Opera House, Munich
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Sunday, April 24, 2005
VVMSAPG--Veterans of the Veterinary Medicine Study Abroad Program in Germany
At this coming Tuesday (April 26)'s final pre-trip orientation, our new crop of students will have the opportunity to meet and chat with some of last year's veterans. You (our newbies!) have all heard me go on at considerable length about this program and about Germany, but here will be an opportunity to get the straight dope from the horse's mouth, so to speak! The student perspective on study abroad in general and our program in particular is unique and is most relevant to what you can expect to see, feel, do, and experience this summer in Europe. I'd like to thank our students from 2004 who are coming on Tuesday evening for taking the time to share their experiences with the class of 2005.
You'all have been good at responding to your Blog invitations and a number of you have already posted your hello responses. Ausgezeichnet (excellent)! I'd say we've got ourselves an up and running group Blog!
You'all have been good at responding to your Blog invitations and a number of you have already posted your hello responses. Ausgezeichnet (excellent)! I'd say we've got ourselves an up and running group Blog!
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Howdy
This blogging thing is new to me, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I hope this posting works. I know I'm getting excited Lindsey.
CJ in the house
A hearty "HOWDY" to y'all out there!
Hi, this is CJ from AIB Düsseldorf. This is my first time ever on a blog, so y'all have to work up some patience for me here. I hope you don't mind me using your Texan vernacular. I've actually been around that for an entire year of my life!
As a start I thought I'd give you just a little bit of background information on myself: After finishing my German "Abitur" (qualifying us for university after 13 years of regular schooling), I've decided to go *really* far away so I could *really* improve my English. That idea had me end up in Coppell, Texas, a growing suburb of Dallas near Dallas Int. Airport where I lived with a family as their "Au Pair" and watched over their first child who was only a tiny little infant when I first got there. My host Dad and Mom had both just graduated with an MBA from UT, so I better stop telling you any more about them... (They are wonderful people, no matter what, and influenced the further course of my life.) So I ended up studying American History and Political Science with a European comparative aspect afterwards in a small, specialized program at Bonn University.
AIB, meaning something like "Academy for International Education" only in German, has its headquarter office in Bonn, so that's how I've first made contact to my current employer. After holding a small student worker position there for a while, I was offered the opportunity to change to AIB's new Düsseldorf branch and work more hours after finishing my Master's degree in what is called "Regional Sciences North America" at Bonn University.
So that's where I am right now, and I do like it a whole lot! As you will see in the near future, we're only a small team here in Düsseldorf but nevertheless put a lot of effort into our work. My boss is Willem Spanninga, a big and usually quiet guy and a very, very nice person who is originally from the Netherlands. Then we also have a few more student workers you will also meet this summer. What we all have in common, I think, is that we like the fact that you have this wish to come over here and see places you've never been to. We'd like to make this a pleasant experience for you, even though some degree of cultural shock should be considered within the normal range of reactions. So don't worry if you feel a little bit displaced upon your arrival. That feeling will pass away quickly. At least you'll have some buddies you can talk to in your own language; I wasn't awarded such a luxury in Texas. I went back during my graduate studies to go to school in Saint Louis for a year. I never really picked Dallas or Saint Louis but ended up feeling very much at home in both these cities. Hopefully you'll be able to say the same about Düsseldorf, even if your stay will be terribly short!
I don't have the slightest clue as to how this whole blog will continue from here. I guess we'll all just check in every once in a while and see what's going on? Maybe I'll post some pictures if I can find some adequate ones :-) I am very picture-shy, and we don't want to scare you away, right? I also can't make any promises as to how regularly I will be able to check in here and answer some of your questions. Jeremy should be a good first source if you have a lot of things to ask. He knows Germany very well and his German is getting better and better! (He knows so much more about German cantorial singing than all of us at AIB combined!)
As a next step for the program preparations, I am awaiting the arrival of your housing forms. Let me just stress again that a simple, one page letter to your potential host family helps us a lot for matchmaking. The more we know about your personality, likes and dislikes, the better chances we have of finding the right host family for you.
With the ongoing semester it will probably be a while before y'all start thinking more about this trip. The best of luck to you for all those finals yet to come, best wishes and "Auf Wiedersehen in Düsseldorf",
CJ
Hi, this is CJ from AIB Düsseldorf. This is my first time ever on a blog, so y'all have to work up some patience for me here. I hope you don't mind me using your Texan vernacular. I've actually been around that for an entire year of my life!
As a start I thought I'd give you just a little bit of background information on myself: After finishing my German "Abitur" (qualifying us for university after 13 years of regular schooling), I've decided to go *really* far away so I could *really* improve my English. That idea had me end up in Coppell, Texas, a growing suburb of Dallas near Dallas Int. Airport where I lived with a family as their "Au Pair" and watched over their first child who was only a tiny little infant when I first got there. My host Dad and Mom had both just graduated with an MBA from UT, so I better stop telling you any more about them... (They are wonderful people, no matter what, and influenced the further course of my life.) So I ended up studying American History and Political Science with a European comparative aspect afterwards in a small, specialized program at Bonn University.
AIB, meaning something like "Academy for International Education" only in German, has its headquarter office in Bonn, so that's how I've first made contact to my current employer. After holding a small student worker position there for a while, I was offered the opportunity to change to AIB's new Düsseldorf branch and work more hours after finishing my Master's degree in what is called "Regional Sciences North America" at Bonn University.
So that's where I am right now, and I do like it a whole lot! As you will see in the near future, we're only a small team here in Düsseldorf but nevertheless put a lot of effort into our work. My boss is Willem Spanninga, a big and usually quiet guy and a very, very nice person who is originally from the Netherlands. Then we also have a few more student workers you will also meet this summer. What we all have in common, I think, is that we like the fact that you have this wish to come over here and see places you've never been to. We'd like to make this a pleasant experience for you, even though some degree of cultural shock should be considered within the normal range of reactions. So don't worry if you feel a little bit displaced upon your arrival. That feeling will pass away quickly. At least you'll have some buddies you can talk to in your own language; I wasn't awarded such a luxury in Texas. I went back during my graduate studies to go to school in Saint Louis for a year. I never really picked Dallas or Saint Louis but ended up feeling very much at home in both these cities. Hopefully you'll be able to say the same about Düsseldorf, even if your stay will be terribly short!
I don't have the slightest clue as to how this whole blog will continue from here. I guess we'll all just check in every once in a while and see what's going on? Maybe I'll post some pictures if I can find some adequate ones :-) I am very picture-shy, and we don't want to scare you away, right? I also can't make any promises as to how regularly I will be able to check in here and answer some of your questions. Jeremy should be a good first source if you have a lot of things to ask. He knows Germany very well and his German is getting better and better! (He knows so much more about German cantorial singing than all of us at AIB combined!)
As a next step for the program preparations, I am awaiting the arrival of your housing forms. Let me just stress again that a simple, one page letter to your potential host family helps us a lot for matchmaking. The more we know about your personality, likes and dislikes, the better chances we have of finding the right host family for you.
With the ongoing semester it will probably be a while before y'all start thinking more about this trip. The best of luck to you for all those finals yet to come, best wishes and "Auf Wiedersehen in Düsseldorf",
CJ
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
German audio resource?
All signed up and ready to be on a plane. Anyone have any ideas on where to get (free) audio for learning some basic German? I've found precious few good websites that also have audio clips. I was going to try Evans...but I fear that most of what they will have will be in EDMS, which means frequent trips to the library. Anyway...see you next week. --R
Welcome and update!
Hello and welcome to our new Blog members! I sent out the invitations today to all 13 of the students who are planning on coming with us this summer as well as Drs. Musser and Herman Jennie Barr (TAMU Study Abroad) and Willem Spanninga and Caro Janda (AIB, Duesseldorf). I've already gotten a couple of confirmatory postings (thank you!) so the system seems to be working as promised by Blogger. We've had the occasional glitch in which an invitee has been unable to sign up but it looks like we can get this all worked out before the summer.
Next Tuesday will be our final student pre-trip orientation (among other things I'll be handing out the camcorders!) and then we chill out until July 10 or so and meet in Duesseldorf on July 11 for the start of the program. Caro (CJ) and I have been corresponding by e-mail working out the final itinerary and she's already formalized arrangements for some of the very best things we wish to retain from last summer. For example, we'll be touring Nuremberg with our Stadtfuehrerin from last summer, Frau Schmitz-Pikulicki. Frau Dr. med. Zarmina Penner will be lecturing to us again on German and EU health care systems and Herr Professor Ralf Zinnikus will be lecturing on modern German history during week one of our program. It looks like Herr Marc Stegherr will be available to guide us through Dachau and he did a superb job last year. CJ has also arranged for us to visit the animal health division at Bayer--which was not so easy to arrange--and this is excellent. Thank you CJ! Many other things, of course, are planned and we're now working on finalizing the plan for our trip to Berlin. I have passed along our students' housing/roomate requests and Frau Evi Pilartz of the AIB is taking care of this for us (herzlichen Dank!).
That's it for now. I await the rest of the confirmatory postings from our students and I trust the overall level of pre-trip excitement is on the rise!
Initial Posts
I was just doing as you had asked us to and post on here to make sure that it works beforehand.
-Josh
-Josh
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