YOUPOST 4

Beautiful New Zealand

A few weeks ago, a girl asked me to give her some advice in terms of travelling. She intends to go to New Zealand and knows that I was there, so I happily gave her some recommendations on what to visit and to do. Now I would like to share my experience with you.

First of all, you do not have to know anything before leaving. There is nothing you must not do, maybe except committing a crime. To correct myself, there is nothing you must not do, that you are not allowed to do in your home country either.
Next, stay as long as possible, because a) the flight is too expensive for a weekend trip and b) you will not be able to get to know the culture in a short time.
In my view, the best way to travel is on your own because you will meet many people on the way and to be honest, I could not spend half a year 24/7 with the same person, even if it was my best friend. I chose to do couchsurfing, I hitch-hiked and survived it. It is not a recommendation to sleep at strangers houses and go with them to the next town, but it is much more adventurous.

Some destinations worth going to: (all the pictures are of course taken by myself, that's why they are not that good)

Queenstown, the city of adventure in the Southwest of the South Island. Known for its beautiful landscape and the great variety of extremsports offered. It is probably best to not stay for too long because after one week you will have spent all your money on things like rafting, mountainbiking and skiing, depends on which time of the year you are going. Remember: Winter on the northern hemisphere means summer in the southern one. Why not spend a hot Christmas and New Year's Eve?

If you then travel on westerly, you will find a hiking trail that leads to Milford Sound, the best known fjord of New Zealand. The attraction is not just the fjord, but the National Park surrounding it is maybe even more beautiful. It is a very touristy place and sadly the only fjord a backpacker can afford to have a look at.

A very remote part of New Zealand is the West Coast of the South Island because it is confined by the Southern Alps in the East and the Tasman Sea in the West. Maybe owing to the fact that there are so few people, the nature is picturesque. To name one example: On the picture above, there is the Fox Glacier, which is a Glacier that runs into the rainforest and the rainforest runs on until it touches the sea.

Another thing you might want to try on the West Coast is Whitebait, a tiny little fish that you eat on the whole. It is a delicacy.

I worked for two and a half weeks on a farm in the Golden Bay, in the North-West of the South Island and I fell in love with that part of the country. Above, you see a photo of Pupu Springs, the clearest waters in the world. 

I recommend eating fresh cockles, pipis and other mussels as well as oysters, picked by yourself in the Bay.

Another remarkable part of New Zealand are the Marlborough Sounds in the Cook Strait. The best way to explore them is to go by kajak. I slept in a hut on one of the many islands and did a night kajak-trip where I saw penguins, dolphins and fish glowing in the moonlight. If you like adventure, go for it!

You might want to try Paua, too. It's a rare, eatable sea snail, but the best part of it is the amazing, colourful shell. The only problem is that they are hard to get, you have to dive for them.

 

One last stop on the South Island: Dunedin, an old Scottish city and the Otago Peninsula, where you can watch some penguins coming home if you are lucky.

 

What I liked best about the North Island, was the Far North. On the left, you see a picture of the northernmost point, Cape Reinga. It is surrounded by a lot of Bays, rainforest and waterfalls. If you like nature, you will definitely like that area.

 

As I said, there are a lot of bays in the Far North and the most famous of them is the Bay of Islands. I prefer other bays over that one because in the Bay of Islands, there are too many tourists. If you have the opportunity to go to one the remote bays of the North, do it.

Rainforest in New Zealand is nothing like the rainforest in other places. The Kauri Trees growing in them are the biggest and highest trees in the world and every rainforest you will walk through, will be full of large ferns. By the way: The silverfern is the national plant of New Zealand.

 

Last but not least, if you like hiking and volcanoes, do the about 18 kilometres long Tongariro Trek in the center of the North Island. There is not much to say about it because, in my opinion, you have to see it for yourself.

I could have shown you about one hundred pictures more, from other stunning, picturesque, amazing places in New Zealand. Indeed, I would be able to fill an entire book about this country. Anyway, at some point there has to be an end.

Some other recommendations:

1) Try Marmite, you probably will not like it, but try it.

2) Wellington is a beautiful city, but maybe try to avoid Christchurch. You will be disappointed because the earthquake destroyed almost everything. A lot of people moved away, so it is a very lonesome city.

3) If you like bubbling muddholes, this is the country for you. On the North Island there are many volcanoes, geysers and other forms of geothermical energy on the surface. Be prepared for the smell of addled eggs!

4) Enjoy the sweet New Zealand accent. :)

5) Go to the small, unknown villages, too. The people will be friendly and show you some places no tourist has ever seen before.

6) Avoid staying in hostels, they are not as international as you might think. You will not speak a word English because ninety per cent of the tourists sleeping in hostels are Germans. If you stay at hostels, maybe you could take one outside of the cities. I had much better experiences with them, because the people are much friendlier and of more disparate cultures.

7) Try some jolly cake.

YOUPOST 3

New York City

I asked myself the question, where I should go to for two weeks, if I had less to do for university. Many answers came to my head, but the most attractive one at the moment is going to New York City, a metropolis where as many people live as in my home country, Austria.

I am not very good at planning a journey, and if I plan it, I do something totally different when I am at my destination. Nonetheless, I try to plan every time I am about to go away again:
I will set off in the summer break next year, so I book a cheap flight to the LaGuardia Airport as soon as possible.
The reason why I want to travel to New York City is because I have never been to such a big city with so many different cultures living in it. America is a Melting Pot and New York was the entrance for the immigrants to the New World. I am curious about the lifestyle of the different ethnicities and so I do not want to stay in hotels or hostels, but do couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is a great opportunity to get to know the real citizens and not just fellow travellers. It is a social network where you can find accommodation, help and information about a place from Natives in the whole world, even in the Antarctica. It already worked out for me in Australia and New Zealand.

Of course I want to do some typical touristy sight-seeing, too. I am interested in the history of America, about which I recently learned in university. As a result, I plan on going to the New York Harbour to see Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty and, when I am already there, the skyline of Manhattan. Going by yellow cab to the Downtown and the Central Park is definitely a must-do, as well as seeing Ground Zero, the Empire State Building and the Times Square.

I do not want to spend more than two thousand Euros and because the flight is very expensive, every activity I planned is free. I intend to spend most of the money on food. I want to eat in Turkish, Malaysian, Mexican, Italian, British, Chinese, Indian etc. restaurants, as many as I can afford.

One last thing I want to take a look at is the Columbia University, because it is one of the eight Ivy League Universities and I suppose the campus and the buildings are picturesque. Maybe I will even get the opportunity to enter them, walk around and explore.

I am looking forward to travelling to the Big Apple. I am sure it is going to be worth the long and uncomfortable flight, the strict security checks and the jetlag.

Homework Analysis 2

Paragraph One (Original):

The advantages of online dictionaries

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided that such dictionaries are not for me. It is arduous to carry a print dictionary around because they are heavy and big, necessarily, because if they were not, there would be even less information offered. Using the internet, in comparison, is much handier and faster. It gives me the opportunity to check on the meaning of a word on various websites, for instance on blogs, in monolingual, bilingual and even picture dictionaries. The amount and variety of online dictionaries is huge, so it is possible for me to learn about the meaning of any idiom crossing my way, additionally I am able to ascertain synonyms, antonyms, collocations and the frequency of the word I searched for, in spoken and written English. In contrast to print ones, a lot of online dictionaries provide audio samples as well as phonetic symbols, so that I can be sure about the right pronunciation. We live in a constantly modernizing world and I want to change with the times, so I definitely prefer online over print dictionaries.

Paragraph Two (Correction):

The advantages of online dictionaries

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided that such dictionaries are not for me. It is arduous to carry a print dictionary around because they are heavy and big. Using the internet, in comparison, is much handier and faster. It gives me the opportunity to check the meaning of a word on various websites, for instance on blogs as well as in monolingual, bilingual and even picture dictionaries. The amount and variety of online dictionaries is great, so it is possible for me to learn the meaning of practically any idiom I come across. Additionally, online dictionaries make it possible to find synonyms, antonyms, collocations and the frequency of a particular word in spoken and written English. In contrast to print dictionaries, many online ones provide audio samples as well as phonetic symbols so I can be sure about the right pronunciation of the words I look up. We live in a constantly modernizing world and online dictionaries adapt better to this world than print dictionaries do, which is why I choose to use the online versions.




Comparing the original paragraph and the corrected one, I can say that I have to be cautious when it comes to the right choice of vocabulary and that I should proofread my paragraph, in order to not give irrelevant information. Additionally, I have to try harder to write in a more logic way. Of course, I understand, what I am thinking when I am writing the paragraph, but it has to be comprehensible for everyone who reads it.
Every time I correct a paragraph, I learn something new or am reminded of mistakes that I tend to make, such as:
1) You do not check on something, you simply check it. You do not learn about the meaning, you learn the meaning.
2) Register is a very important part in writing. "Huge" and "a lot of" are too informal, a paragraph should be written in a neutral to formal language.
3) I should try to shorten some of my longer sentences, so as to make the paragraph more coherent.
4) "Ascertain" means "to discover", for example, the cause of something, or "to make sure of". You can find synonyms and antonyms in a dictionary, but to ascertain them does not make sense.

Christmas Fever

Not even two weeks left, until it is Christmas again!

What do you actually connect with the words “Christmas” and “Advent”? Do you think of a quiet and peaceful time or a rather busy and annoying one?

For me, the Advent season as well as Christmas itself are a very pleasant period of the year indeed. I like to give presents, eat cookies and a large amount of other sweets, receive presents, go to Christmas markets as well as to drive home for Christmas Eve and have the whole family celebrating together. Nevertheless, there is one part of the Advent season that bugs me after some time: Christmas songs are played everywhere all the time. Whether you are in the supermarket or in a shop, whether you turn on the radio or the TV, you will hear Christmas songs in a continuous loop. Not that I do not like them, but they might be played too often.

That is my opinion, of course I know that there are many people who cannot get enough of the "Christmas feeling" and the obligatory songs. Come to think of it, almost every known musician has written a Christmas song, maybe it is a fixed part of a music career...
Anyway, if you do have neither a radio nor a TV and do rarely shop this year for some reason, you may miss the familiar sound of Christmas songs. Do not despair, there are millions of videos available on YouTube and other websites. To give one example, this three hour long compilation of the most famous songs will probably satisfy every Christmas addict. :)


Merry Christmas!
Frohe Weihnachten!
Счастливого Рождества!

Homework Analysis

Being in the process of learning how to write a proper paragraph, it is important for me to, firstly, understand the mistakes I have made, and secondly, know how to correct them.
This is a piece of homework I handed in in class:

The emblem of South Dakota

The one thing that really surprised me about my CLI, Mount Rushmore, was how much effort was put into carving the presidents' faces as a memorial into the Black Mountains. One architect as well as four hundred experienced mountaineers and sculptors worked for fourteen years on the more than eighteen meter high faces. The workers dynamited to remove the largest rocks, but they used drills, chisels and hammers for more detailed work. It is impressing how much attention the sculptors paid to detail, looking for instance at the cubes of granite left inside the eyes' irises in order to make them seem more alive or at the characteristic glasses of Theodore Roosevelt which are present in the monument. The architect of Mount Rushmore even had plans to chisel each president from head to waist, but his early death caused the end of the project and left the sculpture as we know it today. Nevertheless, Mount Rushmore attracts nearly three million visitors a year who travel to South Dakota so as to get as surprised as I am, when travel guides and signs tell them how much work it has been to create this masterpiece.


The corrected paragraph:

The emblem of South Dakota

The one thing that really surprised me about my CLI, Mount Rushmore, was how much effort was put into carving the presidents' faces as a memorial into the Black Mountains. One architect as well as four hundred experienced mountaineers and sculptors worked for fourteen years on the more than eighteen meter high faces. The workers used dynamite to remove the largest rocks, but they used drills, chisels and hammers for more detailed work. It is impressive how much attention the sculptors paid to detail, taking into consideration for instance the cubes of granite left inside the irises in order to make the eyes seem more alive, or the characteristic glasses of Theodore Roosevelt which were carved into the monument too. The architect even had plans to chisel each president from head to waist, but he died before he could do so, consequently, the project and the sculpture were left as we know it today. Despite that fact, Mount Rushmore attracts nearly three million visitors a year who travel to South Dakota and are probably as surprised as I am, when travel guides and signs tell them how much work it was to create this masterpiece.


To talk about the positive aspects first, my original paragraph was cohesive. My supporting sentences as well as the conclusion sentence refer to the statement in the topic sentence and I do not overuse linking words.
There are many mistakes, though:

1) It is more common to say “to use dynamite to remove something”, than to “dynamite something”.
2) It is “impressive”, not “impressing”! If I wanted to use “impressing”, I would have had to write “it is impressing someone”. “Impressive” means that something is impressive in general and it does not need an object.
3) “Taking into consideration” is definitely more formal and sounds more intelligent than “looking”
4) “Left inside the irises to make the eyes seem more alive” fits better, because of possible reference confusions: In my original version, the reader might think that the eyes' irises look more alive because of the cubes of granite. Indeed, it is the eyes that look alive.
5) Punctuation: The comma between “alive” and “or” is necessary because there are two strong clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, or, but, for, nor).
6) “Which are present in” is not a good way to say that the sculptors carved the glasses of Theodore Roosevelt into the Black Mountains. Probably I derived it from the German “präsent sein”. Anyway, it does not work in English.
7) “The architect of Mount Rushmore” → “of Mount Rushmore” is redundant because it would be illogical if I suddenly spoke about an architect of a different monument.
8) “Cause” means “to make something happen” and is a transitive verb. The question is: Can death make something happen? Obviously not. The absence of the architect could have caused the end of the project and the architect is absent because he is dead. “Stop” cannot be used in this context either, because the architect did not die so as to stop the project. That is why I decided to rebuild the sentence in order to avoid the use of one of these verbs.
9) “Nevertheless” is not appropriate because it indicates that the sculpture is not that good because it is not finished, but nevertheless there are many tourists who want to see it. What I actually wanted to convey to the reader is, that the sculpture is brilliant, even without the waists of the presidents.
10) “So as to get as surprised as I am” would mean that tourists go to Mount Rushmore with the intention of being as surprised as I am.
11) “has been”: wrong tense
Working on carving the sculpture is already over; I even know the date it was finished. Because of that, past tense is, in my opinion, more appropriate.

Sita Sings The Blues

Hello again,

I recently saw a very interesting movie which I want to tell you about. It is called Sita Sings The Blues and in the beginning it caught my eye because it had received really good reviews.

After watching the first ten minutes, I realized that this movie is different to anything I have seen before. It is a cartoon about the similarities between the story of a normal couple nowadays and a couple in an ancient Indian myth, the Ramayana. I do not want to tell much about the story of Sita and Rama because I want you to watch it yourself, but a small knowledge about the interesting structure of the film could be helpful if you intend to watch it: As I said, it is a cartoon. Narrators, who are shown as traditional Indian shadow puppets, tell the whole Ramayana, interrupted by short sequences of a contemporary couple. Throughout the movie, the narrators discuss the meaning and the sense of the story in a very sarcastic and funny way. Additionally, to make the film even more interesting, there are some musical episodes in it, that should probably underline the plot.

All in all, I have to say that Sita Sings The Blues is a very interesting, strange and definitely funny movie, even if some songs and parts of the story are told longbreathed. 

By the way, there is even an intermission in the middle of the movie which, in my opinion, is great, although I watched it at home and could have pressed "stop" and "play" as often as I wanted. The simple idea of stopping the film for two and a half minutes amazed me! :)