august: cleveland county

During the Fall 2015 semester, I had the opportunity to take a course in spoken Chinese from the Confucius Institute at the University of Oklahoma (OUCI). This course, called Great Wall Chinese, was not for credit and open to the public. It met twice weekly for just over an hour, and we learned quite a bit in a short amount of time. Since I know that Confucius Institutes can be a source of controversy, I thought I'd write up a piece about my experience from the student's perspective.

Confucius Institutes are organizations funded by the Chinese government that exist at a number of universities in the United States as well as abroad. They help to spread Chinese language and culture, which reminds me a bit of the Fulbright program. The biggest difference between the two that I noticed on the surface is that my Chinese teacher was an actual teacher instead of a confused 22 year old. I know that OUCI does language camps in the summer for elementary, middle, and high school students as well as sponsoring several cultural activities in Norman throughout the year. The teachers also teach the for credit Chinese courses at OU.

The BBC and Inside Higher Ed have both published pieces criticizing the program as being a tool that the Chinese government uses to promote its views abroad. China's controversial views on topics such as Taiwan coupled with the amount of money that China supplies to the universities that run these programs have made it a hot button issue in Chinese language education. It should be noted, however, that most of these issues come from the administrative side of things, which I had practically no dealings with while at OUCI.

My personal experience with the course was extremely positive. My instructor was a genuinely excellent teacher who was excited to teach us spoken Chinese. The class was fun, although a lot of that had to do with the non-credit aspect - not having tests or quizzes tends to make it a more relaxed environment! Although we didn't learn many characters, we all learned enough Chinese so that, as the teacher put it, we won't die if we go to China. We also discussed several festivals in China and learned some Chinese paper cutting.

The only critiques I can make based on my personal experience is that we looked at a map of China that included all the disputed areas such as Taiwan as part of the country, although we didn't discuss Taiwan at all. Additionally, once someone asked the teacher about the end of the one child policy and she didn't really want to discuss it. Besides that one instance, we never discussed politics at all in the class.

I really enjoyed learning Chinese at OUCI. The class only cost $30 for the entire semester, which is great value. I would love to enroll in the second part of the course in the spring. Unfortunately, it won't fit into my schedule, so I'm going to have to be content with continuing to learn out of my textbook.
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Link:
OU Confucius Institute

Angela Merkel deserved to be Person of the Year. Her influence over world politics was unparalleled this year and has not met its equal on the European level for quite some time. However, previous Person of the Year essays have not always been so positive. Although the choice was sound, it could also have been tempered with a slightly larger dose of reality.

After a seemingly unending period of construction, part of the new InterCity Express train line that will eventually connect Berlin to Munich via Erfurt is finally finished! Now you can travel from Erfurt to Leipzig in less than an hour, and by the end of 2017, the travel time from Berlin to Munich is only going to be four hours, which is two hours less than it was when I first visited Germany in 2012.

You can watch a German news video about the event here.
This project is part of German Unity Transport Project 8, whose website is in both German and English. In addition, the new train line is part of a wider European Union effort to increase ease of transit within Europe.

When I was living in Erfurt, the train station had to be closed on holidays several times in order to get the part of the tracks immediately surrounding the train station put in place. This led to an interesting experience - Deutsche Bahn (the train company) had to bus people from Erfurt to Weimar or Erfurt East in order to catch trains from these smaller stations. The buses were quite crowded, which made for a memorable trip.

It's an exciting time for Erfurt. Once finished, the city will finally be on the line between Munich and Berlin. Up until now, that route passed through the smaller university town of Jena instead. This makes it a much more enticing spot for businesses since it will finally have great train connections to match its regional airport, which offers flights to London and Majorca, and the large amount of industrial space that is available on the city's outskirts.

Erfurt's train station, September 2013

Here's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to tell you what to do in the event of an earthquake. Instead of stop, drop and roll, the catchphrase is drop, cover, and hold on. You should drop to the floor, cover your head and neck, and then hold on to a sturdy object. It really isn't that different from a tornado drill, except you can be upstairs for this. I'm not entirely sure what I would hold onto in my apartment filled with lightweight objects (my desk?), but it's still nice to know.

Ready.gov also says that if you are in bed, you should stay there during the earthquake.

If you're outside, stay away from possible sources of debris. If you're in your car, pull over when it's safe to do so.

In addition to this, the Red Cross says that standing in doorways does not make you safer than anywhere else in the house.

Also, if you're in a trailer or a building "unattached to its foundation," the Red Cross says you're at additional risk. (FEMA has some resources for people that own their dwelling who wish to make it more earthquake safe.)

Why is this happening to us now?

Some studies show a link between increased fracking (a method of natural gas extraction) and increased earthquakes. A report in MIT Technology Review found that "nearly all earthquakes were within two miles of high-volume injection wells." Some wells, however, have never triggered a seismic event.

Bloomberg published an article in October 2015 saying that these earthquakes are a threat to national security since much of the nation's oil runs through Oklahoma. If important oil centers such as Cushing were to be harmed, it could affect the entire country's oil supply.

RT, the always questionable Russian news organization, had a field day with Oklahoma's earthquakes and fracking.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission did call for disposal wells near the epicenter of strong earthquakes to be shut down and others to decrease their volume follow this week's earthquakes.

I'm not a geologist by any means, so if you have more information on this subject, let me know!
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Links:
Red Cross
Ready.gov
FEMA
If you feel an earthquake, help the USGS out and report it!
Image source: Flickr user Andy Maguire, used under CC 2.0.

The German television station Das Erste's news program, tagesschau, has started a version of their 100 second news broadcast online with subtitles in Arabic and English for migrant and refugee viewers. Both are silent with subtitles, but it is a welcome gesture nonetheless. The broadcast will be updated twice a day on weekdays and once a day on weekends and holidays. The original German broadcast is one of my favorite news sources, so I'm glad that English and Arabic speakers can access it now!

Here's a link to the article (in German).

tagesschau in Arabic here.
tagesschau in English here.

Today, many leading officials from many states have come to the conclusion that it is too difficult to sort Syrians seeking asylum from terrorists in disguise. These people think that the United States is putting itself at risk by accepting refugees from Syria. Perhaps they are right; you can never say never about these sort of things.

However, these people, who include my governor and several of my facebook friends, seem to be overlooking three major points:

It is extremely difficult to enter the United States as an asylum-seeking refugee. The US State Department lists the average processing time for an asylum seeker as 18-24 months. The backlog is enormous. The U.S. Code specifically prohibits individuals with a history of persecuting other individuals from applying for asylum. (This probably wouldn't discourage a terrorist, but it is still important to note.) These individuals must also be interviewed by a busy case worker who may only have four hours to review the entire case, including the interview, which means that any inconsistencies often result in rejection.

In September, President Obama only promised to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. That is not a significant population when one considers the population of the United States (322 million). This is also not very significant when one considers the number of American citizens who engage in activities such as school shootings that incite terror each year.

Finally, if you look at Germany, these worries begin to seem a bit silly. Only one terrorist attack has taken place this year in Germany, and this was carried out by a German who injured only one other person (a policewoman). This man claimed to be an Islamist although this was disputed. Before the massive influx of refugees began in Germany in 2015, there were already over 226,000 people seeking asylum and over 216,000 additional refugees in that country.* If the amount of terrorists hiding among the Syrian refugees is as high as some seem to believe, wouldn't there have been an attack in Germany by now?

If you look at all the research and come to the conclusion that refugees should not be allowed in the United States, that is your right, but please do your research before coming to a conclusion.
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*Note: this source was last updated December 2014
Image source: Wikimedia, uploaded by Haeferl on February 16, 2013, used under creative commons.

When a terrorist attack happens in a first world country, the response is usually the same. News outlets spend their entire program looping grainy footage of the event, questionable reports are spread via social media, and many people take to social media to express their outrage and heartbreak.

I find the events that took place yesterday in Paris to be horrible and tragic, as do most of my countrymen. However, I would not say that I'm "devastated" or "heartbroken" about these events. My reaction to such news events is to learn as much as I can via internet and television, ignore social media posts that aren't from an outlet that I trust, and then to use that information along with the information I already know to try to understand the situation.

Since I'm studying international studies, I try to catch one (or three) news programs a day when my class schedule allows it. If you keep up with current events, you know that devastating events that destroy lives happen on an almost daily basis. If I fell apart every time something like this happened, I could not hope to someday enter a job where I will analyze policy, even for catastrophic events. Would you want a president or secretary of state or even a low-level policy maker who is so overcome by these events that he or she cannot think clearly? Perhaps not.

I think that we all have a role to play when something like this happens. Everyone has a responsibility to educate themselves about what has happened and why it is significant. Artists have the responsibility to express their heartbreak and contribute their creative talents to a healing process. Policy makers must remain calm in order to make the best decisions using the information that they have.

Resources

American news outlets that refrain from spreading unconfirmed reports:
NPR (radio, web)
PBS Newshour (television, web)
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Deutsche Nachrichtenagenturen:
tagesschau (Fernsehen, Web)
Deutsche Welle (Web, Radio; also in English)
Der Spiegel (Web, Zeitung; also in English; mehr Gerücht als die anderen Agenturen auf der Liste)
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Image source: @jean_jullien.

Today after a grueling google search for "blogger layouts," I discovered a template that I actually like, which increases the probability that I'll start blogging again. Since I'm entering the final months of my academic career and am looking to find a job in the next six months, I'm going to try to start blogging a bit more with an emphasis on my area of study. (I'm thinking about maybe blogging weekly on current events or perhaps just when the urge strikes.)

If you live in Germany, one of your favorite pastimes has to be complaining about the national train service, Deutsche Bahn. The trains are often a bit dirty (especially the regional trains) and they are often a few minutes late, which isn't aided by the company policy to call trains that leave less than six minutes after their stated departure times as punctual. If you've ever had the singularly unpleasant experience of catching a small train that has been overrun by a bunch of school children, one of whom is affected by motion sickness, you can be tempted to swear off the entire enterprise as hopeless and decide that renting a car is a far better option. I've been there. After spending all. day. long. on a train, it's difficult to appreciate the efficient train service. Despite all this, Deutsche Bahn actually represents the best that Germany has to offer.

This article from Germany's public television station is about security standards at German train stations following the Thalys attack last week. It points out that higher security standards that would make train stations more like airports are entirely unrealistic. I wholeheartedly agree. One of my favorite things about train travel in Germany is how simple and efficient it is. To ride on a train, you simply purchase a ticket from a kiosk, then take the stairs up to the platform and get on your train. You don't have to present your ticket at any point in the train station. You don't have to figure out how to work the ticket turnstile to get onto the platform because they do not exist in Germany. The German train system works on a good deal of good faith and common sense.

Tickets are checked after you are sitting in your seat and the train has started moving. The conductor enters the car and says "Jemand zugestiegen?" (Any new passengers?). If your ticket hasn't been punched yet, you hold out your ticket. After that, you can ignore the conductor whenever s/he comes through the car. (Unless you cross national boundaries, but that's another story.)

For me, the ticket check was always a bit nerve-wracking, especially when I had an early train and really just wanted to fall asleep. (I have before fallen asleep with my ticket in my hand out in front of me.) If you're on a regional train, the ticket checker may not even come through, especially if you're only taking a very short trip. This system works perfectly well on the honor code. I am perfectly fine with paying a bit more for my fares if that means that people who cannot afford train travel can slip by for free from time to time. (That is not the intention of the system, but I still think it's a jolly good side effect.) If you get caught without a ticket, you have to pay 40 Euros.

The article above from tagesschau.de mentions that police officers are allowed to ride free whenever they want as long as they're in uniform. This is a brilliant idea because it means that police officers are almost always present on a train in case of emergency. (It also explains why there were always police officers on the train last year...they always made me nervous, like I'd gotten on a particularly sketchy train route.) Knowing that police officers (and in the Western part of Germany, off-duty American servicewomen and men) are aboard does help to curtail crime on the trains.

The only train station that I've been to that has a lot of security is the one below the airport in Frankfurt am Main, for obvious reasons. Almost every time I've traveled through that area, there has been some sort of disruption in the train station due to unattended baggage. Every train station has signs posted and announcements that tell people not to leave their baggage unattended, but due to the train station's proximity to the airport, every piece of unattended baggage throws the entire rail system off. It was due to unattended baggage that I missed my train to Koeln on the way to Fulbright orientation. I think unattended baggage had something to do with the fiasco in Frankfurt where I saw someone fall on the tracks. Unattended baggage shut down the tunnel between the station and airport on my very last morning in Germany last July. If one train station with airport-ish security can throw off the system this badly, think of what an entire network of train stations with this security would be like! (I'm ignoring the fact that this is not a financially viable plan either - none of the train stations even have turnstiles, much less an area for security screenings.)

So you do you, Deutsche Bahn. Germans and those who reside in Germany may love to complain about you, but after a year without any real public transit (the bus system in Norman is okay, but limited), I'm really missing the freedom to wake up, jump on a tram to the train station and from there venture off to a new city or country.

(Also, this girl is living on DB trains as a school project. Interesting & in English!)

I hope you're enjoying the back to school season as much as I am!

- Chelsea

Hello, reader. It's almost May, which I am really excited about. Hence the blog title: Anticipating May! I love May, despite its often unbearable heat (or, in 2013's case, snow), for many reasons. The two biggest are that school is over in May and my birthday is at the end of the month! I have not yet outgrown being happy about my birthday...especially since this year it is set to coincide with my family's trek to Indiana to watch one of my cousins graduate from high school. Hopefully I'll get to visit Funky Bones while I'm there.

Emily and I are also going to go see Rainbow Rowell in Dallas in two weeks!! I am so excited since she's written some of my favorite books!

Also, Mumford and Sons is releasing a new album in one short week! I absolutely love the songs they played on SNL a few weeks ago, and I'm sure the rest of the album is similarly delightful.

And here are some photos:

Fair reader, there are so many things I could write a blog post about. I went to a wedding two weekends ago and was reunited with 4 of my lovely Fulbright friends. I went to class, which usually lends itself to the absurd. I sat in my room and read several books for fun. The weather has changed from pleasant to cold to hot back to cold. But I'm not going to write about these things. Instead, I'm going to write about the restorative power of Kaffee und Kuchen.

Kaffee und Kuchen is a German phrase meaning coffee and cake. The concept is pretty simple: at four-ish in the afternoon, you drink a cup of coffee and eat a slice of cake. It's really common if you have someone over to offer them coffee and cake in the late afternoon, and it's also common to have an afternoon break in a meeting (like the Fulbright Berlin Conference or Welcome Meeting) to relax and partake in some delicious coffee and cake. Here's some information about the history of this tradition from the German Embassy's website.

However, before you partake in this glorious event, you need to know a few more things.
Firstly, the cake probably isn't going to be quite as sweet and moist as you're used to in the US. It's still absolutely delicious (I recommend the marbled cake or anything that looks like it has fruit in it), but it's a bit different.
Secondly, if there is whipped cream involved, know that it's just cream that has been whipped. It's not sweetened at all! (Do you see a pattern?)
Thirdly, there may also be tea available. It's good too. (I love love love Waldfruechte tea & Vanilla Pear tea.)
Fourthly, there will be no coffee creamer! You'll probably (but not always) be offered milk & sugar. Sometimes they have something called Kaffeeweißer, which is a sort of powdered non-dairy creamer that never seemed to have much taste when I used it, so I stuck to milk & sugar. (My host parents like foam in their coffee, so they'd use this little contraption to turn their milk into foam, which was cool. They they'd tease me for putting 3 spoonfuls of sugar into my cup when I thought they weren't looking.)

Cake from the Polish side of the German-Polish border.

Now you know the secrets of Kaffee und Kuchen! Are you ready for some anecdotes?

On one of my first days in Erfurt, I was really busy with registering for my visa, opening a bank account, and going to work. I was meeting someone for coffee around 3 pm...on that day, coffee & cake were my lunch. It was really quite nice.

On one of my last days in Erfurt, I went to a colleague's house. It was upwards of 85 degrees outside, but we still drank boiling tea outdoors. She got cake from the church bazaar, and it was so good! (Her cat stole my last piece when I wasn't looking though!)

And, finally, today. I went to Walmart this afternoon because I forgot that it's Super Bowl Sunday. The trip took forever because there were so many people there! In the midst of all this chaos, I discovered that you can buy coffee that's in tea bags for people who are too lazy to bring their coffeemaker from its current position in their closet at their parents' house to their apartment. At the end of the trip, I found a relatively short checkout line, but the computer kept on messing up, so it took a really long time to check out! (It didn't actually bother me that much; I knew it wasn't the lady's fault.) However, at the end of all this, I was quite worn out and grumpy. When I got back to my apartment, I realized that I had coffee and I had cake, and the only thing that would make me feel better was coffee and cake! So I had some and now I feel cheerful!

Coffee (the plain stuff with just milk & sugar) always reminds me of Germany because I'd never had it like that before I studied in Holzkirchen and Werner made us coffee during the morning break so we wouldn't fall asleep during literature class. Ahh, good times!!

The kitchen at the school in Holzkirchen, complete with a view of that fateful coffeemaker!

I've resolved to try 12 new recipes this year, just to make sure that I don't eat breadsticks all year long. Yesterday, I made a sort of chicken dish. It's probably already a recipe somewhere, but I just made it up last night!

A Sort of Chicken Dish

Ingredients:
Chicken Breast
Italian Dressing
Mushrooms
Chicken Broth
Shredded Cheese
Salt
Pepper
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder

Preparation:
Marinate chicken breast in some Italian dressing (I would estimate that I used a few tablespoons) for a few hours. After that, put the chicken and dressing in a casserole dish along with about 1/2 cup chicken broth. Slice some mushrooms (I did 5 for 1 chicken breast) and arrange then around the chicken. Top the chicken with cheese, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Put the lid on and cook at 350 degrees for about an hour. After that, check to make sure the chicken is cooked. If not, put it back in until done. When the chicken is done, add more cheese to the top of the chicken and let cook uncovered for 10 minutes or until the cheese is crispy and delicious. Enjoy!!

(It doesn't look super pretty, so there is no picture. It is delicious, however!!)