For my family, birthday celebrations have never been a big deal. When I was a kid my parents would always organise a party for me to celebrate with my little friends and have very good memories of that. Last time I celebrated myself getting older together with many other people was at 17, few months before I left my birth country for my school year abroad. After that, I have always been somewhere else, travelling and treating myself (instead of treating others!).
As far as I have noticed, for my German host family birthdays are very important. My host mother has got a calendar where she has written the birthdays of literally all the people she knows. She even has your year of birth, so you can’t lie to her about your age! Almost every day she phones a different person to wish them happy birthday and to the her close dears she also writes letters. I think she is almost obsessed with it, it’s some kind of hobby of hers. Heart of the matter, this year my birthday didn’t go unnoticed. Both my host parents asked me months ago how I wanted to celebrate it and they were almost shocked when I answered I wanted to go for a day-trip to meet a friend of mine who lives in Hannover on the weekend after. Not only were they stunned because I would have done nothing on the day itself (on Thursday), but especially because I would have not celebrated together with “many” other people. At the end I felt quite pressured to do more and ended up having the longest birthday celebration ever. Honestly, it was very pleasant to receive so many attentions. The day before getting officially older I received some “birthday post” from my host-relatives, it was the first time in my life to receive it and I loved it! (How they knew when my birthday was is a mystery I’ll let you solve). In the afternoon of my natal day I made a cake and a liquor and cooked a delicious dinner with my host mother. After that, we ate, of course! In short, I made something different, with different people on 5 different days. New country, new habits! I highly recommend living together with other people, like in a host family, during your year abroad. It really gives you a distinct, more complete perspective of the place where you are, the culture, the traditions, the habits and the things to do.
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There is at least a dozen of reasons why I am happy to study at the University of Aberdeen. I will share what makes me grateful at the moment.
I am an undergraduate student in French and German Studies and I am currently spending my compulsory year abroad, interning as an English Language Assistant in Germany. I am extremely glad to be able to do this experience although I am not a native speaker – I learned about this opportunity thanks to my amazing teachers at UoA. If I had not known, I would probably be doing an unpaid internship and having hard financial times (my studies are not supported by my family), which is not what you hope while you are in a foreign country. I study German at UoA because I would like to be able to communicate with my relatives who were born in Germany. Due to the language barrier, my family was, unfortunately, losing contact with them, but not anymore thanks to me and to what I have learnt at Uni! In this picture, in fact, I am jumping with my German little cousin in the town where I intern, Bad Salzdetfurth. As an incredible coincidence, the school where I work is the same school where her mum (my father’s cousin) also teaches. We see each other every day and I couldn’t be happier! Before coming to Bad Salzdetfurth I spent three months in Berlin, where I interned for a company that takes care of medicine and bureaucracy for foreigners in Germany, which has been a valuable experience, considering that I would like to work in the field of medical translation and interpreting. While in Berlin, I not only met people from all over the world (that I will visit soon in their home countries!), but I also had the chance to visit some of the most beautiful museums in the world. I love visual art, especially painting and sculpture; every time I see one of the master pieces of my favourite artists I almost cry! During the summer, when I still was in Berlin, I attended two online German language courses, the first one with the university of Dresden and the second with the University of Mainz. This boosted my language skills and prepared me for the wild life outside! Again, I learned about these two courses thanks to my teachers at UoA, and the best part is that I did not have to pay for them as I applied for and won their scholarships. Thank you, University of Aberdeen, for making this possible! |
OUR STUDENTS, RESEARCHERS & ALUMNI...... here share their experiences of living, studying, seeing, researching, listening to and working with German culture. Click on the logo to go to the German Department's student newspaper Aberdeener Allgemeine.
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