My other life

I lived in Austria for nearly a year. I lived and worked in a boarding school - yeah... the thing about boarding schools is you have so much intensive contact with a small number of people that you just want to run screaming into the woods and hide all day (which I did, minus the screaming, on a number of occasions), but when you're finally removed from the situation it's amazing how quickly you forget the aggravation and miss those people quite longingly. My time there was amazing and I have thousands of fond memories squirreled away in the recesses of my head. Unfortunately there is no room here to recount them all so I'll make do with a few pictures.

Salzburg is a beautiful city that manages to hide its size well and still come across as quaint.

The school was located in the countryside just south of the city. At the end of the road is the Untersburg Mountain. The view from the first promontory is amazing. I climbed to the station near the top (1800 meters) and nearly passed out while descending, for lack of food.

This is the mountain as viewed from near the boy's dormitory, where I resided as 'Residential Counselor'.

I must have really hunkered down during the winter, for although it encompassed the core of my stay in Austria, I have few pictures indicative of that cold season. This next photo is the front drive of the dorm, Konig Ludwig, also a hotel and restaurant. The van is one of the school vans in which I have fond memories of tearing down the pictured driveway and executing 'schumacher-esque' maneuvers to the delight of the boys.

The other RC, who was my roommate and split duties with me supervising the boys (and coaching soccer), was Patrick. Had Patrick not shared my eccentric sense of humor, my standard of life would have suffered; considering 90% of the people I knew while living in Salzburg were middle and high school students, I really only had a few 'non-dependants' that I could depend on myself as a vital release valve.

Emotionally, I think my time in Austria was most defined as a time when I had many different 'roles' and I was constantly changing personas to accommodate interacting with so many unique individuals. Although it was a great opportunity to learn from a wide variety of cultures, it seemed like nearly everyone understood me as only some fraction of my full personality and Patrick was the only person whom I could interact with as my complete self.

This is Patrick and Laura. Now I could write a book on all of the students and what they meant to me and what I learned from interacting with them and that would be fair to everyone, but I don't have that kind of time or emotional fortitude. So I'll just say that I miss Laura and move on.

The RCs operated as much as a business unit as social unit and everyone fulfilled a particular role. Here we see myself, Anjali (my go-to social conspirator) and Patrick. We had a lot of these formal events (this being graduation) and I took it upon myself to release the tension whenever possible. Now that I think about it, I was doing that a lot, for everyone - those kids had way too much stress for their ages.

We had two days a week off when we could get away from the school (two more than the kids - I teased them through reminding them of it but they don't even know how much more I needed that time) and much of that time was spent with Anjali. This next picture is in the accepted American gathering spot - O'Malleys, the Irish Pub. It was a rare occasion that all of the RC's were out together.

Pictured are Dalibor, Patrick, Pam, myself and Anjali on Saint Patrick's day - also Patrick's birthday and one hell of a day to drink with friends in a country that understands what bars should be like.

I'm including this next picture because it pleases me so much. When I was about 5 I had a dinosaur book and there was a page with a silhouette drawing of a man standing beside an ultrasaurus leg. The book explained that this was the biggest dinosaur ever and all that had ever been found was the leg. When I saw this bone cast in a museum in Vienna I nearly shit myself with excitement and I became the man standing beside the Ultrasaurus leg. I'm feeling a little reverberation of joy right now as I remember it.

One of my duties as RC was to drive a van on school trips. By the second trip of the year I had bonded sufficiently with a number of 'my boys' (those who lived on my floor and reported to me) that we were a van team - they wouldn't have any other driver and I wouldn't have any other crew.

Pictured; Tom, me, Fabian, Shota, Sandu, Husseyn (I don't know why James missed this picture). The license plate derives from a game I called "a little tap" in which I kept our van amused by giving Patrick's van little taps whenever a stop light afforded us the opportunity. The inevitable conclusion was the at the cost of our poor licence plate.

Two of my primary responsibilities with the boys were; providing myself as a good role model and sternly disciplining, when necessary:

It was very cold on our trip to the Rhine valley. There's nothing quite as warming as being volubly swarmed by a tiny throng of Japanese girls. I particularly miss the little Nippons.

I like this next picture for a few reasons; it nicely illustrates the personalities of the students in it and reminds me of experiences I had with them individually; it depicts the essence of their life at the school - always dressed up and expected to do something but inherently children; and finally, it offers an attempt at representing a sampling from the wide range of students that I can't possibly due justice here on my site.

Fabian, Bojan, Yavor, Antonio, Lexi, and Givi

When all was said and done, my travels provided me with a wealth of experiences and memories as well as the biggest wad of cash I've ever tried to stuff in my wallet.