Pictures, Electron Beams, Antifas & Delegates

Well everybody, this is basically going to be photos and comments on them. I'll try to give you some context. And I'm writing this in parts when I have free time (currently about to leave for Berlin Mid-year Seminar in 5 minutes... so yeah).

To get this out of the way: I HAVE AN INTERNSHIP NOW!!!

I will be working at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute in Dresden for 4 weeks, aka Physics Research! (their PV research team didn't have any open spots). 

I'm a little confused as to how I'm going to pull this off myself, but I'm excited!

I will be helping design a new experiment, wherein we use Electron Beams to reconstitute paper. I'll be setting up the apparatus and then running some experiments!

Militär Historisches Museum, visited with my awesome History class. It's really hard but I'm getting tons of historical perspective of Germany. This building (very architecture!) and the ones around it for e.x used to be Barracks for the Russian army in Dresden during the cold war, i.e where Putin was stationed!

I had the great luck of being able to attend the Green Party national convention for the European Election this year. Very exciting and my friends from the Grüne Jugend were there and they were very nice and showed me around. Met some awesome people. Saw some democracy.
 I WENT ON STAGE BTW!!! The GJ did a spontaneous action against TTIP (which I actually support but whatever) before the delegates voted on the programm (which ended up support a redrafting). We went up on stage and played out the EU and US inviting their corporate friends (monsanto, google, Vattenfall etc.) to hang out and exclude the Delegates (b/c one concern is that these deals will be made without elected officials), there was much confetti, I obviously played the USA.. And then the "good guys" (Greenpeace, Deutsche Bund, The Greenparty, PETA, NWF etc.) came to defeat us and ensure that we weren't jeopardizing  environmental policies.  And then we all chanted "Stop TTIP" for a minute and that was that. 
Although this action was obviously generalized, and I didn't agree with it. It was really really fun!

Courtyard swag at Messe Dresden where the convention was held

Bravely went up to Jurgen Trittin (very tall) to ask him a question about EEG and Decentralization and get a picture.
btw the guy in the crook of Jurg's neck was also with GJ and was superl chill.

February 13th marks the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden near the end of WW2. It was a devastating event that still bears a scar on the city to this day. Those of you who have read Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" may be familiar. 

It has become tradition to honor this memorial with a city organized "Menschenkette", a chain of people holding hands that goes all the way around the  city center and lasts for ten minutes as bells ring. I somehow ended up with the group of people who organized the Menschenkette, so we got white vests and we walked around telling people where to line up. It was really fun and then suddenly very solemn as the bells rang all around us, standing there holding hands with strangers in the night. 

Unfortunately in the last decade or so, radical nationalist conservatives and neonazis have attempted to use the memorial as an occasion to demonstrate against immigrants or whatever. Luckily in response there has been a massive citizen backlash from the group "Dresden Nazifrei" (free of nazis), which has reduced the number of extremist demonstrators to a tenth of what it started at, and this year there were absolutely no Nazi demonstrations on the 13th !(there was something on the 12th but most importantly it's not on the memorial day anymore)

Although, it turns out alot of self labeled Antifas (Anti-fascists, punks with a cause) were still out and about makin' a ruckus, and there were tons of riot police for safe measure, but it was maneagable.  In the end it just turned into a dance party and I was with people from Grüne Jugend and it was just fun and exciting to get to be there and see everything unfold. 

 

I visited a DDR museum with my guest family. Here you see a model of a classroom.

Notice the dear leader Walter Ulbricht keeping safe watch over the party's children.

Freie Deutsche Jugend. It was a state run scouting organisation that most DDR school

kids were a part of. "On the side of the Comrades", and then similar to the BSA "Always Prepared!"

Got Milk?

 

The Swagtastic 4. A Honecker and Pieck sandwich with Marx and Engels bread. Yum.

What a lovely living room!

The Kölner Dom (aka Gothic Skyscraper)! I got to visit my guest relatives Claudi and Kaja in Nordrhein-Westphalen. It was awesome! The Cathedral still isn´t done btw, so naturally there are a few jokes about the world ending or the rapture happening upon it´s completion!

Haha! The Kölner Dom is giving the Ludwig Museum bunny ears,
those silly buildings! What is my life?!

 

The week I was there was Karneval (same thing as mardi gras). It's a really big deal in the Ruhrgebiet. I saw some very questionable and some creative costumes. This is the set up for a big parade.

Westfalen Stadion. The home of the soccer team BVB Dortmund. The biggest stadium in Germany (80k, it was sold out that day!), and the site of Jack's very first live pro-soccer game. 3-0 gegen Nürnberg gewonnen!

Ultras German's love soccer a lot! There's absolutely no comparing this level of fandom to anything in the US. They have massive flags, there are clubs that buy out entire seating blocks, there is choreography, there are chants. It was a really unique experience and It was awesome to get to be there with Chris and Domi and Kaja.

 

And then we went to a TV tower in Dortmund, really cool view from up there!

 

Ok now I'm back in Dresden. I went to Ash Wednesday at the Hofkirche. I don't think I'd ever been to a Catholic mass before, and I'd never been to  mass in german before either, but structurally it was the same as at home except a Bishop was there and they had the incense smokey thing on a chain that they swung. It was really hard to understand anything because of the acoustics and the more formal language. Overall, it was very spiritual and soul searching, as you would expect from sitting silently in a 300 year old Baroque Cathedral built by August II. (elector of Saxony and king of Poland), bombed to rubble during WWII and rebuilt in the DDR, sitting amidst throngs of humanity from all backgrounds in the secular and contemporary city of Dresden.

 

I got to have an unforgettable weekend in Meißen as part of a seminar organised by a friend of mine from Grüne Jugend (good job Clara!) for the German youth foundation. The theme was politics. We were hosted by the evangelical academy of Meißen in an extremely cool, 700 year old monastery. There were great workshops with politicians, and very perceptive discussions. I met some absolutely wonderful people too! My roommate Timm actually turned out to be a former YFU student!

We had a little party in the cellar on the last night, I got to play a few songs and they all liked it so much that they gave me a bottle of Meißner Wein! This year has definitely been great for my self confidence, and learning not to be afraid of judgement (I'll do a seperate post). I played a song I wrote for the first time in front of a crowd, and now I'm much more comfortable playing in front of people.

Watcha lookin' at Paula?

Ludwig Richter's Haus!

Time

In the past 2 months since writing I have been super busy, but instead of just listing off and describing everything I've been up too (I will do a seperate post) I thought I'd write about the exchange student experience and how It's affected me. Obviously these are just my perspectives but I hope they could be helpful to prospective Exchange Students, or just humanity (always a good option).

A division of an exchange student's time

At home and in High school I always felt overwhelmed by all the stuff I had to do, I would try to treat everything with the same level of importance. In the past I have not been good at prioritizing and very good at procrastinating. Which isn't very fun when you give everything a strong sense of commitment, so everything would get done but was often late and I was working very inefficiently. This year there's been a huge change, maybe just because I don't live at home anymore, but also because my exchange year has given me the chance to do a full reset.

This year I've been much busier and have been waaay more productive. Here's my scheduling and how I divide it up:

"Required" Time:

For me this is going to school and mandatory YFU gatherings, and for 4 weeks, my Internship (will describe below). which, are the things I'm officially here for. What's awesome/weird for me is that I don't need grades this year. I still do homework, but I am less of a perfectionist about it and I just sit down and crank it out. There's a certain comfort in knowing that the most important thing is is to just show up. For others this would be college classes and work. In high school I often stayed home from school because I hadn't finished the homework, which created a vicious cycle. I hope I maintain this attitude for College next year and don't turn into one of those students who ditches Lectures to work on a paper for the same class.

"Committed" Time:

This is stuff that I don't need to do, but do consistently anyway because I actively commit. For me here it's Choir, Theater, Grüne Jugend, The Greenpeace energy committee. I am absent from this stuff from time to time which is totally fine, and they're not fun every single time. These are things that I picked out myself and they have led to meeting sooo many people and got me into so many awesome events, these are also commitments which I have accumulated over time here.

Exchange Students: Don't worry if you have trouble finding a club or group for your particular interests, just keep your eyes and ears open and keep an open mind and don't be afraid to ask people if they know what kind of groups there are that do ____. Don't worry if it's not ideal. In terms of language, I can't even begin to describe how much specialized vocabulary I've learned from these groups (i.e Theater, Political, Environmental terms), and Grüne Jugend & Greenpeace are ideal atmospheres to improve speaking skills through discussions and debates. 

To be clear, I got involved in the Grüne Jugend (green party, youth group) solely because of environmental stuff, but as I result I've learned an incredible amount about the political system in Germany in the process although I'm not interested in politics, but because I view it through the lens of Environmental Policy it becomes interesting through osmosis.

"Free" Time:

This could be further divided into alone and social activities, but for me they are pretty similar. This is often me hanging out with friends, writing my blog, going jogging, playing guitar, and my newest hobby: learning Chinese!

At first I had so much free time here that I didn't know what to do with it, as it got pushed aside by my Committed Time activities/events. During this year I've become someone who always equates interesting with fun, and when I'm not doing something productive I have a guilty voice in my head nagging me. So when I watch youtube it's Scishow and Ideachannel, when I'm playing a game online it's Memrise, and when I go jogging I listen to (and repeat) Pimsleur's Learn Mandarin. It may seem kinda intense, but I love it!

So that concludes my summary of how I spend/schedule my time on exchange, I hope I continue to do so back in the US because every day is a gift! I hope that the people who read this take the time to think about their own lives, and use their time so that there's never a dull moment.

Hallo 2014!

Hi there!

If you’re reading this that means you've survived either:

a.)    Forcible entry at the hands of a surly bearded man who proceeded to incentivize good behavior in children via the giving of material goods
b.) Hanukkah. If you don't celebrate Christmas and option a still happened then contact your local authorities and don’t open the presents
c.) The barrage of fireworks that made german cities sound like warzones on new year’s eve. All forms of fireworks are legal in Germany, and people set them off in the streets. You’re Doin’ it right Germans.
d.) The polar vortex briefly shifting from the north pole down to the Midwest, I hope everyone’s staying warm! (here’s a great Hank Green video with his thoughts about its implications?)

Either way I hope that you've been having a great 2014 so far.

Here’s what I've been up to since my last post

Hiked up a “mountain”

So the town where I go to school is in a valley (Freital = Free-valley), and there’s a little mini-mountain overlooking it called the Windberg. So one day when I got out of school early I went and walked up it. It wasn’t that hard but the view was nice, and there was a memorial to King Albert of Saxony which was neat)

Jack’s first protest political action!

It was with the Grüne Jugend who I’ve mentioned before. Our goal was to get people to buy less stuff for Christmas. We went through the Dresden Christmas Markets wishing everyone a merry Christmas and giving out little pieces of paper with non-material gift Ideas on them. You guys should stop giving material gifts too! It’s more personal and saves money, e.x. I gave my guest parents a donation to Kiva, and my sisters a certificate for us to see improve together which I made myself and am suuuper proud of (front, back)

We also had super ironic slogans like: “The world in a shopping cart”, “Buy yourselves happy”, and the one that I got “Konsum Geilheit” which translates to either “Lecherous Consumption” or “Lust for consumption”! We even started chanting “kauf” (buy) at one point! At first I was a little uncomfortable and embarrassed but then I warmed up to it and it was a ton of fun. We made a lot of people smile and started some dialogue, it wasn’t one of those angry complain-ey protests but one that offered solutions and made them seem like a better idea than the status quo. We did get some searing stares from shopkeepers though. It was especially  satisfying because I was the one who originally suggested the general concept of the action in the first place!

I’m really glad that I started going and that I get to hang out with this great, motivated group of people. Meine Igel!

And then I had my 19^th birthday!  We celebrated with an evening of Bowling and cards. I’m so lucky to have met all these wonderful friends here and they really made it the best golden birthday ever.

Weihnachten (Christmas)! Celebrated on Christmas Eve, I got to meet the actual Santa Klaus, although I didn’t realize that he spoke in such a strong Sächsische dialect!  It was really neat how all the presents are from Santa instead of just one per person, and how Santa actually came in and personally handed us our presents from his bag, but only after making Hendrick (Guest mom’s grandson, 6 y/o) sing a song and promise to be good next year and not to interrupt people so much!

For Silvester (newyears) I went with my guest mom’s Son, his wife and their kid Hendrick to a resort in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. We met up with 2 of their friends and their 3 y/o Daughter. Pretty relaxing, and the fireworks were spectacular.

BOOM! Photo explosion:

We went to this massive Strawberry Farm experience store where they have every imaginable product that could be made with strawberries. There's was a restaurant, Ice skating rink, high ropes course, pottery painting activities, and this huge exhibit of bad-ass ice sculptures!

That's Mario, technically my guest brother, certified bamf.
After this photo was taken he would go on to be quite rude to that swan.

Best binoculars ever at a nature museum.
please don't punch me Wheezy Waiter it's not a real eagle.

just us moms chillin while the kids play in a play maze thingy.

And then I napped

and napped some more,
here's me napping in my nap dream: napception

and then I was ever so rudely awoken!

After we got back from “Meck-Pomm” Miranda (YFU-er who I was in Frankfurt with) came to visit me and I got to show her around Dresden. Then I realized that I know this city just as well as Chicago, albeit Dresden is much smaller but still it’s 5 months vs. 18 years! I don’t know when I started feeling like a “resident”, but I’m definitely one now. I recommend her blog (link here) for those interested in another exchange student’s perspective (no 2 are alike!), she lives in Bayern and they do things a little bit differently down there.

Now I’m back in school again. Rehearsals for the play I’m in, “Die Räuber”, are starting up and I joined the school choir! It made me realize how much I missed singing every day and all of the wonderful students and teachers in singing groups back at ETHS.

One of my big projects in the coming months is going to be a Praktikum (internship). German schools really emphasize those, they even give you 3 weeks off of school to do one, and I think that’s great because you get hands on experience and you can explore career paths. I’m in the process of applying right now, so hopefully I’ll have good news by the next time I post!

Thanks for reading!