Bonjour!!! I am on a farm in France - neAr St. Nazaire outside of Nantes on the atlantc coast. I am on my friends iPhone so excuse mistakes.....
This is a really nice and reflective way to finish out my time in Europe. Yesterday I harvested cucumbers and tomatoes and took care of hundreds of chickens. Today I built a gate with the Belgian girl who lives and works her long term. I am enjoying using my french... It is great to see that it has improved a lot since I lived in Suisse AND that I can communicate with people apart fro
My host family on more than a passing basis. But still I miss Danish. I'm not kidding! Ther is something about that strange little Nordic language that really works for me.
I have sen writin letters to peopl n my HIA program as a way to reflect on it. Time consuming but a great way to process. I'm hoping to get through everyone though that s a tall order...
Love you much. All my best from the farm
Alice
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Actually in Switz again!
Hello all. Here I am writing from Signy, Canton de Vaud, Suisse. Back in the host family where I stayed when I started writing this blgo! I originally wasnàt sure I would end up here this summer but thought it would just be simple to use the same blog... but here I am. how full circle of me.
But before Swityerland I went to Hungary with my good friend from HiA...
BUDAPEST WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! My friend Ben and I from the HiA program were aboslutely perfect travel buddies. We just walked and walked and walked for hours every day. Literally ten hours on foot one day. Budapest puts the so called European travel capitals to shame, Iàm not kidding. it is gorgeous, rich in history, bustling with life. I just canàt say enough about it! Hungarian is a nutty language though. It sounds like galloping horses. Ben and I took a day trip to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. I love that kind of spontaneity. He proposed it at 11pm and we got up at 6 the next morning to head off to Slovakia! Funnn. A cute little former Soviet capital. DAYUM it was hot - about 100 degrees every day. Hmmm random story - it took us a slightlz paiful hour and a half to find the entrance to the 'castle caves' - these caves that run under Budapest castle that have been around since cave peopl times and were used to store treasure by kings and queens, during the world wars, during the cold war, and now as a museum of course. They were fascinating - but also suuuuper strange in parts. There was a big exhibit on 'homo consumus' - meaing u now in the age of capitalism who consume a lot of materials and arenàt connected to our modes of production. It was fascinating, but super edgy and strange and not something i would normally expect from a state government - more as an avant garde art project. So it was interesting to me that it was a state run museum that put it together.
Yesterday my host mom Gudrun and I swam in Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) and lounged around by the lake for a while - and then she took me to this bizarre Swiss park in the Jura Mountains. My French has improved by leaps since I first came ti la Suisse! It was really gratifying to talk to her and Hermann, her long term boyfriend. He doesnàt speak any English so communicating with him is even more of a full on French experience. They have an SIT student staying with them for the 5 week summer program right now. He is originally from Germany but has lived in the states for the past 6 yeras - so he speaks German and not French. The conversations between the four of us are hilarious. Gudrun is fluent in all three - Hermann and I speak French - Max (the student) and I do English - and Hermann speaks enough Swiss German to get by - but that is essentiallz a different language from 'High' German so that is another struggle bus!
Okay I am tired, tired, tired and tomorrow I head for a farm in France. It is Bastille day as well so that will be interesting :)
Love,
Alice
But before Swityerland I went to Hungary with my good friend from HiA...
BUDAPEST WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! My friend Ben and I from the HiA program were aboslutely perfect travel buddies. We just walked and walked and walked for hours every day. Literally ten hours on foot one day. Budapest puts the so called European travel capitals to shame, Iàm not kidding. it is gorgeous, rich in history, bustling with life. I just canàt say enough about it! Hungarian is a nutty language though. It sounds like galloping horses. Ben and I took a day trip to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. I love that kind of spontaneity. He proposed it at 11pm and we got up at 6 the next morning to head off to Slovakia! Funnn. A cute little former Soviet capital. DAYUM it was hot - about 100 degrees every day. Hmmm random story - it took us a slightlz paiful hour and a half to find the entrance to the 'castle caves' - these caves that run under Budapest castle that have been around since cave peopl times and were used to store treasure by kings and queens, during the world wars, during the cold war, and now as a museum of course. They were fascinating - but also suuuuper strange in parts. There was a big exhibit on 'homo consumus' - meaing u now in the age of capitalism who consume a lot of materials and arenàt connected to our modes of production. It was fascinating, but super edgy and strange and not something i would normally expect from a state government - more as an avant garde art project. So it was interesting to me that it was a state run museum that put it together.
Yesterday my host mom Gudrun and I swam in Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) and lounged around by the lake for a while - and then she took me to this bizarre Swiss park in the Jura Mountains. My French has improved by leaps since I first came ti la Suisse! It was really gratifying to talk to her and Hermann, her long term boyfriend. He doesnàt speak any English so communicating with him is even more of a full on French experience. They have an SIT student staying with them for the 5 week summer program right now. He is originally from Germany but has lived in the states for the past 6 yeras - so he speaks German and not French. The conversations between the four of us are hilarious. Gudrun is fluent in all three - Hermann and I speak French - Max (the student) and I do English - and Hermann speaks enough Swiss German to get by - but that is essentiallz a different language from 'High' German so that is another struggle bus!
Okay I am tired, tired, tired and tomorrow I head for a farm in France. It is Bastille day as well so that will be interesting :)
Love,
Alice
Thursday, July 7, 2011
BUDA
Hello from Budapest!
The HiA summer program is over now…. It doesn’t feel real! Parts of the Berlin conference were wonderful – some of the speakers, meeting fellows from the other four programs, hearing more about HiA from the people who founded it and are those who are involved now. There was also an itch to just be hanging out together and seeing Berlin but luckily we were able to have plenty of both worlds.
I guess it officially ended on July 3rd with the end of the conference but about a dozen of us stayed around in Berlin for a few days after so it felt like a continuation of HiA on our own. None of us really cared what sight seeing we were up to as long as we were spending time together. Plenty of neighborhoods to explore, a couple of museums, and that one important wall.
Six of us took a day trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp just an hour north of Berlin. Hard to really put that into words. I wasn’t unequivocally shattered and sad per se – mostly just very detached and deflated. Looking at the cremation chambers gave me a literal gag reflex. This particular camp is unique in that most people there were political prisoners rather than Jews. When Germany was split in East and West Sachsenhausen was in the DDR and it was under that government that the camp became a museum/site. It churned up a lot of controversy because the commemorations were solely to the communist who were persecuted by the Nazis and not at all to the Jewish people who were there. It also heavily thanked the Soviets for freeing the camp. In reality the Soviets kept it running as a quasi-work camp for a couple years after the war. History is never subjective.
Leaving my HiA friends was unbelievably difficult. I don’t know how it happened but I love these people, I realy do. I feel insanely close to many of them after just five whirlwind weeks. I have learned so much from them and changed the way I think about myself and the world. It’s hard to say exactly how yet but like I struggled to convey in my last post – I can tell that there are many changes yet to unfold form this experience. I feel like talking a little bit about some of my friends and what I learned from them:
Sofia is able to be critical of almost any idea without shutting down a conversation. She doesn’t just “play devil’s advocate” – her brain is that actively engaged in conversations and her mind is that flexible to see outside of the mainstream. She’s a law student in Stockholm now interested in immigration and migration there. It seems that every conversation we have somehow involves her telling me the story of a social movement in Sweden or political figure in India or feminist author I simply must read – her thirst for and grasp of world knowledge is amazing. It intimidated me at first, but she is so warm and affectionate as well.
Thomas was my Danish partner for our final article for the program. He is an incredible idealist through and through but such an intelligent, confident, and creative one. Hearing him speak about the social welfare state was so revealing about Danish culture and my assumptions about political systems. To him, it simply makes sense that the strong should help the weak and that society should reflect that logical truth. Thomas is SUCH a nice guy - he felt terribly for expensive everything was in CPH so he insisted on treating me to so many drinks and kebabs and paper-writing snacks. He’s also a complete weirdo/dork – organized us playing Danish children’s games, had a literal “yes hat” that he wore when we went to clubs, and has the best quirks – some typically Danish and some entirely Danish like the nose tap, the tongue click/head bob… to be imitated at a later date ☺.
Marija is from Bosnia and seems so wise to me. The social and political climate there fascinates me… I mean, there was genocide just 16 years ago, but you’ve got to go on, as she says. Her views on holocaust remembrance and education were always extremely strong and sure – she gets frustrated when too much emphasis is placed on the past because she sees people in her country focusing on retribution rather than the future. She is extremely nonjudgmental – her focus is on doing what is in her power.
Theis, like Sofia, helped me to challenge my definitions of “normal” and “possible”. We "got" each other from the beginning and so became really, really close. He seemed to know things about me that I hadn't verbalized - he's several years older than me,
Love,
Alice
The HiA summer program is over now…. It doesn’t feel real! Parts of the Berlin conference were wonderful – some of the speakers, meeting fellows from the other four programs, hearing more about HiA from the people who founded it and are those who are involved now. There was also an itch to just be hanging out together and seeing Berlin but luckily we were able to have plenty of both worlds.
I guess it officially ended on July 3rd with the end of the conference but about a dozen of us stayed around in Berlin for a few days after so it felt like a continuation of HiA on our own. None of us really cared what sight seeing we were up to as long as we were spending time together. Plenty of neighborhoods to explore, a couple of museums, and that one important wall.
Six of us took a day trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp just an hour north of Berlin. Hard to really put that into words. I wasn’t unequivocally shattered and sad per se – mostly just very detached and deflated. Looking at the cremation chambers gave me a literal gag reflex. This particular camp is unique in that most people there were political prisoners rather than Jews. When Germany was split in East and West Sachsenhausen was in the DDR and it was under that government that the camp became a museum/site. It churned up a lot of controversy because the commemorations were solely to the communist who were persecuted by the Nazis and not at all to the Jewish people who were there. It also heavily thanked the Soviets for freeing the camp. In reality the Soviets kept it running as a quasi-work camp for a couple years after the war. History is never subjective.
Leaving my HiA friends was unbelievably difficult. I don’t know how it happened but I love these people, I realy do. I feel insanely close to many of them after just five whirlwind weeks. I have learned so much from them and changed the way I think about myself and the world. It’s hard to say exactly how yet but like I struggled to convey in my last post – I can tell that there are many changes yet to unfold form this experience. I feel like talking a little bit about some of my friends and what I learned from them:
Sofia is able to be critical of almost any idea without shutting down a conversation. She doesn’t just “play devil’s advocate” – her brain is that actively engaged in conversations and her mind is that flexible to see outside of the mainstream. She’s a law student in Stockholm now interested in immigration and migration there. It seems that every conversation we have somehow involves her telling me the story of a social movement in Sweden or political figure in India or feminist author I simply must read – her thirst for and grasp of world knowledge is amazing. It intimidated me at first, but she is so warm and affectionate as well.
Thomas was my Danish partner for our final article for the program. He is an incredible idealist through and through but such an intelligent, confident, and creative one. Hearing him speak about the social welfare state was so revealing about Danish culture and my assumptions about political systems. To him, it simply makes sense that the strong should help the weak and that society should reflect that logical truth. Thomas is SUCH a nice guy - he felt terribly for expensive everything was in CPH so he insisted on treating me to so many drinks and kebabs and paper-writing snacks. He’s also a complete weirdo/dork – organized us playing Danish children’s games, had a literal “yes hat” that he wore when we went to clubs, and has the best quirks – some typically Danish and some entirely Danish like the nose tap, the tongue click/head bob… to be imitated at a later date ☺.
Marija is from Bosnia and seems so wise to me. The social and political climate there fascinates me… I mean, there was genocide just 16 years ago, but you’ve got to go on, as she says. Her views on holocaust remembrance and education were always extremely strong and sure – she gets frustrated when too much emphasis is placed on the past because she sees people in her country focusing on retribution rather than the future. She is extremely nonjudgmental – her focus is on doing what is in her power.
Theis, like Sofia, helped me to challenge my definitions of “normal” and “possible”. We "got" each other from the beginning and so became really, really close. He seemed to know things about me that I hadn't verbalized - he's several years older than me,
Love,
Alice
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)