'll also be able to shadow the advanced English and Math classes, and the philosophy equivalent in the International Baccalaureate program, which is called Theory of Knowledge. If that sounds packed, then our trips, hikes, mountain bike courses, and team sports visits are peppered into nearly every week of the term. We do, very happily, find ourselves served chocolate mousse or some kind of pastry with every lunch: you just can't complain about compulsory mousse.
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I started my first day of rowing coaching today. It was a delight. For the next year, I will be a member of the rowing club in St. Gilgen, and I will have two sessions a week. On Monday afternoons for four hours, I'm in charge of the juniors. Sixteen girls and one boy, as excitable as house cats, and some of them with equivalent swimming experience. A group of them, however, are remarkably skilled for their young age, and all of them are lovely and excited to learn. Rowing makes you feel like you're in charge, but also reminds you that what you are in charge of is very small and, through the lens of the other agents affecting you, you find that your keep is insignificant: a life lesson which cannot be learned too early, or it makes you tired the rest of your life.
Tomorrow is my day off. I am set to spend it in Salzburg, I think, with another boarding assistant who I am quite fond of, and with whom I get along as well as anyone in presently in Europe. I can't think of what to do yet, even, because my eyes hurt when I blink them and the kids, although this will never happen again, were given an erroneous quantity of sugar right before study period. This had made them unmanageable and dangerous, like gorillas wearing haberdashery. It is decided: tomorrow will be Schloss Leopoldskron, Old Town, the river, and when everyone comes to meet up with us at night, and the river is jetting with the newly lay storm water, it has to be the Augustinerbrau. I'm thankful to be active, finally, but there is just no substitute for the arrival of a very anticipated day off.
Sunday is the only off-day that the school provides the students, and it was still as packed as a day of rest can be. Breakfast is at 8, and it was pancakes, and it was fruit and yogurt, and it was hot cocoa, and it was delicious. We then had cakes and coffee at Dallman's, a pastry shop up the road owned by the husband of one of the administrative gurus at the school, a lovely and smiling woman named Natascha. That's how things are in St. Gilgen; everyone is related to everyone, and the fashionable spread of news and secrets very strictly underscores that fact. Then just after noon, we cooked four pizzas the size of Vatican pulpit bibles, and we rode mountain bikes. That is, some of us did: I napped. This is also how St. Gilgen is: we are frenetic in pace, or we are power-switched off. This is the way of the restaurants, of the kids, of the weather coming over the mountains.
The first full week of school is over now, and I finally feel like I can update something worthwhile. This case proved impossible last week for two reasons. First, I knew that I would be way too busy to concentrate on something that calms me down. And second, I figured that most of what I said would have been nonsense, because it would simply change again this week. Both reasons were proved right, but those are no bother now: I have something of a schedule, and even though I'll be ragged come December, I'm glad I finally have a routine. On Mondays and Thursdays, I will take out a team of kids in the quad skiffs that the school reserves, and we'll be doing some rowing around Wolfgangsee. Tuesdays and Saturdays will be football. Wednesdays and Fridays, we have rehearsal for a stage adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes tale, which we will be putting on at the end of the term. Hopefully I'll also be able to shadow the advanced English and Math classes, and the philosophy equivalent in the International Baccalaureate program, which is called Theory of Knowledge. If that sounds packed, then our trips, hikes, mountain bike courses, and team sports visits are peppered into nearly every week of the term. We do, very happily, find ourselves served chocolate mousse or some kind of pastry with every lunch: you just can't complain about compulsory mousse.
---------------------------------------------------
I started my first day of rowing coaching today. It was a delight. For the next year, I will be a member of the rowing club in St. Gilgen, and I will have two sessions a week. On Monday afternoons for four hours, I'm in charge of the juniors. Sixteen girls and one boy, as excitable as house cats, and some of them with equivalent swimming experience. A group of them, however, are remarkably skilled for their young age, and all of them are lovely and excited to learn. Rowing makes you feel like you're in charge, but also reminds you that what you are in charge of is very small and, through the lens of the other agents affecting you, you find that your keep is insignificant: a life lesson which cannot be learned too early, or it makes you tired the rest of your life.
Tomorrow is my day off. I am set to spend it in Salzburg, I think, with another boarding assistant who I am quite fond of, and with whom I get along as well as anyone in presently in Europe. I can't think of what to do yet, even, because my eyes hurt when I blink them and the kids, although this will never happen again, were given an erroneous quantity of sugar right before study period. This had made them unmanageable and dangerous, like gorillas wearing haberdashery. It is decided: tomorrow will be Schloss Leopoldskron, Old Town, the river, and when everyone comes to meet up with us at night, and the river is jetting with the newly lay storm water, it has to be the Augustinerbrau. I'm thankful to be active, finally, but there is just no substitute for the arrival of a very anticipated day off.
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