The Rest of April, And Some of May

It’s nearly June, and it’s been a busy two months, which is why this post is only including a tiny bit of May, instead of all of April and all of May. After the family went home, I had a busy week before the new semester started. Things seem to pile up quickly, and if I’m being completely honest, I have no idea if I’ll be able to catch up on these blog posts any time soon.

I’m already enjoying this semester way more than last semester. In previous blog posts about my time in Marburg, I never really wrote about my struggles with social anxiety and depression, because, well. It’s not an easy thing to write about, and I’d try to focus on the positives when writing blog posts, both for my sake and others’. I don’t know if that was the right choice, or if there even was a right choice to make there. In any case, the truth is that I’ve had a really difficult time abroad.

Someday, when I’m feeling more up to it, I might write a post about what I didn’t earlier. But for now, I just wanted to mention it because it gives more context when I say that this semester has been a lot better than the last one. There’s a lot of different factors in why this semester is better, but I feel like most of it comes from the fact I’ve been here longer, my language is better now, and, of course, therapy. I’m really glad that I chose to come for the full year. If I hadn’t and had instead returned in December, things might have been easier but I would’ve left without a really positive experience. In a way, this semester feels like a new page and a second chance at having a good study abroad experience.

So, with all of that in mind, here’s the post about the start of the new semester! Also, before I forget, here’s the video for April:

Old-Timey Cameras

Kris checking the focus at the first location.

The day after the family headed back to the States, I got to try something incredible in my photography class: working with a large format camera. A.k.a., the old-timey camera with the accordion middle, the type where you have to pull a sheet over your head to see the image.

Kris collects various old cameras and already had one, and I’m really glad I got to try it out. We both had to carry a large backpack with all of the various pieces, and setting it up and getting ready to shoot took nearly thirty minutes. After taking the image, we had to take everything apart and pack it away before heading to the next location, where we put everything back together to take the second photo. I learned how to work everything with the first photo, and then I did everything for the second.

The set up for the second shot

Shooting with large format is such a long process, that only getting two photos isn’t that bad, considering how much time we had. Getting six photos is considered a busy, productive day when you’re working with large format. The benefit of this type of camera is that you can get an incredible level of detail and have a lot more control over all the little details.

Kris developed the photos, and then I got to actually make a print using a negative a couple weeks later. It was so cool to work in the darkroom with the red safety light on, and the pans of chemicals. Unfortunately, the large photo paper size had had a light leak at some point, so the first prints we made had a giant dark shadow in the top corner. Since we had used large format and therefore could print to a larger size to get more detail, it was a little disappointing to need to jump down to a smaller paper size. I don’t have a clean computer scan of the final print, but here’s what the final result was:

AnnenMayKantereit Concert

Last October, shortly after my arrival in Marburg, I found out that the band AnnenMayKantereit was having a concert in Frankfurt in April. I first heard their music during the März Musik Madness event at South, and they quickly became one of my favorite bands. I almost didn’t buy a ticket to go see them, but who knows when I would have the chance to see them perform live again?

The concert was fantastic. I enjoyed the opening act, a band called Leoniden that I hadn’t heard of before. I enjoyed the music enough to look up some of their songs again later, but judging by the difference between when they performed and when AnnenMayKantereit performed, I definitely wasn’t the only person who was new to their music. Although a lot of people danced and cheered, and participated when the band told the audience to clap, there wasn’t the same level of recognition.

Once AnnenMayKantereit came on, the energy of the crowd just increased. It was an incredible experience, to be in a crowd of people all singing and dancing along to songs we all loved. This was my first time attending a concert, and that was definitely one of the things I enjoyed about it the most.

The Start of Classes

It’s a bizarre feeling, to be starting a new semester in April, and to be barely a month into classes when friends back home start talking about finals week. Like last semester, my schedule was a bit of a mess the first few weeks as I tried to figure out how classes would transfer back to Etown, but thankfully I was able to work it all out. It was definitely a bit easier this semester, now that I have a better understanding of how the system works.

My classes this semester are all incredibly interesting, and also relate to my major more than last semester. One of my favorite classes is about the history and influence of foreign words on the German language. Learning about language history and the origins of different words and the way different languages have interacted, it’s all so fascinating to me! Another really interesting class is about the verbalization of emotions, or in other words, it’s a neuroscience class about how emotions and language interact. I could honestly talk all day about the things I’m learning in those two classes alone, and the only thing keeping me from doing that here is that this is already going to be a long post.

My other classes are geared specifically towards international students. I’m taking another BCA literature class, this time about novels. I’m also taking a practical language improvement class at the university. Every week a new pair of students who are learning how to teach German as a foreign language teach the class. It’s a useful and fun class, even if it is twice as long as my other classes. My last new class is a class that compares Germany to as many countries as there are nationalities in the class. Every week there’s two presentations, where a group of international students compare Germany to their home country in a specific area, like politics or economics.

This semester I also had the great luck of being able to take a fencing course here! They mostly only do foil fencing, but thankfully there’s a couple of other girls who also do epee fencing. I’ve missed it so much since leaving high school, and I’m glad I have the chance to do it here.

Easter Celebration Brunch

Group selfie taken by Emily

A bunch of the new BCA students all got together to have an Easter celebration together at the castle! This semester, there’s a lot more BCA and Etown students here, and we get along really well.

Everyone brought or made something different for the brunch. I brought a bunch of fresh fruit. Others brought the things to make pancakes, french toast, and maple bacon and made them at the castle. We also had some hashbrowns, yogurt and granola, and even an Easter cake and some candies.

It was really nice being able to celebrate the holiday with friends and to get to know some of the BCA people I didn’t already know from Etown better.

A Game with Friends

One of my friends from last semester, Nóra-Bríd, has a class this semester that relates to Celtic lore and required her to learn how to play a board game relating to it. She invited me and a couple of others over to come play the game and hang out.

It was a really weird game, and not weird in the way that I usually enjoy. The board was a map of Europe, with several long rays spreading out to different areas to which the Celtic people spread. Each person playing would choose a path to advance on. It was mostly a trivia game, where on your turn you’d pick a card from a couple of different categories and try to answer the question. Someone else would look up the answer in the book, and if you got it right, you moved forward and added the card to your pile. If you got it wrong, you had another chance to guess the correct answer, and if you still got it wrong you were still able to move your piece forward, but didn’t keep the card.

At the end, you count up the number of cards everyone has and whoever has the most “wins” and gets to draw their prophecy from the prophecy deck. Then everyone looks up their prophecy in the answer book, with the prophecy description being more information about whichever symbol you drew.

The game felt like it had been made to teach a bunch of information, and not really to be a fun game to play. After we’d finished, everyone had a general feeling of bafflement at how odd the game was. Despite the strangeness of the game, we all had fun hanging out and talking, and Nóra-Bríd got some good feedback for her class.

Tanz in der Mai und Tag der Arbeit

On April 30th, there’s a celebration in Germany to “Tanz in den Mai,” or to dance in the (month of) May. It’s a way of celebrating the end of winter and to welcome in spring. There’s a lot of different ways of celebrating the holiday depending on where you are in Germany, and I later learned about them in my language class.

In Marburg, a giant party is thrown in the square of the Oberstadt in front of the city hall. A big stage and speakers are set up, and then around the stage various vendors were out selling food and drinks. I got there at around 8 to meet up with the other BCA students plus some other international students I hadn’t met yet. By 9:30 the square was packed, and only more people showed up as the night went on. The DJ played a lot of music, mostly upbeat pop, and there was a lot of dancing.

Shortly before midnight, a couple of short speeches were made by the mayor and a couple of other people, and then the clock struck midnight and people cheered. After that, the party continued for another hour or so, though we headed back to our dorms a little earlier than that.

Tag der Arbeit, aka Labor Day!

Even though May 1st was a Wednesday, we were all able to sleep in, because it was Labor Day! It’s pretty strange that the US doesn’t celebrate it on May 1st, because the origin of the holiday was May 1st in the US.

After Easter, I’d had a lot of apples left over, and had planned to make some sort of pie or cake so they wouldn’t go bad before I could eat them. I bought an apple cake mix at the grocery store, but soon discovered that it would be fairly complicated to make, and needed more time than I had in an afternoon with classes.

Instead of making on my own, I invited the other BCA students to come over and help make and eat the cake. It was definitely much easier and fun than if I done it alone, and our cake turned out really well! We ended up ordering pizza for dinner, and by the time we were done eating, the cake was done cooling and we could put on the whipped cream and enjoy.

Hausfahrt, Part Two

Last semester, I went on a Hausfahrt with the Schloss dorm, which is a small weekend trip for people in the dorm. The first weekend of May was when they had the Hausfahrt for this semester.

Who knew canola flowers were so pretty? There are fields all over Hessen, and we walked beside one on the way to the train station after the Hausfahrt.

Once again, they rented out a hostel in a small village, this time in Malsfeld-Dagobertshausen. It was pretty similar to last time, but as with many things, I had a better idea of what to expect. After dinner, everyone hung out and played a bunch of different games. I got to talk to some of the new people living here, which is a large part of why they do the events; to help the people living on different floors or who have mismatched schedules get to know each other better.

I was tired out pretty soon in comparison to everyone else, consequence of photography class. I found out the week before that we were going to be shooting the next roll of film in color, but was already 5 photos deep in a roll of black and white. In an effort to get through the rest of the roll so I could get a new color roll in, I asked the BCA students if anyone wanted a black and white portrait of them. It ended up being perfect timing — Emily’s boyfriend had flown over to visit her in Marburg, and they had just gotten engaged when I asked! I took their engagement photos around the castle, and it was a little stressful but also exciting.

It’s not a lot of snow, even by Georgia standards, but it’s still snow in May.

So, the Friday morning of the Hausfahrt, I had gotten up super early for photography class so that I could develop both the black and white film and the color film (a more complicated process I hadn’t done before). As a result, I ended up going to bed earlier than the others’, and was also awake long before anyone else. I had a huge shock the next morning when I looked out the window to see it snowing out. By the time other people in the house started waking up and getting out of bed, it had stopped and was all but melted. I’m glad I saw it.

I’ve created an Instagram account specifically to share my photography! You can check it out here @seelysphotography.

What I’m listening to this week  My favorite AnnenMayKantereit song, since I talked about their concert in this post: Pocahontas