Vocab A-Z

This my very last entry about vocab, I promise! I have just uploaded the documents "Vocab A-Z" directly to my blog and I am going to put a link to our wiki! That´s it for the next two month, I think, because today I am starting to work and I don't think that I'll have much time for English (or for studying in general).

However, I am still not quite sure if this is my very last blog entry. At first, I wasn't convinced of this project, but in the end it turned out to be rather interesting. So, we'll see what is going to happen with this language learning blog... the future will show! Have a nice summer and enjoy your holidays! Bye!!!!

No wetbacks any more...

Yesterday I read a couple of very interesting NYT-articles, most of them on the topic of immigration. This seems to be a never-ending issue in the USA. One article, however, especially caught my attention, because it reminded me of Kathi’s presentation about illegal immigration in the U.S.. Kathi mentioned that they were trying to build a fence along the Mexican-American border in order to make it harder for illegal immigrants to cross it.

Now the Homeland Security Department is building a virtual fence in Arizona, which consits of nine towers with radar and high-definition cameras to scan 28 miles of border. Known as Project 28, for the 28 miles of border, the virtual fence is part of the Secure Border Initiative, a mix of technology, manpower and fencing intended to control illegal border crossings. Thousands of agents will be hired and officials expect to have about 600 kilometers of physical fencing by the end of 2008. After the system is fully functioning, the net will be very tight. Officials estimate total cost of the initiative at $7.6 billion. If successful, hundreds of such towers could be installed along the Mexican and Canadian borders.

But problems with the equipment have forced the project to miss its starting date and Boeing, which has a million contract to develop the project, is not providing a new completion date. They said that they would prefer a delay over starting the project with malfunctioning equipment. The Congress, however, is questioning why the problems were not disclosed at a hearing on the project, it was only afterward that the delays came to light.

The cameras, activated by radar, beam high-quality images of targets miles away, making it possible to determine whether they are watching a family or a group of illegal immigrants. The information then flows over a wireless network into laptops and the officials are able to respond quicker to criminals. With much of the Mexican border, officials consider virtual fencing an improvement to distant agents and physical fences that illegal immigrants knock down.

However, residents near the towers have raised concerns, questioning why most towers are miles from the border and whether they will allow unscrupulous agents to peer into their bedrooms. People value their privacy, and are not used to being observed.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair

Hello again! I am sorry that I didn´t write anything recently, but I was very busy studying for my other courses. The last few weeks were extremely stressful and I am glad that this semester is soon (very soon indeed) over. I am really looking forward to finally going back home. Do you know what I missed most, especially in the last couple of weeks? My lovely air-conditioned room back in Carinthia. I really can´t stand this heat here in Graz any longer.

However, I still managed to write something for English today, although I am not quite sure about the quality of this entry as I am not really able to concentrate that well. So, what is this entry all about? Well, I don’t know if you are interested in this topic, but today I would like to tell you something about “witches”. You will probably wonder why I decided to write something about these legendary creatures. In fact, I was inspired by the presentations on Wednesday, which were all very interesting and interactive. To my mind, my fellow students chose great topics, but unfortunately we didn´t have enough time to discuss all of them in greater detail. That´s why I decided to write something about ‘the myth of the witch’, as this topic is somehow related to Sabine’s presentation, isn’t it ?!?


THE MYTH OF THE WITCH

“When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurly-burly’s done.
When the battle’s lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun…
Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1


According to the Dictionary of Word Origins by Joseph T. Shipley, the word “witch” has its origins in the ancient Anglo-Saxon word wicca, which could mean “witch” or “wizard”.

The witch, in one form or another, whether in a positive or negative sense, has been an important part of humanity for a long, long time. Some say the origins of the witch date back thousands of years to human pre-history, to the days when the Goddess was worshiped and humanity had great reverence for the powers of Nature and for women as creators of new life.



Prior to the 14th century witchcraft was popular among various European peoples, and it was more or less tolerated by the hierarchy of the Church. It is important to remember, however, that witchcraft didn’t mean demon-worship, as it was later branded. Rather, witchcraft came to mean a collection of beliefs and practices including healing through spells, mixing unguents, doing magic and forecasting the future. The witch functioned more like a priestess than an evil sorceress.


From the late 14th century to the early 18th, the hierarchy of Christianity essentially turned its back on the peaceful and compassionate message of Jesus and substituted instead a fanatical rage of intolerance and paranoia aimed at anyone suspected of being a witch. Almost anyone could be accused of being a witch or a devil worshiper during this reign of terror, often referred to as ‘The Burning Times’. At that time of extreme suspicion, women were the most vulnerable to these wild accusations. Needless to say, a woman who practiced herbal medicine was in a severly precarious position.


A societal contempt for the status of women eventually led to the belief on behalf of Church authorities that the devil could easily seduce women to join him. This explained why most of the accused witches were female. It was believed that witches would travel to sabbats where they would consort with the devil and even engage in sexual relations with Satan.

By the late 14th century and certainly by the 15th, the persecution of witches began in earnest. The Church had gone from a somewhat tolerant disbelief in witches to a fanatical doctrine toward the existence of witches and their alleged alliance with Satan. Accused witches were burned to death, hanged, drowned or crushed to death under heavy stones. Many would die under torture during the inquisitor’s attempt to extract a confession of witchcraft.


Although there were many witch hunters over the centuries, one of the most notorious was a traveling lawyer called Matthew Hopkins from Protestant England. He was a fraudulent inquisitor who made a nice business for himself killing innocent people in the name of God, of course. Like many other witch hunters he used a witch pricker, a sharp needle-like device to stick at the “witches’ mark” on the witch’s body. One test to prove the accused was a witch was the lack of pain if the mark was stabbed slightly. Another insane method used for hunting witches was the ‘Water Test’. Women bound were thrown into pools of water and if they sank, they were innocent. But if they floated, they were presumed guilty of witchcraft and murdered.


The ‘Burning Times’ was one of the foulest periods in the history of Western Civilization- a time when compassion gave way to prejudice, when simply being different could result in the most sadistic and brutal tortures and eventually death.


Sources:
- Dictionary of Word Origins by Joseph T. Shipley
- World Book Encyclopedia
- http://www.parascope.com

Tales of Life Abroad

Hello my fellow sufferers! So, many English students tend to get nervous on the eve of the final, but I´m not planning to do this today. I will stay calm and concentrated and I will just go over my notes again to summarise what I have learned so far. But I would also like to upload an interesting blog entry, so I thought why not writing about the second book I had to read for English. I guess you are all very interested in my personal thoughts about “A House Somwhere”, aren’t you?

To begin with, I would like to quote from the introduction, which was written by Don George and Anthony Sattin, the two editors of this collection of travel stories.

“It’s a potent scenario: you´re on a trip somewhere […] and suddenly you see a place that exerts a kind of mysterious attraction on you. […] It’s not logical, but you’re irresistibly drawn there, and after you return to wherever you came from, you spend all your time thinking about how to get back to that enchanted place. This chance encounter will change your life forever.”

Visiting a place that has an outstanding pull on your heart and then wanting to establish some sort of residence there is not an uncommon travel experience. In fact, that is the main theme that all the pieces share: settling down in a foreign country. This book has selections from twenty-six different authors on this theme. Eight essays are original works by authors who include Isabel Allende, Simon Winchester, and Jan Morris. Others come from well-known books such as Mayle’s A Year in Provence, Mayes’s Under the Tuscan Sun, Emma Tennant’s A House in Corfu, Niall Williams and Christine Breen’s O Come Ye Back to Ireland, and Tim Parks’s Italian Neighbors. There’s a delightful variation, with stories from all over the world. The stories are set in the Philippines, Paris, Provence, the USA, Italy, Kenya, Singapore, Mexico, Ireland, Morocco, Japan, China, Egypt, Thailand, Turkey and Greece.

There´s one thing this book proves: the nicest way to get to know a place is to live there for a while, having enough time to catch the rhythm of the place and to get to know the local people. The mood is mostly light-hearted and humorous and the essays provide both entertaining and enlightening anecdotes about overseas living experiences. I enjoyed them all, because they made me appreciate electricity, paved roads, and being able to turn on a faucet and drink the water. I love such stories about people living in a cross-cultural situation, because they remind me how lucky I am to get to live in Austria. Don´t get me wrong, I really love travelling. It so much fun getting to know different people, visiting fascinating places and exploring a new culture. However, I don´t think that I will ever be able to find a place somewhere else that convinces me of leaving Austria forever. To my mind, Jan Morris puts it well in the opening essay, “Home Thoughts from Abroad:”

“And I know well, too, the delectable thrill of moving into a new house somewhere altogether else, in somebody else’s country, where the climate is different, the food is different, the light is different, where the mundane preoccupations of life at home don’t seem to apply and it is even fun to go shopping. […] However, I never felt entirely comfortable, entirely natural, in those delectable foreign homes.”

As I have already mentioned, reading this book was a real pleasure, because sometimes I even had the feeling that I was travelling the world myself. Yes, I think that´s what I liked most about this book, namely that it offered me the possibility to visit all those exciting and beautiful places without leaving my own little dull room. I also enjoyed the fact that there is no direct connection between the different chapters, they are arranged independently. That’s great because it allows you to start reading wherever you want without missing anything that has happened before. As far as vocab is concerned, there was one thing that really surprised me. You cannot even imagine how many words from the “Jaywalking with the Irish” glossary were also used in this book. It was amazing and it really lightened my mood, because now I know that trying hard to memorise all those new words was not for nothing. Sometimes, however, I still had difficulties with reading this book above all when I came across all those expressions written in a foreign language I am not at all able to understand.


My favourite story

If I were to choose my favourite story (which is very hard indeed) it would probably be “Digging Mr Benny´s Dead Uncle” by Rolf Potts. Potts’ first book, “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term Travel” was written in Ranong, Thailand. In fact, the story I chose tells about the process of writing this book and I decided to pick it because it´s hilarious (it really is!), but it also reveals a lot about what it is like to live in a foreign country.
So, as I´ve already mentioned, Potts moves to this sleepy town in Thailand not to get to know the local culture or to explore the beauty of the landscape but to write this book. So, in the beginning he lives in total isolation and just focuses on his work. Then one day, however, he goes to a local barbershop to have his hair cut and gets to know Mr Benny, a thin old barber with a moustache, thick spectacles and some faded crucifix tattoos. This odd character tells Potts a tale about how he had to travel to the USA in 1993 to digg out the bones of his uncle Benedict, who had already died fourty years ago.

I have just been told in class that Kathi has already written about the same story and I think she did a great job. So, if you would like to know more about Mr Benny´s amusing anecdote, just have a look at her blog.
What I would like to mention, however, is how this experience influences Potts’ opinion about Thailand in general and the local people in particular. The fact is that after his first visit to this dusty and outmoded barbershop, Potts isn´t able to concentrate on his work anymore. It is somehow impossible for him not to reflect on this quirky encounter as he was only told the first part of the story and many questions keep lingering in his head. That´s why he makes a habit of visiting Mr Benny`s barbershop whenever he passes through central Ranong. He also starts to enjoy conversations with other local people and as time flies he begins to feel more a part of this little southern Thailand border town. In sharing the bizzare tale of his dead uncle, Mr Benny has broken through his tunnel vision and allowed him to glimpse a piece of Ranong for the first time.

Desperate Houswife....... no, not really!

Hello everybody! I have to admit that the last few entries weren’t that thrilling and I wonder if there is still anybody reading my blog. In case there is still someone left, I would like to proudly present an expat blog I absolutely enjoyed reading. Now some of you might ask, “Why did she ENJOYED (past tense) reading it?” Well, I didn’t give up reading this amazing blog, in fact I read every single entry. However, the women writing it left the foreign country she was living in and so now she doesn’t have anything to write about…. What a pity! I am serious now, you have to believe me. It really was a pleasure to read this blog and I even became kind of addicted to it.


By the way, those of you who regularly read Birgit Böck´s entries might notice that my blog report has a familiar ring. It is true, I am guilty of choosing the same expat blog. But in order to understand my motivation, I have to inform you about my tedious search for a good blog in my second foreign language, BKS. So, you would think that finding such blog is child´s play, especially if you have three diffrenet countries and languages to choose from. However, quite the contraty seems to be true. Please, believe me, I tried hard to find a different blog, but I couldn’t. I had a look at a vast number of blogs about Croatia as this is the country I am interested in most. However, the majority of them were of poor quality when it comes to content or style and sometimes I couldn´t even identify if they were really written in English. Moreover, most of the time I couldn´t even find a single entry that seemed to be culturally relevant. It is obvious that a lot of people don´t care much about the style and content of their blog, they just try to stay in contact with their family and friends back home. From time to time, however, I came across a blog that seemed be interesting and worth mentioning. For example, for a while I read a blog about the whole area of southeast Europe and it really seemed to be promising at first. It was called “Balkan Baby” and what I liked most was the great variety of different topics, which ranged from sports to politics. In addition to that, there were many entries about Croatia and its most popular tourist attractions. However, didn´t like the style, sometimes it was rather informal and not amusing at all. So, despite my qualms I decided to tell you about the blog “Desperate Serbwife”.

******************************************


To begin with, the blog was written by Brooke, an American moving to Belgrad, Serbia, not because of any particular connection to this country, but because her husband was offered a job there. She kept this blog for about fifteen months until she returned to the USA to accept a job offer there. (As you can see, Americans are very likely to move somewhere else for better job prospects) So, blogging really seemed to be a cure for her expat blues as she mainly used her blog for telling her friends and family about what it is like to live abroad in a country that is vastly different from her own when it comes to culture and language.


Because of her difficulties to learn the new language and to find her way around in a new culture, she was sometimes rather frustrated at the beginning of her stay. For example, she was totally disgruntled, because she wasn´t even able to read the street signs or the instructions on food packages as they were all written in cyrillic. That´s why she had a few hilarious encounters with some local people in Serbia. Her maid, for example, had to explain to her that the powder she had identified as dishwashing powder was actually tub and tile cleaner. Or the only answer she was able to give when a salesperson asked how much she wanted of something was “pola kilo”, meaning half a kilo. That was fine for things like meat or potatoes, but when it came to red peppers, for example, it was a bit of a problem. She was also annoyed by the fact that taxi drivers always charged her too much just because she wasn´t able to speak the local language. They seemed to hear an accent and decided that she had to be rich and wouldn’t mind or even notice paying twice as much as people without an accent. So she was eager to learn Serbian in order to understand what people are saying to her and what is going on. And she quickly realized that by learning Serbian, she would be able to speak Bosnian and Croatian too. To be perfectly honest, that´s also why I chose Croatian as my second foreign language although I also had to start from scratch.


However, even if she had been able to speak the local language perfectly well, she would have still faced many problems that cannot be avoided when moving to a foreign country. Generally speaking, it is always difficult having to get used to a different lifestyle and this process of adapting always needs some time no matter where you go. That´s why she also had some bad experiences while acclimatising herself to this different culture. For example, she was very annoyed having to buy adapters and converters for every single appliance as the voltage used in Serbia is twice as high as in America. She also mentioned that streets were a serious problem as there were scores of potholes, sometimes even sections were missing, but the streets never received any repairs. Sometimes she complained about the high gas prices or about the huge amount of disgusting cars that polluted the environment and made the lungs of Belgrade residents black by emitting thick black clouds of exhaust fumes. In addition to that, it was very difficult for her to understand the Serbian way of living. For instance, one thing that she surely won’t miss is the smoking. It drove her crazy to sit in smoke filled cafés, ride in taxis while the driver was smoking or walk behind people who blew that disgusting filth from their lungs. And she was shocked by the driving habit of the local people, who seemed to be speed-addicted maniacs without any regard for the rules. The incessant horn honking upset her most as people even tended to honk at drivers in front of them who couldn’t turn right because of an old lady crossing the street. She also pointed out the bad bus etiquette. Not that people only refused to scoot in towards the window, they also refused to let you off. So you had to get ready to immediately jump off the bus when the doors opened. Sometimes Brooke even made fun of the Serbian belief that cold weather was making you sick. People there think that if you walk outside with wet hair, you will get a headache and if you sit on a cold surface, you won't be able to have children. I am not quite sure what other students in our course think about this topic (as we are quite international), but I was told exactly the same when I was a little girl.
Brooke also had a hard time finding a job at first as she was rejected without being talked to or even considered for positions. Finally, however, she got a volunteer position as an advocacy advisor. To my mind, her reaction to this job offer was typically American, because even though she wasn´t paid for her job, it still fulfilled her need to do something productive with her time.


Overall, however, she had many more successes than failures and after a while life became quite comfortable and happy in Serbia. She adored her apartmant which was just huge and beautiful and the neighbourhood they were living in was just perfect. They lived just outside the city center, not far away from a traditional open-air market and a small park and there were tons of cute restaurants and stores all around. In addition to that, it did not take her long to make many new friends as people were disarmingly friendly, helpful, very kind and welcoming. She was also relieved to find out that Belgrad was an amazingly safe city! All in all, she really seemed to have a high opinion about this country. For example, she thought that after all the problems of the 1990's, Serbia had started to blossom in so many ways - in business, in tourism, in democratic government. She was fascinated by the amount of determination she had seen in this country's young people. There were also a million other little things that Brooke loved, like the beautiful countryside or the fact that everything was just unbelievably cheap (except for gas). However, the thing that she loved (and talked about) most was the high quality of Serbian food, with a special emphasis on fresh vegetables.



So, I think that is enough information about Brooke, because now I would like to explain to you why I chose this particular blog. Well, this decision was rather easy. In fact, as soon as I read the first couple of entries, I knew that this would be the right one. I am fond of Brooke´s style and if I had to choose a single word to describe her blog, it would probably be ADDICTIVE. It really is, because most of her stories are just hilarious and make you laugh out loud. I am very well aware of the fact that Mr Newman doesn´t want us to copy what other people have written, but you should really get the feeling of what it was like for me to read her blog. So here´s an entry of Brooke´s blog:


"It burns, it burns!"

Alright boys and girls, today's lesson will be on the importance of using SOAP when washing your hands. I know that many of you have heard me harp about the importance of washing your hands WITH SOAP in order to protect yourself from the cold and flu, but today's example should drive that message home. Word of caution: Do not try this yourself, it is not fun.


So last night Mike came home early from work (YAY) and so we decided to make Chili for dinner. I had bought all the ingredients at the market, including jalepenos pepper for Mike's portion (I'm too wimpy to eat jalapeno peppers). Mike tried a bit of the pepper to see how hot it was. After a small bite, his face turned bright red and he dove for the fridge to get some beer to cool his tastebuds. He decided to cut out the seeds (the hottest part) and eat only the outside part. ´


So we made a very yummy chili and Mike enjoyed his portion with the jalepenos. After dinner I rinsed off all the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. One of the last things that I cleaned was the cutting board with the jalepeno seeds and remanents on it. First I brushed the seeds and stuff off in the the garbage and then I rinsed the cutting board and placed it in the dishwasher. I then rinsed my hands, dryed them and went to sit on the couch with Mike. A few minutes later I wiped in the corner my eye because I had an itch.....and then immediately my eye started to burn, and I realized that I HAD NOT WASHED MY HANDS WITH SOAP AND NOW THERE WAS JALEPENO IN MY EYE AND IT WAS BUUUUUUUUUURNING!!!!!!


AHHHHH, MY EYE, MY EYE!!! I ran to our bathroom to rip out my contact lens but I didn't even have time to open my contact case and so I just crouched on the floor next to the tub, holding my eye with one hand and the contact up for Mike to deal with in the other. OOOOOUCH!!! IT BURNED!!!! I couldn't even open it, it burned too bad!!! We thought about putting beer in my eye to take away the burning, be decided against it (and Mike didn't want to waste good beer, haha). I couldn't even open it to flush it out with water, so I just sat there with my hand over my eye, WAAAAAAAAAAA! After about a minute, with my eye still burning, I just couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I can't even take jalepeno in my food, and now it was in my eye!!! I have got to be the world's biggest idiot!


After a few minutes, it started to feel better and I was able to flush my eye with some water and then Mike put a bunch of Visine drops in it. My eye is fine now. Today´s lesson: If you don’t wash with soap, it´s like you didn´t wash at all- that, and, never put a jalapeno in your eye.


However, that is not the only reason why I chose this blog. To my mind, Brooke’s blog isn´t only amusing, it is also very philosophical and her entries are full of detailed descriptions of the local people, of the Serbian life style and even of other European countries. I don´t think that her style is too informal, far from it! Most of the time it is obvious that she picked her words very carefully and that her intention was to publish well-written, thoughtful entries. To my mind, she definitely has a talent for writing. Most importantly, I think it helped me a lot to read this blog as I even picked up some useful words and phrases and in English. In addition to that, there are even some entries about the Serbian grammar which remided me how it was like for me to learn this language. She mainly talked about how hard it is to get used to the case system of the Serbian language (there are SEVEN cases) and although this grammatical chapter wasn´t new for me, it was still useful to read the explanations in English.


What is more, this blog is great as Brooke provides great insights into many different cultures, she doesn’t only focus on Serbia as one might expect. Together with her husband she explores many different parts of Europe like Hungary, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Luxenbourg and Slovenia and I´m pleased to say that she loves Slovenia as much as I do. That´s why I could also learn a lot about other European countries, but I don´t want to bore you to death with a summary of what she liked and what not. As this blog was written by an American moving to Serbia, I would like to focus on those two cultures.

So what did I learn about the Serbian culture? Well, I have to admit that I didn´t really know a lot about Serbian culture before as we are mainly focusing on Croatia in most of our courses at university (it is such a shame, I know!!!) However, maybe that is why I consider her descriptions of this country so informative and interesting. One thing that really shocked me was her entry about the inflation in the 1990´s when many people lost all their savings and all commerce was stopped. By the time people were paid in local currency at the end of the month, the amount was only enough money for a liter of milk and one loaf of bread. Amazingly enough, Serbia even holds the world record for the largest banknote ever printed at 500,000,000,000 Dinars. It was also interesting to read about the Serbian tradition of “slava”. Every family in Serbia has a patron saint which they honor on that saint's feast day and this day of celebration is known as their "slava." Most interestingly, everyone's saint celebration is on a different day of the year. I would also like to mention her entry about the “Montenegrin Referendum”. Well, I have heard about that important election before (I am not that stupid or uneducated as you might think), but it was especially interesting to read about the first-hand experiences of someone living in that particular area at that time. For those of you how are not informed about the outcome of this election: Serbia and Montenegro, two “countries” which share a common language, history and ethnicity, decided to brake up and form independent countries.

Because Brooke is from the USA ( from Washington DC, to be more precisely), she also included useful information about American culture in her blog. Living abroad and talking to people from all over the globe has given her an interesting insight into they way the world views America. And she is rather shocked when she realizes that, for the most part, the world hates America. However, she also seems to be very critical about American politics in general. For example, she mentions that Americans should rather pay more attention to the crisis in Sudan or the US's inhumane and immoral treatment of "enemy combatants" from the Iraq war and not to sending more and more troops into the Iraq. To her mind, America's foreign policy can mainly be described as “two-faced, hypocritical and arrogant”. And she even tries to convince her fellow Americans to stop to this nonesense by voting against Bush and the Republican Party.

So, what else do I have to say about this blog? Well, reading through my detailed description you will have probaly noticed that I liked this blog and I can only recommend it to all of you. So if you have time, just have a look- it really isn’t a waste of time.

******************************************

BTW (By the way): I didn´t forget to look at a second blog and I also listended to many “Here on Earth” podcasts, but I haven’t had enough time to write a summary so far.

HOORAY! I´ve made it!!!!!!

I still can't believe it, but I have really made it, I have finished my tedious and exhausting vocab project!! There were many times when I just wanted to give up and there were many times when I nearly did it..... but now I'm really glad that I brought this project to an end. I just relieved and happy!!! So, now I finally have time for studying for the exam.... great!



By the way, you can access the last FEW words as usual when you look at My files: Vocab Round 31-40 and Last Words B, C, D, P and S.

However, I'm quite sure that there are some typos in these documents.... I mean, it wasn't my purpose to make any mistakes, but I spent the last three days in front of my computer and so I think that I might have overlooked some mistakes. So, that's why I would like to ask those of you who are actually using my documents for their studies to tell me if there are any typos or any other mistakes in them.

Just one last thing that I wanted to mention: THIS IS DEFINITELY MY VERY LAST ENTRY ABOUT VOCAB!!!

words, words, and more words

Again just a short post to let you know that I have just uploaded new vocab lists.... round 21-30. Still many left, but as the exam is next week, I will try to bring my vocab project to an end as soon as possible. Bye