Election watching and the U.S.

Late Tuesday night... well early Wednesday morning... I participated in an event that I suspect all (if not most) US citizens did: election watching. I expect that I was like everyone else at the beginning, nail biting and on the edge of my chair, watching the state races and Electoral College votes unfold. However, this time was also different from 2008 election, when I was huddled in a friend’s college dorm room, completing engineering homework and anxiously awaiting election results; myself, another ex-pat, and two other Germans drowsily watched the elections, just wanting to stay awake until our questions were answered, and not another minute more. In the end, we didn’t make it through, but luckily woke up just in time to watch President Obama’s acceptance speech.

Living in Germany, I am very humbled by foreign interest in national issues such as hurricane Sandy, the election, and even our healthcare system. Sometimes, I’m simply amazed at how much people know and other times, I’m slightly embarrassed at how far some of the more ‘erroneous, biased facts’ tend to reach (and also, this). Whatever the case may be, I still try to bring in relevant and personal observations about my culture into discussion. My hope is to add dynamic to the conversation and (hopefully) portray the U.S. in a different light from mainstream European media. (The link is to an opinion article).

Interestingly enough, mention of the U.S. has managed to sneak into almost all of my lectures at the University. Most of the time, the U.S. is used as a comparison to highlight a difference in political ideologies (and court cases) and other times it’s American research and terminology. It always catches me off guard to listen to a German lecture and then have a few very familiar phrases thrown into the middle of sentences.

For me, it’s still odd to see the presence of my homeland everywhere, on the streets as stars and stripes leggings and scarves and on fliers for ‘American style’ college parties (red solo cups included). Although I do welcome the fact that I can still find brownie mix in major grocery stores.

Humor

Originally I was going to use this blog post to explain my experiences studying at a German university as a foreigner, but as I was drafting this post, I realized that I needed to expand on both of these ideas. The latter is undoubtedly a theme throughout this whole blog, as I learn to once again situate myself within a new environment.

A few years ago, as I was writing an essay reflecting on my time studying abroad, I explained that the most necessary ingredient for a successful stay was humor. It’s been a little over three years and I still find this statement to be remarkably true.

In the month between my arrival in Augsburg and the beginning of the semester, I was helplessly going about trying to figure out the necessary requirements for registering with the University. Since I was new in the city and the only foreigner I knew that was studying here (at that time), I hung on to the slow trickle of information that was given to me. Indeed, I had already been accepted to the Environmental Ethics program, but that didn’t quite mean that I was an actual student yet; I still had to take a German proficiency test (passed), sort out health care, and pray to all the University Gods that I didn’t forget any important documents back in the States.

Surprisingly, with the amount of things that could have gone extremely wrong, registration (which was less than a week before classes started) went without a hiccup. Other than that, I had to get my head around the University’s internet system (UofMers: not quite WolverineAccess/Ctools) for which to enroll in classes and making ‘the perfect’ schedule (no classes on Friday = Travelday!).

Here’s where the humor part becomes important: at any given time, especially now that I’m at the University and among students, I can either completely misunderstand a conversation or stumble upon my own speech. As I haven’t been in Germany for that long, I’m still working hard at comprehending/speaking fluidly and correctly. Trip-ups are bound to happen and it’s not comfortable having my lingual ‘imperfections’ exposed, but I just have to remember to laugh it off and acknowledge that things will get better over time.