So now, my attempt to write a quick entry about how I have been. It is a cold, grey June evening in Freiburg. For a city that claims to be the sunniest in Germany, I have not been impressed. It has been rainy and cool for the past few days, very much unlike what I would imagine the first real week of summer to resemble. This may be for the best, though, as it is also the last week of IES courses, meaning I have a decent amount of work to complete indoors. I say a "decent" amount of work because it is nothing like the last week of school at Grinnell, but I have papers or projects in every class to turn in this week, including my group's final film.
Yes, I am in a film-making class. It has been a lot of fun. We had a few lectures about film-making theory, such as camera angles, match cuts, etc., in which we got to watch some cool clips from movies, and then we had two weekend-long film praxises. In these praxises we got into the real technical details about film-making. We got to know the cameras really well on the first day, and practiced how to use the aperture, manual focus, set the white balance, etc. We also got to play with the lights they had, and practiced framing scenes. We were then released onto the streets of Freiburg for an afternoon in groups of three and filmed our own short movies. The next day, we learned how to use the editing software, Edius, by creating our own edits of the footage we'd taken the day before. I ended up with this:
Eis from Hanna Liebl on Vimeo.
We rock-paper-scissored to determine who would be the lead, and it ended up being me. There are some rough spots, which shows how well you have to plan out filming before you go out and do it to avoid jump cuts, and clearly, I'm not an actress. It was interesting to see the other two edits my group members came up with-- there was a surprising amount of variety even within the limited amount of footage we had.
We did a longer movie for our second group project, and practiced editing in a group. We had the past month or so to work on a final, five-minute film. I will post that later-- it turned out alright. Looking back you can always see the mistakes, but there is no time now to correct them. Still, I learned a lot about film making, in particular how to plan shots with movement that are natural from one frame to the next. I also learned a lot of technical film terms in German for which I don't know the English equivalents!
My other three IES courses have also been going well. I'm doing an internship at the University of Freiburg's E-Learning Center. I am making English language tutorial videos for them, using a screen capture software called Camtasia. That has been surprisingly fun. I enjoy the process of creating the videos, even if the content isn't so exciting. Plus, I am getting paid an hourly wage in euros, so I have no reason to complain. I have to write a paper for the academic portion of that class-- we had three lectures on different aspects of German life (the education system, the healthcare system, and the recent city and state elections) and are expected to write a six page research paper adhering to German academic standards on one of those topics. I still have a month to do that, thankfully.
I decided to take courses I normally wouldn't be exposed to at home, hence the film-making course, and also my reason for selecting the IES drama course that is also wrapping up this week. We saw a lot of plays in Freiburg (and an opera in Basel), groups presented on the background of each play, and we discussed the production afterwards. There have been a few written critiques due and some class presentations. Going to modern theater productions has been interesting...almost all of theater in Germany is modernized (as in, Shakespeare with guns) and almost every play we've gone to so far features at least some nudity. Honestly, most of the plays we've seen have been really weird, though we saw what I thought was a great production of Through the Looking Glass this past weekend. We also saw a production of The Beggar's Opera (only the name bears any similarity to the original play, however) a few weeks ago, in which they hired people from Freiburg who are very close to being homeless (none of them were actually without homes, but they would be, in America, living beneath the poverty line) to present their stories along with professional actors. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.
My last IES course is the required German course. I placed into the highest level class, taught by a wonderful professor named Klaus. We have read and discussed a lot on different themes, like intercultural competence and German identity, and just completed the final project, which we presented on last week. The project involved doing interviews with local people on a particular topic and then presenting our topic to the class and writing a paper. My partner and I presented on food in Freiburg, and how it relates to the environment and health. We interviewed the manager of one of the many organic food stores in the city, and conducted some surveys in organic food stores, an Aldi, at the local farmer's market, and in people's personal gardens. The results aren't scientific, but provided us a good opportunity to practice our German with strangers and learn more about an aspect of Freiburg.
And, of course, I am taking one university course. One of the nice things about this IES program is that I am allowed to enroll as a student at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. I had thought I would take two courses at the university, but once I got here, I had more of an interest in doing an internship and taking both the IES drama and film courses, which meant I only have time for one university course. The course I am taking is called, translated, "The Supernatural in German Literature." It is a Germanistik Proseminar, an upper-level course (at the equivalent of bachelor's level in Germany...most likely like a 300-level literature course at an American college) in which we read short stories and novellas that have something to do with the supernatural or otherworldly (for example, we have read Der Sandmann, Das Marmorbild, a short story by Thomas Mann, etc.). Some of them are ghost stories, in a way, but most of them are more complicated than that, for example, subtly demonstrating how one can make literature suspenseful by describing character's reactions to a particular event rather than just describing the event (like a good horror film).
The course is, for the most part, interesting, but also different in some ways than any other literature seminars I've ever taken. It only meets once a week for 1.5 hours, and every week, a group presents on the reading material, not the professor. The professor certainly adds her opinion and gives guidance, but the students, in general, pick the direction they want to take with the class discussion. The grade in the course is determined by class participation, the group presentation, and one final, 12-15 page research paper. I suppose that aspect is similar to my previous experiences, but I am used to professors leading class discussion almost every time, not students. And I think I prefer when the professor is the one presenting the guidelines and direction for the discussion.
I was visiting a Vorlesung, or lecture course, at the university about mysticism in Buddhism for a few weeks, but I found the academic German in the class to be above my head. A Vorlesung is very different than anything I am used to at Grinnell...the professor, in this case, an old, distinguished Bavarian man, stood in front of a group of fifty or more people and lectured for 1.5 hours, often without stopping to write anything on the board or referencing any type of handout. It was very taxing, and as the lecture dealt with a lot of philosophical terms and background I didn't know anything about, I decided to not take that course. It was interesting to see who was in the audience of that class, however. German universities are free (well, almost free, they pay 500 euro a semester and it is a huge scandal here), so people from the public can come to lectures. Half of the people attending that lecture were obviously well beyond student age. That was very interesting, and honestly surprising to see how many community members came out week after week to hear a highly complicated lecture about Buddhism.
So, that is my academic life, in a nutshell. How about life outside of class? I don't have a close group of friends here, and the community in my dorm, both among the Germans and the American students, is not as good as it is in other dorms, which is disappointing. I am far away from most of the other American students with whom I have become friendly with, and it is hard to get together sometimes-- I am not an easy walk down the hall or across the quad, but a 30 minute or longer commute across town. The social aspect of study abroad has not lived up to my expectations in a lot of ways. Partly I am to blame, but it there are a variety of circumstances, including just bad luck about where I was placed to live. There was also never a person with whom I "clicked" with in the way I have clicked with a lot of people at Grinnell and in Granville. I have, in the past few weeks, gotten to know some people better, but, sadly, they are leaving at the end of this week as they are not taking any university classes- again, just bad luck on my part. The ultimate frisbee team has been a disappointment as well. I can only make one or two practices a week, don't see the same people at practice from one week to the other, and have found them to be, in general, quite reserved and in some ways almost exclusive-- very much unlike the ultimate community in America.
Still, I certainly do sometimes do things with other people, and in the past few weeks there have been class get-togethers, which have been lots of fun. There was also a wonderful IES weekend trip to Munich about a month ago. I take time on the quiet evenings I have to exercise regularly and cook for myself, and can keep myself busy in general for a long time without needing anyone else. So, yes, I am very excited for good friends to come visit me at the end of July, but until then, I am doing fine. Traveling alone in Rome was a rewarding experience in a lot of ways, but one reason was that it showed me I really don't need someone else with me to explore an area or go on trips, and particularly since coming back from there, I have been much more happy with being more independent than I had perhaps anticipated I would be before coming to Germany.
Expect an entry about Rome soon-- it was an amazing experience. Until then, tschüss!
Enjoyed your post as always. ^_^ And the video! You are so cute! I just want to smush you in a big hug - which, happily, I will be able to do again quite soon. That icecream looked really good, btw. I hope you got to have some of it. ^_^
ReplyDelete