Frühlingserwachen - spring finally seems to have arrived in Germany and Austria...

[LinzerTorte]

... or at least I hope so.

For everyone in Germany and Austria, and anyone else who would like to chat!

Oh no, Canella, sounds like a nightmare - but hopefully you've done better than you thought and at least you're feeling fairly confident about the oral. That example you gave is really difficult; the first two words are ans and weder, but I'm not too sure about the third - müssen, maybe?

Glad you've almost got the paperwork sorted out, admylin. DH excelled himself in the presents he brought back this time: a pencil (with his company's name on it, so obviously a freebie) and a postcard for each of the DC. Nothing for me, unless he's keeping it till Mother's Day. He and his boss were flown there in a private jet, so you'd think he would have got some better freebies than that!

i had never heard the phrase "brachte ans Licht" so put ins instead - made sense to me but wont forget it now! and now you've said weder i can see that its right - just got so stuck with the whole sentence that i couldnt think straight in the end.

hope your dh produces some good mothers day presents since he was flown in a private jet! my dh is on call on sunday - no rest for me!

Wow Canella that was a hard test. I'm sure you'll do well in the oral test as you've been here a while. I'd have got 'ans' for the first one but would have been stuck with the other 2. Was there a list of possible words?

I'll be up dead early on mothers day as dh goes to Hamburg. He's cursing the neurosurgeons as it's one of their conferences and alot of them only have the weekend so the whole weekend from 7am to late evening is full, then it goes on for another 3 days but slightly less hours. Dh is coming home by train tomorrow night as we couldn't get him into a hotel (well, not for a decent price) so he'll have to set off at 6am on Sunday to be back there on time and then he'll stay in a hotel until the end.

Who knows, maybe by some miracle the dc will get up of their own accord, go to the bakery and make me a lovely mothers day breakfast at least!

Think Linzer is right with "müssen". I wondered about "werden", but it makes less sense in context.

Admylin I've only been teaching the dc since Feb. I started off by working out what I wanted to teach and then writing out a lesson plan in the style of a Berlitz manual. I found a lot of good ideas online, for example starting the lesson with a physical exercise (I say "stand up", "clap", "stamp", "swim", etc and the kids have to copy me while repeating the words). The only problem with the online stuff is that it's aimed mostly at EFL teachers in Asia, where the kids are obviously expected to learn to read as early as possible, whereas I have to assume my groups can't read.

With adults I used to drill grammar rather than try to explain it in German. I can give you specific examples if you tell me what grammar it is. I think most people have a big block against anything that works differently in their own language, though. "Used to do" for example. Easy to explain, easy to drill, but by next lesson it's like you never mentioned it!

it is hard canella! I hate those filling in the gaps tests. Good luck for the oral. I found my exam really hard too - harder than any practice ones I had done - but still passed all the individual bits. My assessment that it was harder was right, but I still passed. And then the oral really brought my overall mark up. So, go for it on Monday!

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Gosh, that was a hard test Canella.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mothers' Day!

Happy mothers day, is it today in the US too jenny?

I've just taken dh to his train and am now waiting for my 2 Langschläfer to arrise and serve me with breakfast! Saved them having to go to the bakery as I picked some sesame and poppy seed rolls up on the way back from the station.

Lovely sunny day again. Has your snow gone yet?

Yes, tis the same here. I must go to bed, but have been waiting for dh to get off his laptop! No snow at our level (3600ft) but still 140 inches at the ski resort, which is open till the end of May. Hope you have a lovely breakfast in bed!

happy mothers day!

admylin - yours sounds as good as mine! dh is at work till lunchtime and only 1 of the dc has remembered!

oral exam tomorrow - will let you all know how it goes!

Good luck, sure you will do well!

Had a lovely breakfast outside on the balcony and now sitting reading a book in the sun. Next job on the list - empty dishwasher. So nice to be able to hand out jobs. Should I get them to make lunch too? Wonder what I'd get!

Forgot to say - dh rang, he's very pleased with his hotel, pleasantly surprised as we thought it's be a bit rubbish for that price. Also he's very mad as he's had to pay another 100 euro registration fee as he only paid the membership fee (200) already and forgot the registration fee.

They are trying to get him to go to the US in November (he even wanted to go at one point) but he's so mad at all the costs and no reimbursment that he isn't going. Registration 450 dollar, membership 175 dollar and then flights and hotel on top of that.

its a lot of money for him to shell out without getting it reimbursed. I told dh about your dh's boss taking credit for his paper - he was incensed on his behalf but said if he made a big fuss about it then he would also have to be looking for a new job at the same time (which is unfair but true!).

Can finally get back onto the thread now that I've switched to Firefox; I haven't been able to get into Living Overseas since yesterday morning. There's a thread about it in Site Stuff and MNHQ asked what browsers everyone is using, so I thought I'd see if it worked in Firefox - and hey presto, it does!

Hope everyone is having a good Mother's Day. We've been out for coffee/ice cream for the third time in two days, but at least it feels like we have an excuse today. DD2 has been in an awful mood so far today, though; she and DD1 stayed overnight at a friend's last night and seem to have had very little sleep.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Mother's Day despite your early start, admylin. Reading on the balcony sounds perfect; I spent a lot of time yesterday sitting outside reading, but it's much cooler here today and looks like it could start raining any time.

silken Starting the lesson with some physical exercise sounds like a great idea. DD2's teacher made the children do some exercise (jumping up and down, hopping on one leg, etc.) before I started teaching last Wed's lesson, and it was obvious that they all really enjoyed it - I'd never thought of doing anything like that in English, though. What's a Berlitz-style lesson plan? I find it much easier to find handouts for DD1's class than for DD2's, who are only just starting to read and write in German so I don't want to introduce reading and writing in English yet.

Canella I think the only reason my three remembered Mother's Day is that they were all desperate to give me the presents they'd made at KiGa and school! DS actually gave me his yesterday (he couldn't understand why he had to wait until Sunday and had wanted me to open it on Fri pm); we took him to the playground after dropping off the girls, where he fell and cut his head and was very upset - so being "allowed" to give me his present a day early helped cheer him up. Good luck for tomorrow btw; I'm sure you'll do really well.

Morning!! Hope you all had as good as a Mothers Day as Linzer and Admylin. You two sounded like you had a great day. My day didnt really get much better (altho DS1 didnt get any more poorly and has gone to kiga today!!) so think we'll probably celebrate properly next weekend!

But good news - i nailed my oral exam this morning!! I could see the scoring sheet and i got top marks throughout!! Whoo hoo!!
So just a few weeks wait to find out if i did enough in the written to scrape a pass. Everything crossed,

linzer - have you been out jogging? I came home and went straight out to run - feel well proud of myself - hope you've been out too.

That's brilliant Canella - well done! I knew you could do it.

I have indeed been out running - although walking/jogging would be a more accurate description - so feel very proud of myself now too (esp. as I didn't collapse in a heap at the end of it). Which C25k podcast are you using? The music on the NHS one isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I would liked to have been told when I'd reached the halfway point (which I know other podcasts do).

Have now been told to take it easy for the rest of the day by my gynae (I had an appointment there straight after my run); she specifically told me not to go running, so I was glad I'd managed to fit it in beforehand. Am now reading and MNing outside in the garden as it's a nice sunny day here.

Thanks Linzer!! and good on you for the walking/jogging!! i'm using the NHS podcast too - i thought the music was ok and found Laura (was that her name??) quite easy on the ear. But i had to work out before i started when was halfway cause i ran throught the forest but wanted to turn at the halfway point or else i'd have been too far away from home. after 4 x 1 minute seemed to be halfway.

Hope those dc of yours let you rest this afternoon - sounds like a nice idea to be MNing in the garden!

Well done for the jogging girls! I did part 1 of the Jillian Micheals dvd work out this morning. Phew, I am very unfit but it was good and I managed it (OK, with a few more pauses than allowed).

Dh rang, he says the atmosphere is not very nice at the conference, some neurosurgeons got up and left a talk because they thought it wasn't relevant, not dh's talk but it made everyone nervous. There's a bit of 'us against them' so the scientists and researchers are 2nd best as the neurosurgeons are of course above everything.

Well done Canella on the exam! That's excellent news! Great stuff on the jogging too. Where can I get this podcast? I need to get some exercise in!

If you put NHS couch to 5k into google it appears - its a great way to start running!

I had quite a relaxing afternoon in the end as both DD2 and DS were at friends' houses. I was struggling to help DD1 with her maths homework, though; the maths itself was quite straightforward, but it took me a while to get my head around schriftliches Dividieren, which seems to be their version of long division.

Canella Once Laura had said we were on the last-but-one run, I started heading for home as the park is only about 5-10 minutes from our house. I'll definitely need to work out the halfway point if I decide to brave the riverside route, though (apparently there's a 5 km running route there).

admylin Well done on the workout. I bought a DVD last year, used it for about a week, then work suddenly got very busy and I haven't gone back to it since (despite work having been very thin on the ground since the start of the year).

Jenny There are various Couch to 5k podcasts, but I'm using the NHS one which is here.

Sorry, hadn't seen you'd already answered Jenny's question, Canella; I really must remember to refresh before I write a post!

Thanks! I won't be doing any riverside runs though, as there have been various cougar sightings over the last 2 weeks!

Morning all!

I've had a quick skim of the posts over the last 2 weeks but haven't had chance to read them all properly so apologies if I've missed anyone.

2and1 Congratulations!! I'm glad it all went well and I hope you're all enjoying your time with the new arrival - I'm sure he's gorgeous and Henry is a lovely name.

Bebe How did the scan go? Did you have a nice time in the UK?

Linzer How was the Kinderhotel? I hadn't heard of them until you mentioned it but it sounds like a great idea.

Canella Well done on the exam! I have my fingers crossed for you that you aced the written test too.

I was a little worried as I managed to pick up food poisoning (from a salad of all things!) while I was away, but I had my 20 week scan yesterday and all is well. In fact the baby is even a little bigger than average so doing very well indeed. I am very small and although I have a decent sized bump already, I haven't put on any weight so far so am a little concerned now that I will wake up one morning in a few weeks and will suddenly be the size of a house! If I'm honest though I'm more tickled by that thought - until it actually happens :)

Hope everyone's well - aren't you all good running and keeping fit!

Canella well done on the oral exam. I'm hoping with Banana that you did better than you think on the written part as well.

Linzer the exercise game at the beginning of the lesson is brilliant. I teach in a prefab, so the kids all have to take jackets and hats off and change into indoor footwear before the lesson (the door to the main building is about 20m away ). By the time all off them are sitting down, some kids are poking each other, or falling off their chairs, so being able to shout "stand up" gets an instant response and they know the lesson has started.

I started off with "stand up", "sit down", "turn around" and "jive" in the first lesson and add one new action per lesson. After a few weeks you can start giving them sequences, which you keep adding to until they can't remember any more. What's also proved fun is getting individual students to give the group their own sequences of three actions. Obviously the important thing is to get students to say the word as they do the action.

Viel Spaß for those of you jogging. I had a mometary idea to do it too after reading your posts about it, but I don't have a time I could manage every day, other than 10 pm! Maybe after DD starts nursery (parents' evening is tonight!)

Just back from my second Couch to 5k run, which has definitely woken me up ? I only had about 4.5 hours sleep last night thanks to working until midnight and then not managing to drag myself away from the computer for another hour. DH waking me up in the middle of the night to ask me who was crying didn't help matters either (it was DS, who inevitably wanted DH); he claimed in the morning that he'd had to wake me because he thought he was in the Ukraine. He's now away again until Friday, at a Teamseminar somewhere in Austria (I wasn't paying attention when he told me where).

Banana Glad to hear the baby is doing well and hope you've fully recovered from the food poisoning by now. The Kinderhotel was great, thanks ? we had a lovely relaxing time there and the DC really enjoyed it, especially the Easter egg hunt.

silken Thanks for explaining about the exercises; I'm always on the lookout for new things to do with the children. I wish I could buy a book of suitable lesson plans; I know there are plenty of the Internet but I can rarely find any that are very useful ? the language needed is too advanced, they involve craft activities that would take too long, etc. I'm not feeling very inspired today so am going to teach DD1's class the same lesson as I did with DD2's last week (on clothes).
Btw you don't have to run every day with C25k, just three days a week with a day's rest in between each run.

Canella How are you getting on with C25k ? have you done today's run? I felt silly (and got slightly bored) running round and round the park, so ran round the streets behind the school after I'd taken the DDs. Discovered some nice leafy streets there which, most importantly, are very quiet! Walking to school was almost the most exhausting part, as the DDs decided they couldn't carry their school bags (admittedly very heavy, although they have no problems walking with them normally) and ride their scooters at the same time, so I ended up carrying both bags most of the way. My arms and legs will be aching tomorrow (actually, my legs are still aching from Monday's run).