Culture Days: America and Ireland

source: society6

Last week must have been quite exciting for most of us students. Not only was it ridiculously hot, this week was also filled with final exams and sudden attacks of unexpected studying. But the past week was also spent with preparations for our Culture Days, which would be a two-days event filled with English students happily talking about aspects of their teacher's culture. In our case, we had a really nice mixture of Irish and American culture presentations.

I was really nervous before I had my own presentation about Bobby Sands. Normally, I'm not scared of talking in front of an audience, but I hadn't held such a presentation for a long time. I didn't even had the heart to go to the first bunch of presentations on Wednesday afternoon, because I felt like I wasn't prepared enough. In the end, I was rehearsing my presentation in front of my cats for about two hours straight, in which process my voice almost went missing. Luckily, when I arrived at university to hold my presentation, I was still in rehearse-mode and so I could go fluently through my text without spending too much thoughts on how nervous I was.

After my presentation was done, I finally could let go and watch these of my fellow students. Unfortunately, I couldn't watch as many as I wanted because I had two exams the two following days, but I at least managed to watch a few more than required. These were:

Ireland: From Emigration to Immigration by Alexa L.
Abortion Law in Ireland by Andrina D.
Video Games in Ireland by Artur S.
The Irish Film Industry by Dunja D.

Hill of Tara by Nadine D.

This is Friz! by Sandra L.

Languages of Irish Travelers by Kristina T.

Poetry in Irish Schools by Cornelia K.

The Influence of James II on the Irish by Julia B.

The Integration of Islam in Ireland by Alexander H.

Witchcraft in Ireland by Sabrina K.

Comics Books and Superheroes by Lucie B.

Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman by Orsolya C.

Hurricane Preparedness by Claudia S.

For our final oral exam we have to pick five of these topics. The ones I chose are the following:

Video Games in Ireland (by Artur S.)

I knew I would pick this topic for my oral exam as soon as I saw the title because I like playing video games. However, my knowledge about the history of videos games is only based on the "big ones" (America and Japan) and so I was most surprised to hear that Ireland's contributions aren't that unimportant in this industry.

The Irish Film Industry (by Dunja D.)

I really liked Dunja's presentation about the Irish film industry because she managed to give us a brief overview without attacking us with too many year numbers and hundred of names. She really waked my interest.

This is Friz! (by Sandra L.)

I simply had not heard of Fritz before, and I really want to talk about art.

Poetry in Irish Schools (by Cornelia K.)

Cornelia's presentation was my most favorite. She provided perfect examples and explained everything in a very calm and direct matter. It also made me think about how Austria's schools deal with poetry at a young age.

Witchcraft in Ireland (by Sabrina K.)

I like the mysterious vibe that comes from this topic. I'm happy that Sabrina chose to focus on two particular examples rather than explaining witchcraft from a dry historical view.

I think our Culture Days were very exciting and great. It was just too bad that it took place in a week full of exams. This took our chance of relaxing and just watching the presentations. However, I really hope that we will do something like that soon again or that at least the next SUK2-class will organize it as well. The whole event was the perfect opportunity to get to know these countries' culture better.

50 Years ago, the First Woman Went to Space

Yesterday morning, when my radio alarm went off, the first words I heard were "today is the 50th anniversary of the first woman ever being in space". I was still quite sleepy and impressed at the same time, when I realized that they were referring to the soviet cosmonaut I'm having a presentation about next week in Russian class. Her name is Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova and -- you might have guessed it already -- she was the first (official) woman ever being in space.

It was the period of the space race in which America and the Soviet Union competed about the most developed space program, which resulted in the most ridiculous and dangerous experiments. Almost everybody knows about, for example, the Russian dog Laika that was sent to space but never came back. There were a huge amount of failed experiments on both sides which would be made public only several years later. After all, neither America nor Russia would have admitted mistakes or failure.

Interestingly, Tereshkova was not a "real" cosmonaut. She was working in a textile factory and parachuted for in her free time. When main space engineer Sergej Koroljov formed plans on sending a woman into space -- after the soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin successfully became the first man being and returning from space -- Tereshkova was chosen over 500 female candidates for her knowledge about parachuting and for deriving from a proletarian heritage. She underwent intensive cosmonaut training, including weightless flights, rocket theory, spacecraft engineering and many more.

On 13th June 1963, Vostok 6 launched into space. She orbited the earth 48 times and stayed in space for almost 3 days, which was the longest stay in outer space at that time. Unfortunately, she experienced nausea for most of the flight, which main engineer Koroljov was not pleased about. It is said that this was the reason why her flight was not made public immediately. Furthermore, it took further 19 years until the next woman would be send to space.

Today, Tereshkova is 76 years old. When she was invited by Vladimir Putin for her 70th birthday, she stated that she would love to go to Mars, even if it would mean to never come back to earth. This among several other reasons is why I think she must be an incredible person. Her life story is very impressive and she seems to be a strong woman which we never can have too few of.

Movie: Hunger (2008)

Sometimes, when I want to get into a certain topic that I am interested in (or at least should be for university), I like to start getting into it by watching a documentary or video adaption about/of the topic. This is also what I did when I had started researching about the Irishman Bobby Sands for my culture essay for English class. I felt that the political issues that surrounded his actions were a bit hard to understand. So I hoped that I would get the grasp of a basic image about these when I would be watching a movie or documentary about it.

The most recent and popular adaption of Bobby Sands' hunger strike in 1981 is the movie "Hunger" (2008), directed by Steve McQueen. It describes the hunger strikes in an unpolitical way, showing pain and fear on both sides (in this case: by both the guards and the hunger strikers) equally with using only a few words throughout the whole movie. McQueen rather focuses on delivering the right atmosphere by using strong images. A good example for such are the scenes in which fully-armed guards and naked prisoners fight each other brutally, both trying to gain control over the other. In contrast, a dialogue of 20 minutes between Bobby Sands (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) and a priest is shown in the middle of the movie, which, by the way, was filmed in one single take without changing the perspective of the camera. It is the exact opposite of the first third of the movie and mostly consists of skirmish between these two. The last third of the movie is showing the process of Sands' turning more and more into skin and bones, by using again strong and depressing images, this time ones of a broken man. The movie ends with Sands' death, not showing the aftermath and political consequences.


In my opinion, "Hunger" is not only the best adaption of the Irish hunger strikes, it is also an outstanding movie in general. The movie does not go for the heartstrings, but sticks to simply showing strong and disturbing images. Every further spoken word would be one too much, because the uncommented pictures speak for themselves. Even the dialogue between Sands and the priest requires to look at the picture itself and not focusing what they actually say, rather focusing on what they do not say. Creating an atmosphere and emotions in this quite theatrical way is what really astonished and touched me about this movie. It might not have cleared the fog about the political background in my head, but it left me incredibly impressed.

Learning Languages Online - Busuu

We all know that learning a new language is not as easy as it seems. Studying a language at university might be one of the most effective ways to do that, however, there are of course many more ways to accomplish that. People want to learn languages faster, easier and without much effort. For those, books like "Learn Russian in 30 Days!" or "Becoming the Master of the Spanish Language in less than 14 Days!" are written and published, although most of these look more promising than they are in reality.

And then there is Buusu. I heard about it in a commercial on television and they instantly got my curiosity. Basically, it's a community connects native speakers with language learners. People can share their texts or audio recordings and get these corrected by native speakers.

I have tested it for about a week with Russian as my learning target as an additional exercise to university. As soon as I had signed up, I had access to several lessons relating to basic topics such as family or emotions. For each lesson, I could choose between watching a slide-show of pictures with topic-related vocabulary on them, reading and writing dialogues and -- most exciting -- chatting with native speakers.

Unfortunately, it is the most basic thing about this community that had disappointed me: their lessons, which are supposed to take you step by step to a higher language level, are translated by and therefore dependent on the online dictionary PONS. Their dependence on PONS is one of the major reasons why their computer-generated lessons are hardly helpful, because the vocabulary is often taken out of context, often providing a wrong translation.

I decided to take the opportunity to interact with native speakers instead. When I had shared a little introduction text with my Russian knowledge from university, I almost instantly got several suggestions and corrections on my text which were incredibly helpful. In the end, I had even found a tandem-partner who wants to study German while being a Russian native-speaker.

All in all, Busuu might not be the place to learn a new language starting by zero, but definitely the right place to find language-interested people from around the world who are very happy to help you on your way of learning their native language.