November 2014 – Page 2 – Valpo Voyager

Month: November 2014 (page 2 of 2)

How Was Your Weekend?

November 10, 2014 / margaretprunty / 0 Comments

The highlight to my week was the fashion show I attended on Friday night. It was hosted by the fashion students at the University of Namibia. Their final project was to create one piece if you were a first year student and an entire collection if you were a fourth year student. The themes were African art, origami, recycled materials, the Hunger Games, and evening attire. All the ensembles were very well done and the show was a lot of fun to watch. They offered a cash bar to enjoy the event and it was a lovely evening to sit outside and watch the hard work of students. Later, we went to Joe’s Beer Garden, to enjoy the each other’s company. It’s a very large and unique German restaraunt/bar that’s partially outdoor. Overall, Friday was a very nice reward to end a week of classes.

On Saturday, we woke up early to go on a hike up a mountain. It was still cool outside from the night, so I was glad to have gone early. It took us about three hours to climb up to the top and back down and it was steep and exerting, but well worth the effort. The city is surrounded by mountains and the hike offered beautiful views on the way up. Unfortunately, it did not photograph well, but it was gorgeous. Later, I went to the sky bar to enjoy more of the outdoors and spent the Sunday morning in town doing some shopping. It was a very enjoyable weekend, much of it spent outdoors and enjoying some of Namibia’s natural beauty, coupled with end of the semester wrap up projects and papers.

Finishing the hike

Uni: Week 1

November 3, 2014 / katherineackerman / 0 Comments

So, this past week was the first week of German university for me. Although most of my fellow Valpo students back home are halfway through their Semester, Germans Semesters are almost a full 2 months behind in schedule.

A reenactment of how I would have posed, had I remembered to take a first day of uni photo.

My schedule itself is quite different than any that I have had since beginning college. Most notably, I don’t have any classes at all on Monday. This was a surprise for me, but I was also kind of glad to have a day of the week off, in order to do more preparation before starting a week of classes. Additionally, all of my classes meet just once a week, but for much longer periods than I am used to, ranging from 2 – 3 hours long.

The dreaded cum tempore in its natural habit.

On Tuesday, I had my first class, a seminar on Comparative Politics of European Parliamentary Systems. This class taught me about in important rule of German university: C.T., or cum tempore. This Latin phrase means that the class actually starts 15 minutes later than the time listed in the registration. Expecting the usual German punctuality, I showed up to class 5 minutes early to get myself settled in before preparing to take notes. Much to my dismay, no one else showed up for another 20 minutes, leaving me to worry about whether or not I had found the right room or if I was sitting in the wrong hall. Fortunately, 10 minutes after the scheduled lecture time, people started to trickle in and I was able to determine that I hadn’t messed up the location of the seminar, but rather the time. In the end though, I’m glad to have a few extra minutes to spare on the way to class.

On Wednesday, I had 2 seminars and a lecuture. The first is called Intercultural Communications. I already love this course because it is so applicable to my everyday life. The class is made up of a great mix of foreign and German student from many different countries, so it is full of intercultural communication itself. The project at the end of the class is to make a portfolio of what we have learned about intercultural communication.

The part of the castle in which I have my class.

The second of the two seminars is from the department of European studies and is called Name and Region. Name and Region is exactly what it sounds like: it’s an analysis of the names and the regions the come from with a focus on the southwestern region of Germany where the university lies. I think this course will be a bit challenging for me, because it’s in somewhat new territory subjectwise, but I’m excited to learn about it nonetheless. Also, I should mention that this class takes place in the basement of a castle. So, no matter what it will give me a good anecdote. The final class of Wednesday is called An Overview of Wurttembergian Church History. This is a theology course that I’m taking to fulfill my upper-level Theo credit, but I’m excited about it because it again focuses on the region in which I’m living. Already, I’ve heard about the influence that the Church has had on the culture here, mainly through a series of medieval laws concerning cleaning that have instilled a love of tidiness into the region. It will be interesting to learn more about the other impacts that it has had as well.

Thursday is a again another seminar called “Hot Topics.” This is offered by the department of German as a foreign language and I took it to work on my academic German. The course focuses on academic language and debate rather than simply casual speaking. I’m excited to see what I will learn from it.

Finally on Friday, I have my final lecture called First-Language Development. This is a linguistics class that focuses on how children attain their first language. It already seems very fascinating and complex, but I’m so excited to learn more about the details of language learning and how people process it. Last semester at Valpo, I took an introduction to German Linguistic, which I really enjoyed and I’m excited to jump into this topic more deeply.

An online PDF textbook for my Polisci course.

Another interesting thing that about German university. is that textbooks are usually either provided by PDF or available free of cost from the library. I was excited to find out that I would be saving money on textbooks after attending my first classes. The first week was in my opinion quite good. I enjoyed all of my classes despite the rainy weather and my being sick. Now I’m ready to see where the classes and the presentations that start next week will take me. Mostly, I’m just glad to be back to the life of a university student.

Bis Bald!

Big Break Part One: Spain

It has been a long ten days of vacation. Yesterday, many of us living in the house returned from our second big break. We all went to Spain and Italy and visited six cities in ten days. It was a very busy week of traveling and sightseeing, but it was worth all of the planning and money we spent, because I had a fantastic time. Because of the amount of things that we did, I can’t possibly fit it all into one post, so I’m going to focus on the first part of our trip in this post.

After classes ended, we all flew from London to Barcelona. At our hostel, we met up with our Valpo friends Caitlin and Bethany, who are studying in Grenada, Spain, this semester. It was nice to meet up with them, and be able to reunite with some people from Valpo!

The next day, everyone except me went on a bike tour of Barcelona, and I heard nothing but good things about it. I don’t really enjoy riding bikes, so I spent five hours wandering around Barcelona on my own. I walked down to the pier and saw a statue of Christopher Columbus. I also stopped in at a very beautiful cathedral and sat in the courtyard and read a book. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon because I got to see the things that I wanted at the pace I wanted.

Pier in Barcelona

View of Barcelona

On Saturday, a few of us went to Sagrada Familia. This cathedral has a really interesting history. The architect who designed it was born in the early 18oos. The cathedral has been under construction since the 1800s and is set to be completed in 2026. It was my favorite place that we visited. The cathedral is unlike any other cathedral I have ever seen. The designs on the ceiling look like suns, and the pillars inside create an optical illusion that makes you think that they’re standing up straight, when they really stand at an angle. And the stained glass was absolutely stunning. I would love to be able to go back and see the cathedral in 2026 when it is finally finished, because I know it will be that much more incredible inside.

Stained glass windows in Sagrada Familia

One of the angled pillars inside Sagrada Familia

The weather in Barcelona last weekend was absolutely beautiful. Temperatures were between the upper 70s and lower 80s, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Because the weather was so nice, and we were all on vacation, we went to the beach our last afternoon. I laid on the beach for literally six hours and just enjoyed lying on a blanket, soaking up the sun and sleeping. It was a perfect way to end our time in Barcelona.

Next to come: Italy!

Barcelona Beach

Spring Break

November 2, 2014 / margaretprunty / 0 Comments

The weather is heating up in Namibia and we are in the home stretch with classes. Having said that, spring break came at a nice time for us. After finishing classes on Friday, we enjoyed Namibia’s version of Oktoberfest. Most of the attendees were of German decent, the music, food, and beer were also very German. One of our German housemates came with us to the fest and said it was basically a spitting image of Oktoberfest in Germany. It was a unique and fun experience because we got a taste of another culture while in Namibia.

The following morning, we headed to the coast of Namibia for the remainder of our spring break. Swakopmund, the town we stayed in, has a plethora of mom and pop style cafes with a lot of good food to chose from and coffee shops that are similar to those in the states. I was happy to drink good coffee, as that is something about being away from home that I miss. During our days, we spent a lot of time on the beach. It was relaxing–although the water was a little too cold to swim–and really nice to be by the ocean. My favorite part of break was dune sledding. Being right on the desert makes for a fun place to ride the dunes. You start on bunny hills and progressively take on steeper areas of the dune. It was amazing how fast you fly down the sand, the only difficult part about going down, was the return back up, although it was well worth it.

From here, we continue on with classes and internships until the end of November. The semester is flying by and before I know it, I’ll be packing up and heading for Cape Town and then home. I have had such a wonderful time abroad and I look forward to what the next few weeks have in store.

The dunes

Oktoberfest

Explorations: Cultural & Geographic

November 1, 2014 / Tobiah Meinzen / 0 Comments

Last spring Valpo gave the current study abroad students a series of lectures about the different aspects of the study abroad experience. I remember one particular lecture which reviewed the common pattern of cultural adjustment. Unsurprisingly I didn’t adhere to the typical pattern of adjustment—I skipped “culture shock” completely. Yes, I road a ‘high’ for the first month here—but that was due to the newness and plentiful travel opportunities. Most of October was the simply rhythm of school, though without the crushing academic load of stateside classes and extra curriculars. It wasn’t until this week, possibly prompted by last weekend’s trip to Songyang, that I started to feel a little homesick. (Though I’ve missed the Pacific Northwest while at Valpo, so the feeling is nothing new.)

Browsing NationalGeographic.com and OutsideOnline.com did little alleviate my ache for the wild beauty of the Oregon coast, Holden Village, or Bristol Bay. Luckily my week ended with events that will likely become in retrospect the highlights of my study abroad experience.

On Thursday evenings I have been attending an “English club” in Hangzhou. It usually meets a bar or coffee shop across town where we chat or play games for a few hours. Last week we started with “trust falls” and other summer camp-esque activities. This week’s club was rescheduled due to Halloween, but Damen (one of the organizers) offered to meet me on campus and bring some friends. Damen (like most Chinese) has been incredibly generous, taking me (and a few other American friends) out to dinner on multiple occasions and he even suggested going camping before I leave in December. Damon’s “few friends” actually turned out to be the or so dozen Chinese who regularly attend the English club—so it might as well have been a typical Thursday night.

(A quick aside.)

For my Chinese Civilization class (taught by Professor Pati from Valpo) we are doing a collaborative project (with Chinese students from ZJUT) on Chinese perceptions of the body. One element of the project requires conducting surveys. Back in the United States collecting such information (especially when our questions include topics such as sex and virginity), is as appealing as grade-school door-to-door fundraisers. China though was totally different.

I brought my surveys to Thursday’s English club where the Chinese were more than happy to fill them out, they even asked me if I wanted them to ask others to fill them out also! I shouldn’t have been at all concerned as to whether I was breaching a taboo topic—the “discussion topic” for the evening was the whether or not prostitution should legal.

If you want to find true difference between the U.S. and China—it is this. A group of friendly acquaintances coming from various backgrounds voluntarily get together to socialize and discuss topics such as sexuality and prostitution. (We talked about homosexuality and gay marriage a few weeks back.) I believe China’s non-participatory government style and lack of a religiously conservative populace has helped foster an environment for open and thoughtful discussions on topics including race, religion, and sexuality.

Caught off guard I took a few moments to form a cohesive response (regarding prostitution). They listened attentively (I was speaking as representative of 300 million Americans) and were impressed and affirmative of my viewpoint. Though they immediately suggested a flaw with my position which required me to further elaborate. I like to believe they were somewhat surprised by my multifaceted response, though I did explain that my view wouldn’t be shared by all Americans. We proceeded to talk about prostitution in China along with examples of a regulated sex industry in places like Nevada, and the Netherlands. I was continually impressed by their thoughtfulness on topics like this one that are taboo in the States. (Although they still hold wacky views such as believing a secret cabal controls Obama (& Clinton), Ebola spread in the U.S., and U.S. involvement in the #OccupyHK protests.)

At one point during our discussion I was asked about my personal experience with one night stands. Unfortunately I couldn’t provide any salacious details on that particular subject. We even talked about how much we (Americans and Chinese) talk about sex.

But that was just one of the many topics we talked about. We also talked about Elon Musk (and his three companies), BYD, OccupyCentral, racism/discrimination, mobile operating systems, cell phone/battery radiation and even Kim Kardashian. Actually the Chinese seem to know far more about Elon Musk and Tesla Motors than the typical bunch of Americans.

I found it enlightening and incredibly fun, I haven’t found such open discussions since my time at Holden (where homogenous political and social beliefs were almost guaranteed).

It is hard not to overstate how friendly, open, and generous the Chinese are… except that I am an American. Foreigners (particularly Americans?) have somewhat celebrity status here, so it is hard to get a intimate understanding of how Chinese actually treat one another because I can only observe their interactions (and without understanding Chinese it is hard to develop a nuanced view).

Although it is still shorts and t-shirt temperatures here, Hangzhou finally got a few rainy days to end October. On Friday after class I decided to go for a walk up in the woods behind campus. Leaves covered the broken paving stones as I followed the ridge south for almost five miles. The air was pungent and (unusually) clean as low grey clouds swirled around the peaks. As I hiked south the hills spread farther and farther to the east, at some points I might as well have been in the wilderness, thickly forested hills and grey sky was all I could see. Given the gloomy weather few people were out. The occasional building and broken stonework reminded me I wasn’t in a remote mountain range, though for respite from living in a city of million this was best thing possible—an expansive area of untamed hills. Just the ‘wilderness fix’ I was needing. I descended from the ridge along a narrow dirt path through the surreal vertical lines of thousands of bamboo trees. I came out at the back of the Ling Ying Scenic area which contained various temples, shops, hotels, and tea fields. It was dark when four hours later I got back to campus. The crush of traffic and mopeds stood in sharp contrast to the quiet and empty trail I had walked along just hours earlier. It was a wonderful exploration for a west-coasty-weather day. Next time I’ll have to leave earlier so I can go even farther.