Assignment 4: U.S. Culture

NEW ORLEANS

This is the last assignment post for this semester and it should relate to U.S. culture. I decided to concentrate on New Orleans because I love jazz music. I think it is one of the most important places to see according to jazz music.

New Orleans is located in the south-east of the U.S. and it is a major port and a metropolitan area in the state of Luisiana. It is well-known for celebrations and music festivals, especially jazz music festivals, also known as "Jazz Fest". This year the "Jazz Fest" takes place from April 25 to May 4, 2014. Unfortunately I won't be able to see this festival as I'm stuck with my studies in Graz.

N. O. has always been a significant center for music which is influenced by Europe, Latin America and Africa. It's unique musical heritage was born in its pre-American and early American days from a unique blending of European instruments with African rhythms.As New Orleans, the only North American city, allows slaves to gather in public and play their native music, the city gave birth to an indigenous music: JAZZ
This style of music gained popular attraction that still holds today.


Watch this! Jazz Fest 2013 :)

Grandmother's birthday

"Zwetschkenkuchen"

My grandmother’s birthday was on the 8th of January. This is why we’ll have a big family reunion at her place again this weekend to celebrate her 83th birthday. When it comes to birthdays I’m really bad in what to give somebody as a present. I’m not that creative and so I thought I could bake her favourite cake which is a plum cake, in German “Zwetschkenkuchen”.

So here are the ingredients you need for a “Zwetschkenkuchen”:

4 eggs

50 g of sugar

a pinch of salt

100g of butter

70 g of icing sugar

220 g of flour

10 g of baking powder

60 ml of egg liqueur

500 g of plums

Topping:

120 g of flour

75 g of melted butter

70 g of sugar

a teaspoonful of cinnamon

First cut plums in half and remove stones. Then separate the eggs and beat egg whites until whipped well and add sugar. Now put butter with icing sugar together and mix well. Then stir egg yolks to a creamy liquid. The next step is to add flour and baking powder to the creamy yolk eggs. Then stir the mixture to creamy dough and carefully fold the stiff egg whites under.

Put the dough into a square springform pan and cover tightly with the plums, distribute the topping on and bake at 160 ° circulating air for about 30 minutes.

Easy, isnt it? I hope my grandmother will love it. Well, I’ll see tomorrow :D

New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve

Hi guys! I hope you all had an exciting New Year’s Eve and celebrated with your best friends and family. Well, I usually celebrate New Year’s Eve in Upper Austria with my family in the afternoon and in the evening with my best friends. It was the first time that I’ve celebrated New Year’s Eve in Graz. 

 I had a great lunch time with my family before I started to make off to Graz. My mother prepared duck with vegetables and fried rice. It was extremely delicious and I was so stuffed, and to top it off, we had coconut pudding for dessert. I had the feeling that I could burst any moment, but I couldn’t stop eating. In Graz a good friend of mine lives in a dormitory and rented the “Heimbar”, in other words a place where students have parties or just get together. 

Some people from the dormitory joined us and we had a great evening. We were playing card games all evening long and I had the opportunity to get to know a lot of people. I had a lot of fun and couldn’t stop chatting with all people. Close to midnight we went on the top of the roof and celebrated 2014 with a glass of sparkling wine with a beautiful scenery of fireworks.

Paragraph discussion (3)

 Irish Culture

The most fascinating aspect of Irish Culture that I learned about by wachting the Story of Ireland was not only Britain influenced Ireland, but also Norway and the United States. The northern part of Ireland called Ulster was largely occupied by the British in the 5/6th century. The reason for this occupation was an unstable situation beween Catholic and Protestant people. More and more English settled in Ulster and the British intended to show that Ireland belongs partly to England. Another important influence towards Ireland came from the United States. The United States played a significant role when it came to the period o mass starvation from 1845 t0 1852, known as the "Great Famine". During this period nearly one million peiple died because of the potato blight. Many people fled to the United States to escape the famine. On the other hand, Norway plays a crucial role too, as in the 12th century Vikings plundered Ireland. The Vikings were raiders at first and then became settlers. They built special ships, which go at rivers like the River Liffey. All those influences above mentioned are the reason for why Dublin emerged. Today, Ireland is a place for cultural interchange and a cosmopolitan place for traders.

Assignment 3: Register

Register

Register? What does it mean? The Longman dictionary says that register is a language style, in other words it is “the words, style, and grammar used by speakers and writers in a particular situation or in a particular type of writing”. We divide register into two parts which are the formal and informal register.

It’s rather difficult to find out in which situation which register is appropriate for. In school I had no idea how to use the right register. To be honest, my teacher didn’t even teach something about register and how to use it. So, I think this is the reason why I feel that is quite difficult to use is correctly.

Here are some examples:

Formal	Informal
offspring	kids
abode/residence	place (house, flat, home)
goodbye	bye, cheerio
go amiss	go wrong, go pear-shaped

So it depends in which context you want to use, you have to take the formal or informal register.
There are some features where you can decide if you use the formal or informal register.

Formal:

-          longer words that come from Latin and Greek

-          formal phrases like in terms of, on account of, in particular

-          formality in notices and instructions

-          letter writing

Informal:

-          monosyllabic words like cops (police), loos (toilets), nick (prison),…

-          clippings like lab (laboratory), fridge (refrigerator),…

-          slang
  --> expressions for money: bread, dosh, readies
  --> expressions for food and drinks: nosh, grub,…

-          writing an E-mail

CHRISTMAS

Christmas 

Hi everyone! I hope you had a great time during your Christmas holidays. So what was going on at my place at Christmas Eve? Well, as every year the whole family come together at my grandmother’s place. My grandmother is always excited about this big family reunion. I’ve also to mention that this is the only time, where I get the chance to meet all family members. However, Christmas at my grandmother’s place is celebrated a little bit different because some family members are Buddhist. So, they don’t celebrate Christmas as this it doesn’t exist in their religion. On the other hand all my little cousins and me are Catholics and this is why we celebrate Christmas.

Well, Christmas Eve starts with very delicious food which varies each year. It also depends on what the little kids like (including me) :D. This year we had red chicken curry with rice or rice noodles and turkey which is seasoned sweet and spicy with rice. For dessert we had tons of Christmas biscuits as my aunt is an amazing baker. We have a Christmas tree and below it the presents are placed. My little cousins didn’t bear until midnight to open their presents. They started in the middle of the day to open their presents and it was so funny to see their excited faces. My parents, aunts, uncles and grandmother had also a great time. As always they started to have a karaoke evening and sang all night Cambodian songs. Well, and just before midnight my grandmother served us some food again, but this time just small Cambodian snacks. 

Red curry chicken with rice

In short, I had a great time with my family and appreciate that all family members are reunited and celebrate Christmas even if some don’t have to do so.