I realize that the majority of my posts consists of stories about the various excursions I have been taking. While it may come as a surprise to some, I still promise that I'm paying a lot of attention to school. Overall, I have really been enjoying my classes. They consist of a lot of reading and I have some ridiculously long papers and presentations to attend to, but the classes have all been pretty interesting. I've decided to provide a few anecdotes about various things I've experienced in the classroom over the semester to give a glimpse of my experience in a foreign institution.
Unfortunately, I don't speak Dutch. Well, I mean I can pretend to know enough Dutch to make it in and out of the grocery store or to talk to the ticket taker on the train, but, overall, my Dutch skills leave quite a bit to be desired. I've mattered the art of the 'nod-and-smile,' but it only gets me so far. There comes a point in many a conversation that one must admit their ignorance and explain that they have no idea what's going on. The general rule is that if somebody talks to you for more than about two sentences, you're screwed and should admit defeat. I tried to hold out longer at the library once, only to find out that the man was actually trying to kick me out of the room because he had a class coming in.
Fortunately for me, as well as all of the international students, the classes that we've signed up for are all in English. That doesn't mean, though, that my classes are full of international students. In all of my classes, I'm one of the very few international students, meaning (1) that it's partially my fault that the class is taught in English and (2) that I never understand what the other kids are always chatting about before class and during breaks.
I was terrified during the first presentation I had to give in one of my classes. Not only was I overwhelmed by the fact that I felt like the only person in the class who didn't know everything there possibly was to know about Rome, but I was also that foreign kid standing up in front of all the locals. I survived and have lived to tell the tale, but it was a traumatic experience. I was super confident about the next presentation I had to give, even though it was over twenty minutes long, but that may have partially been due to the fact that there were only four other students and the teacher in the room. I was really prepared for the last presentation I gave and was ready to rock it, until I came down with the flu and proceeded to do more coughing up of my lungs in front of the class than educating them about the Victorian Era.
I got an assignment back in one of my classes and got full credit for it. The professor did mention that my writing was a bit colloquial and archaic. I found this statement to be a bit ironic
because I'm the only native English speaker in the class, including the
professor, and they're telling me that my English sounds different. Of
course it's colloquial; I'm from a different local. Go figure. It didn't bother me so much as confuse me. What did bother me was the next week in class when we were reading something in Middle English and he said that non-native speakers have an easier time pronouncing the language and that native speakers tend to butcher it. Guess who he called on to read aloud to the class next. This girl!
Spending a semester in a foreign school has really been a really cool experience. I love hearing about the different perspectives and backgrounds that people bring into their interpretations of what we're doing in class. The other day in one of my classes we were talking about the point of education and who should be responsible for funding it. A lot of people in my class all believed that the government should be in charge of funding education because they set the standards. Students in the Netherlands get funding from the government to live and go to school. This has obviously shaped part of the educational experience in the country and it's been cool to see how things like that alter the viewpoints from which we discuss things in class.
In my Hungarian cultural history class, we've done a lot of discussing how the material we've examined impacts us based on our background and relates to us based on our background. It's kindof a cool class because the teacher is Hungarian, as are two of the students, and the other two are Dutch. We all came in with different life experiences and it definitely makes class discussions, which are the main component of the class, that much more meaningful. I read a novel for class this week called "The White King." It was written by a Hungarian author, so I was obviously reading a translation. It was an amazing translation, though, and really seemed to keep the integrity and point of view of the original version. It also kept the setting very real but was still something that could be related to.
The coolest part was that I read the book in English, two students read it in Hungarian, and two read it in Dutch. Comparing our experiences with reading the different versions made for an awesome class discussion. I really, really enjoyed the book and it was neat to see how the others interpreted it. The best part is that the author is actually coming to visit next Tuesday! I'm super excited to meet him and think that this is such a great experience.
Overall, this semester of school has been great so far. I still have a lot of work to do and exams to take, but I'm ok with that. It did bum me out a bit that everybody at home is now done with school, but, all things considering, I'm not really in a place to complain about things like that, am I?
