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