Week 1 Academics: Das ist Hildegard

After the initial culture shock of arriving in Germany, it was time to actually learn how to pronounce and understand more or less the world around us. German class was taught by a woman who amazingly over dramatizes the language that is filled with pure entertainment and I learned how to count to 10 and then some. I also realized that there is a lot of similarity between English and German  in the sense that perhaps one out of every 50 there is a word I can pick up simply because it sounds like the english version.

In the History of Medicine class, we learned about the pre-historic practices of medicine. That there is a limitation on the knowledge of the world and seeing how far we have come in the years entices me of what there is to come. Many of the strategies sounded quite strange, but were completely understandable. After all, I couldn't have thought any differently if I tried. This week we also went to Bingen to discuss the impact Hildegard von Bingen had made for not just the world of medicine, but for having the guts to speak about what needed to be said. We had explored the her sights and visions, being able to directly see how she perceived them. The garden was also filled with flowers and plants of different varieties that were believed to have healing powers; a concept that would seem mostly foreign to this day.