Yearly Archives: 2016

week 5 – Reichenau

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This weekend, I paid a visit to an island around Lake Constance near the border of Germany and Switzerland: Reichenau. In the early middle ages, Reichenau was well known for its abbey. It was established by the Irish Saint Pirmin, and became one of the most important cultural centers in the Carolingian age.  The most famous abbots of Reichenau in the ninth century was Walahfrid Strabo, whose biblical commentary for Deuteronomy is one of the major primary sources for my dissertation.

Horticulture and vegetable cultivation are major business for Reichenau today, as it was more than 1200 years ago. Walahfrid Strabo once wrote a famous Latin poem Hortulus , Little Garden, describing and praising the different plants in the garden that he usually worked on. During my visit, behind the Münster of Reichenau, I found a little garden called Strabos Kräutergarten, created in memory of  Walahfrid Strabo’s famous poem:

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Blog 6

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Entering the seventh week of the summer program, the end is now in sight.  It is sometimes hard not to lose focus a bit when studying.  However, there is still a lot more ground to cover. 

By now I truly feel able to communicate with native speakers at a fairly high level.  I guess the term I would use would be “adaptability.”  I am able to enter conversation on almost any topic, and at least hold my ground.  This is comforting, for I no longer feel as lost as I once did walking the streets of Beijing.  It is similar to sports; the game has slowed down.  It is getting much easier to understand the accents and quicker pace of speaking. 

This past weekend, our summer program went to a Chinese movie theatre to watch a movie entirely in Chinese.  Because it did not have subtitles, it truly was a test of our progress.  I was excited to find I kept pace with the plot of the movie, and by the end understood almost the entirety of the dialogue.  It really was a fun assurance of the progress I have made so far. 

Blog 5

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Entering the seventh week of the summer program, the end is now in sight.  It is sometimes hard not to lose focus a bit when studying.  However, there is still a lot more ground to cover. 

By now I truly feel able to communicate with native speakers at a fairly high level.  I guess the term I would use would be “adaptability.”  I am able to enter conversation on almost any topic, and at least hold my ground.  This is comforting, for I no longer feel as lost as I once did walking the streets of Beijing.  It is similar to sports; the game has slowed down.  It is getting much easier to understand the accents and quicker pace of speaking. 

This past weekend, our summer program went to a Chinese movie theatre to watch a movie entirely in Chinese.  Because it did not have subtitles, it truly was a test of our progress.  I was excited to find I kept pace with the plot of the movie, and by the end understood almost the entirety of the dialogue.  It really was a fun assurance of the progress I have made so far. 

Blog 4

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Life in Beijing is nothing if not consistent.  The excitement from the trip to Xi’an has worn off, and it is time to begin the second textbook of the summer.  It is exciting to look back at the progress we all have made so far, yet daunting to see how far we have yet to go.   It is satisfying to leave campus on weekends and evenings, for it allows you to practice what you are learning every morning in class, and reassure yourself of your progress. 

The sheen of life in a new country has given way to an acceptance of routine.  I no longer consider myself a tall American strolling about campus, but more integrated into the college life here at Peking University.  Meals are still a problem faced sometimes, as bad experiences in ordering food at one of the dining halls has temporarily excluded it from the meal options.  If there is one thing I am missing right now about America, it is the food.  However, there are other options, and it is not a pressing problem. 

Japanese Kindergartens

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More on Japanese schools! I had a day off from school, and I spent it at my host mother’s kindergarten. She is the head teacher at this school, and so let me shadow the entire day, through classes as well as free play time. It was very fun and cute, as well as a fascinating experience!

Japanese kindergartens include ages 3-5, kind of like Montessori school. Interestingly, they have uniforms to wear to and from school, and then another uniform to change into after they get to school (clothes they can more easily run around in).

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Kids arrive at around 8:30, and the school remains open until 6pm, although many kids are picked up by 2 or 3. The school day consists of free indoor and outdoor play periods alternating with formal “lesson” type periods, lunch and exercise. It is interesting the emphasis they place on exercise in Japan. There is this routine set of exercises to a particular musical track that many people in Japan seem to do often if not daily, and the kids are taught these exercises at school.

In their lessons, sometimes there will be organized arts and crafts, other times, they will learn songs or play musical instruments, or study the Japanese “alphabets” (hiragana and katakana) and read books. Each day there is a student who is the “teacher’s helper”, and they will stand in front of the class to start the day with announcements and use formal greetings to greet each member of the class. This routine seems to be a way fro them to practice using formal classroom Japanese, because at all other times they use plain forms, even when talking to the teachers! Since kids are always spoken to in plain forms, it makes sense that they would not have learned how to speak in “desu” and “masu” (polite sentence forms), which they will of course need to know for formal classroom settings soon, so it makes sense that kindergarten would be the place for them to learn this. It is funny that I have a much easier time speaking in “desu” and “masu” than plain forms because I learned those first! It didn’t occur to me before how they may be difficult for children.

Trying to speak to the kids in plain forms was good practice. Other than the exercises, polite speech practice, and tiny adorable bento boxes served at lunch, the kindergarten and the kids there seemed to be pretty similar to US preschools/kindergartens. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to spend a day here! The kids were so awesome!IMG_4250

Asahi Elementary School Visit

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We had the opportunity to pay a visit to one of Hakodate’s public elementary schools! They taught us Hakodate’s signature dance, the “Ika Odori” (squid dance – Hakodate is very famous for its squid!) and then broke into small groups and played games with us. I was with a 6th grade class, and we had a lot of fun! It was somewhat challenging to try to teach them games in Japanese, but we were able to get laughs playing Pictionary telephone and Duck Duck Goose. Being able to communicate with them was really exciting because I was able to talk around words I didn’t know in a way that I definitely could not have done weeks earlier! It was also interesting to learn a bit about the school system. First through sixth grades are all part of elementary school in Japan, and it did look like 6th graders still had elementary-school style classrooms and lessons. Middle school here is 7th through 9th, and high school is only 10th through 12th. Also, the 6th graders were busy studying fro their middle school entrance exams (!!). Before entering middle school and high school, Japanese students must take an aptitude test, their score on which entirely determines which middle school or high school they will be able to attend and is a significant factor in their future success. That seems rather high-pressure to me for such young kids! Many of them attend cram schools after school each day to help prepare for the test.

This was a pretty neat experience!

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Sapporo Trip

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During the mid-program break, I had the chance to travel to Sapporo! It was a really neat city, and I got to visit the famous zoo, stroll through the beautiful Odori Park, see the TV tower, and even experience the Japanese “game center”. Japanese game centers, or arcades, are absolutely full of claw machines, except unlike in the US, they’re actually winnable! As a result, claw machines have become a huge part of Japanese culture. I can see why people get addicted – they are winnable but only just barely, in such a way that one always feels as though they will succeed with just one more try, one more try! Eventually, you will win, but only after you’ve spent way more money than the prize is worth. But perhaps it’s worth it to try it out once for the experience and the fun! It took me more tries than I’m willing to admit, but I was able to win myself a huge, adorable hamster. Japanese cute culture continues to amaze me – I don’t know how they can make so many random products so darn cute!

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Also in Sapporo we were able to try my host family’s #1 favorite ramen place, where we ordered Sapporo’s specialty – butter corn miso ramen. It was a completely different experience from eating ramen in the US! Even though ramen is originally from China, and even thought of as “Chinese food” to people in Japan, it has been highly “Japanicised”, and these kinds are definitely types of ramen you could only find in this countryIMG_4185!

Back in the US but still thinking of Iceland

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I’m back at Notre Dame, and I’m already missing Reykjavík. I miss the people and the school and the city – all of it. But being back does mean that I’ll be able to use my Icelandic in my research, which is quite exciting!

Looking back on what I learned in Iceland, I’m still astonished by how much my language skills improved. I’m still understandably far from fluent, but I’m now able to read texts more fluidly, and I can actually hold a conversation in a language in which I could barely introduce myself in June! Reflecting on the goals I outlined before heading to Iceland, I think I achieved the goals I had set: I feel comfortable holding a conversation in Icelandic (though I need to work on my vocabulary related to my field of research: history of medicine), I can read Icelandic with much greater ease, I met Icelanders with whom I can continue to practice my Icelandic, and I experienced modern Icelandic culture.

My current knowledge of Icelandic would have been impossible without the SLA grant. Icelandic is a language that is rarely taught and has relatively few speakers; going to Iceland was genuinely my only option for studying this language. I was initially worried because I’d never really conversed in the language before going to Iceland, but this allowed me to realize how incredibly effective immersion programs are. I was speaking Icelandic on day one, and on day three I was thrilled when my instructor switched to using Icelandic exclusively. My experience has shown that immersion programs and the SLA grant are appropriate for languages with few available resources and were definitely the best and most productive options for me.

Now that I’m back at Notre Dame, I am going to start reading through the academic journal articles written in Icelandic that I’d found but had been unable to read prior to my trip to Iceland. Additionally, I kept a list of books and resources about the history of medicine in Iceland that I came across while in the country, and I plan on working through that list next. Not only are these books and resources supporting the research I’m doing now, but they’ve also generated new questions and avenues of research. This language has provided me with a ton of material to explore!

I know my work will take me back to Iceland in the future, and I can’t wait!

Build Me Up Butter-Cake

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Thanks for tuning in.

A little change here, I will start with my community interaction.

So, if you’ve been following along on my adventure thus far in Brittany, you’d recall that my host family dad and I had tried our hand at making the traditional Breton cake called Kouign Amann (literally ‘Butter cake’). Well here’s the second attempt, as you can see, a little less brown on top, but we don’t seem to have mastered the requisite creation of layers. Don’t get me wrong, it was still delicious by all means (sugar butter what’s not to like?), but perhaps a more rustic (read messy) in presentation.

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Just my two cents, but this is definitely the best The Shirt of my three years here. #AlwaysReppin 

Unfettered by the disappointment of failure, I traveled to a local bakery to discuss this regional dish. In a short talk with the baker, I learned a little bit about the humble Kouign Amann. A couple highlights:

  • It was a 19th century creation made in a little town in Brittany (I found online the name to be Douarnenez, did not get the spelling right at the bakery)
  • A good Kouign Amann’s pastry is supposed to be airy, light, and flaky, similar to a croissant. So our thick, dense cake doesn’t quite fit the bill of a proper creation. We must not be doing something right; we sure aren’t missing any ingredients, because it’s just flour, sugar, and butter.
  • And he didn’t have to tell me why its popular, because I know these cakes are just freaking delicious. Although I will say that while the French are much more concerned with controlling portions and maintaining health in general (heck the end of their McDonald’s commercials feature warnings to eat 5 daily servings of veggies and not too much fat/sugar/salt), that kind of restraint does not seem to be present in the preparation of their pastries. I’m a stereotype fulfilling American, and I was surprised with the amount of butter and sugar we put into our stout-sized cake. I assume frequency of consumption is better managed.

And there you are, now turning to school.

Our group of B1.3 switched professors as a group of 40 Mexican collegiate students arrived Monday, so our last prof went to take some of them. However, I did get my test back from last week, and it was the highest I had ever gotten on a test (17/20 which is ok by US standards, but excellent in France).

Nothing truly new to report from the classroom, I feel like I’m learning a lot and making good progress. Perhaps what’s most indicative of that is my conversational ability with other international students. For example, my best buddy here is Swiss, and I feel like I just have a lot more I can say to him after five weeks. I remember the first week when we met, where I just could not always get a coherent message across, and now we can have a lengthy, much more fluid conversation.

On a related note, something that I’m most excited about is my fluency with the different tenses. I don’t feel afraid anymore of using the future, past conditional, or subjunctive tenses. Instead, quite naturally, I’ll just be talking and Whoop there it is just popping in like no biggie. Yay me!

And that’s all for this week. I haven’t decided the theme of next week quite yet, so I’ll leave my one reader in suspense for now.

 

再见, 中国 (See you again, China)

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Today was my last day in Beijing, and I was battling a lot of different emotions as I left our dorms and headed to the airport. A part of me missed my family, my dog, and the familiar smell of cheeseburgers. However, a part of me recalled all of the hard times and the amazing memories that this country has given me. I began to feel a rush of emotions as I hugged Emma, our beloved friend from the University of Pennsylvania, the same girl who dyed her hair blue and bravely ate live scorpions. I felt the same rush when I bought my last mango ice cream from the convenience store that we went to every single day, and as I was packing my luggage, every object reminded me of a specific memory, whether it was bargaining at one of the markets or buying something from a street vendor. It was an unforgettable eight weeks, and I’ve been so fortunate to have this experience, to meet some of the most amazing people, and to have a more authentic perspective of China.

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Before going to the airport, one of my instructors, Hu Laoshi, treated me to a pizza dinner and to coffee right after. As we were eating, I asked him why he chose to be a teacher, and his response left me feeling inspired. He told me that he chose to teach because he learned as much from his students as they learned from him. Exchanging different opinions and perspectives with his students, who came from all walks of life, inspired him to become a better teacher. I related to his response because I strongly believe that building perspectives around authentic and immersive experiences lead us to become more empathetic and aware as students. I’ve corrected a lot of preconceived notions that I had upon coming to China, and I feel as if I am leaving this country with a motivation to continue gaining these authentic experiences and learning more about the world.

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I have a week to rest before I continue my Chinese studies at Notre Dame, but being in China has transformed the way I learn and retain the language. I am interested in seeing how this change exactly goes about once I start class. For example, speaking with local residents really heightened my sense of how colloquial Chinese is spoken, and I am finally more comfortable with presenting speeches and engaging in basic conversations. This was such a rewarding experience, and I am so thankful for this amazing opportunity to not only learn about a unique country, but also learn more about myself in the process.

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