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Hello! My name is John Hammerschmitt. This summer, I will be traveling to Leipzig, Germany in the hopes of advancing my knowledge of the language and the culture. Ultimately, I hope to live and work in Germany and spend most of my life there. However, there is a lot of time and experience needed before that dream comes to fruition, so I’ll focus on this summer throughout these blogs.

When I was 8 years old my family and I moved to Japan for my dad’s work. I lived there for 3 years while attending an international school. I played the same sports as other Americans, learned the same subjects, and even ate some of the same food. But I learned so much about other cultures and how to interact and learn about them. I learned about Japanese, Chinese, Australian, and other Asian cultures throughout my time there. Those 3 years were the best of my life, and I will never forget those experiences. Plus, I believe it was in Japan that I developed a love of language, travel, and foreign cultures.

Because of my time in Japan, I had a more inclusive and understanding childhood. I could relate to other cultures slightly more than other people in my grade, and had experience with foreign language that shaped my learning. However, I still lack many skills necessary for my dream, and hope to learn more about German and its rich culture during my time in Leipzig.

Specifically, I want to build confidence in my knowledge of both the language and the culture. I hope to be able to speak without hesitation and start to process conversations in my head in German. This is a big goal for me because it will demonstrate what I have learned both because of schooling and my immersion in the culture. I also hope to explore Germany and learn about its history and people. I imagine I will be taking the train to many German cities, both small and large, to get the biggest picture possible. I’m looking forward to my experience in Germany, and can’t wait to get there!

Auf Wiedersehen, John

My name is Thomas Reimer, and while I have grown up in a very culturally diverse area and had many friends not from the U.S., I have never actually been to a foreign country. I’ve always wanted to, as I want to have an experience of complete immersion in my life, although this has never happened until now. I think that this process allows for you to see how you actually react to things and allows you to empathize to a degree with the multitude of people who have had to move to vastly different countries within their life. I would say I certainly anticipate it and want to do it although at the moment I don’t feel much excitement or nervousness, which in my mind is a good thing.

I’ve always had in intense interest in language and the way it impacts the brain throughout my life, and I am interested in the way that this immersion will change the way I think and act. I have taken a fair few languages in my life (Spanish, Latin, Arabic, and now Japanese), although I haven’t really had to use them in conversation until now. I think this will have a vast difference on how my brain relates to the language as it will become less of an object and more of an instrument. I also think it will be interesting to see how my brain will attempt to make more complicated sentence structures without knowledge of more advanced grammar structures. I want to see how much my guesses actually match what people say. The main thing I want this experience to shine light upon is the way that I communicate and relate to language, as I think a foreign language gives you better conditions to test this due to your lack of familiarity with convention. I don’t really want to have very rigid and intricate goals, however, as I think it is more important to let the experience shape me than to let me shape the experience.

In reflection, the first things that come to mind are 1) my cultural experiences before SLA and 2) my goals for intercultural development.

I thought a lot about the intercultural learning I’ve gained so far. I have been to a few different countries with that very goal in mind. But so much of a college education here in South Bend, Indiana, has been intercultural learning. A testament to that inconceivable amount of money that it costs to be educated here, is the inconceivable amount of intercultural learning I have gained from being here. I could not have imagined that multiculturalism would be such a big part of my college education or that it would transform my mind as it has. I have learned (sometimes in disagreement with others’ opinions) that everyone has “culture” because everyone has history and a relation to it. I have examined what culture really is- scientifically, sociologically. I have begun to examine what it means to build equity with both diversity and inclusion. Intercultural learning was born from all of these things in my life, and it will continue to grow with this summer experience and as I begin my senior year.

One of my goals is to connect with people in Costa Rica, particularly through understanding ways in which they suffer and how they find resilience. For me, there are constant imperatives to explain how my people are disadvantaged, why my life matters, and even that I am a regular human like my peers. I get pretty frustrated when I have to defend or justify black American people and culture. Because this can be difficult for me, I made it my goal to connect with people in their own language and talk about forms of resilience.