Culture Days *yay*

Soo...I've already told you guys about the Culture Days. Now we got the assignment to write about 10 of the presentations (uhhhh..I hope I remember all of them :D ). All in all, I think the Culture Days went really well. There were hardly any delays (I think we were in time mostly) and most of the topics were really interesting.

The Kennedys
I think "The Kennedys" is a really cool topic. Usually it's always about John, but this time it was fiiinalllyy also about his brothers and his father (who by the way played a veery important role in American politics). John's father was very strict and even when the boys were still kids he wanted them to get the best education available. So they always had to talk about politics. Unfortunately they all suffered great loss during their lifetime (also called the Kennedy curse). The oldest brother died in WW2, John and his younger brother Bobby were assassinated, and Ted died from brain cancer. Still, they were one of the most loved and admired families in the US.

The Korean War
As my topic was the Vietnam War, it was really interesting to listen to the presentation about the Korean War and compare those two. During WW2, Korea had been occupied by Japanese troops. The Soviet Union and the US, however, wanted to pitch the Japanese out of the country and worked together to do so. In the end, they drew a line between North and South Korea- the North was supported by the Soviets, the South by the US. This friendship did not last long and soon troops from the North started attacking the South. At first, the North Korea was about to win because the US had underestimated the power of the Soviet Union, but then the US asked for the help of the NATO. Together they pushed the North Korean troops back to the North. However, nobody was able to win the war and therefore they only agreeed on a ceasefire agreement. So actually North and South Korea are still at war.

American Indian Boarding Schools
Since I had already learned about this topic in school, I knew most of the facts that were mentioned in the presentation already. However, it was good to fresh up my knowledge and hear about this cruel episode of American history again. The pictures where they compared Indian kids before and after the school were extremely shocking. Afterwards they just looked like Europeans.

Ellis Island
I had also heard about Ellis Island before, but I never had any detailed knowledge about it. For example, I had never heard about the "Six Seconds Medical Exam" where they tested immigrants in order to make sure they were physicall and mentally fit enough to be allowed to immigrate. Imagine having to go through this after fleeing from persecution- imagine the fear they must have felt knowing that they might not be accepted and might have to go back.

Woodstock
Although I had also already known most of the things that were mentioned, the presentation was really interesting. What surprised me most was the fact that for the first time Hippies were not seen as radicals anymore (I had not known that). I think the Woodstock era is one of the most fascinating parts of American music history. It
was an expression for what people felt back then - their wish to live in peace and harmony, their opposition toward war, their desire for change.

++++ These were the 5 topics I chose for my KGP (final oral exam). I think they were the most fascinating ones and can be related very well to other American topics e.g. Ellis Island to the American Dream or the Arizona Immigration law; Woodstock to Vietnam, Korea and the Cold War; or the American Boarding Schools to the Trail of Tears, the Luisiana Purchase, Manifest Destiny or to Sacagawea ++++

Race Around Ireland
This presentation was my absolute favorite among Irish presentations. It was not only interesting to
hear about the race itself (I hadn't even know that there was a race around Ireland haha) but also to hear about the personal experience of the student who did the presentation ( He is one of the guys who help cyclists during the race). The only thing I missed were pictures of Ireland's landscape...I bet what those cyclists get to see is soooo beautiful *.*

9/11 and it's aftermath
My friend Helene did this presentation and it was soo awesome! I mean.. I had heard it a couple of times before the actual presentation because we practiced together..but still... it was great. I think 9/11 is a tragedy that is still in the heart of Americans and that influenced decisions that had great impact on the whole world (Iraq, racism against Arabs, Afghanistan etc.) Also, Helen showed President Bush's speech in which he declared war on terror... today we all know what that actually meant (invading Iraq and Afghanistan, death of thousands of soldiers..etc)

Irish Intelligence at its peak
Although I heard the presentation twice, it was never boring. The student who presented it did a veeery good job.. she made people laugh and still gave a lot of interesting information. I do believe though that I would have understood more if I had known more about Irish history in general (I still know a lot from last semester- but I have forgotten some of the key facts).

Belfast

This presentation was somehow very shocking to me. I just can't believe that the serperatists and unionists there are still kinda fighting. That they need a WALL in order to be separated and not kill each other. It's really unbelievable. But then again...the time of the Troubles was not so long ago and what had been happening to the Irish for CENTURIES (English Protestants telling them what to do and killing a lot of Irish in the battlefield) takes some time to be processed I guess.

All I have is a voice
Another friend of mine -Sarah- did this presentation, and just like Helene she did a veeery good job =). It was so interesting to hear how Hip Hop evolved and how music was used by blacks in order to express their feelings- how it was their only way to keep their cultre alive during the time of slavery and oppression. Also, I finally learned who exactly Malcom X was (I had heard his name a couple of times and knew he had something to do with the Civil Rights Movement, but I didn't that he was so radical and wanted to protect the right of blacks by ALL MEANS NECESSARY.)

Interpals =)

Have you ever heard  of the website Interpals? No? Well, then you missed out on something!

Interpals is a language exchange website where you can sign up and look for people who speak the language you want to learn. When I was 15 years old, I wanted to improve my English skills, and I knew that I would have to speak with natives in order to do so. I've known my oldest Interpals friend for more than 4 years now. He's an American from New Jersey, and he's the one who helped me improve my English in high school and who still proofreads my essays sometimes. The funny thing is that I always thought that I'd be the only one who's so nerdy that he signs up for something like language exchange. And for a long time I was the only one among my friends who was sooo crazy about languages. I guess you know that you found the right field of studies when the ones who study with you are just as crazy as you are :D A lot of my friends here in Graz are also on this site (and they also always believed to be the only crazy ones haha). So now it's like a 2nd facebook for us- we all use this site and added each other as friends :P.
Cool, right?


Yesterday I skyped with a pretty cool Russian guy who said he would help me improve my Russian. We had a very nice conversation. If I didn't know a word, he explained it; if I made a mistake, he told me. After some time, as I got really really tired, we started switching between English and Russian. We talked about politics and life in Russia, and since this is not the easiest topic, we decided to use both languages. He's not really good in English, so if he didn't know a word in English, he said it in Russian, and I told him the English equivalent.
It was really interesting to hear his perspective on various topics like, for example, the issues with the Ukraine. Once again I found out that our Media coverage isn't perfect either. For example, I'd never heard/read that the Krim used to be part of Russia until Jelzin decided to give it to the Ukraine as a present in 1991. The Russians suddenly became Ukraines- but most of them didn't want that. The Ukrainian government forbade them to vote whether they wanted to be Ukrainian or not.

Facts about Russia part 2...

Ok , I admit it...I just don't want to study anymore (probably the reason I'm so motivated to write blog posts right now :P)
Thaaat's why I decided to have a good laugh and write a blog post about some funny facts concerning gooood old Russia (I mean.. that's basically like studying, right? )

#1 Each Russian consumes 18 liters of Alcohol a year. That's twice as much as experts consider healthy.
#2  9 million more women than men live in Russia.
#3 At the nearest point Russia and America are less than 4km apart (that's from where I live to the nearest train station- takes about 15 minutes by car to get there)
#4 Russia is bigger than Pluto.
#5 A russian woman in the 1700s gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets in just 40 years with the same man
#6 In 1908, the Imperial Russian Olympic Team arrived to London 12 days too late for the games because they were not using the Gregorian calendar yet. (haha, I really had to laugh about that one :'D; imagine what the team must have felt like once they figured out they wouldn't even get the chance to compete)
#7 Bears in Russia are addicted to jet fuel, and sniff it to get high and pass out.
#8 In 2010, a heat wave in Russia led to over 1,000 deaths, the majority of which died from drowning while swimming drunk!

And now a really funny video about Russian car drivers....at least the first part with the tank is REALLY funny... imagine experiencing that :D :D

Corrected Culture Project: Vietnam - Soldiers as Victims and Villains

Sooo... we had to give a presentation about a topic concerning US culture. I chose American war crimes in the Vietnam War. And I must say: I was absolutely fascinated by that topic. Of course not in the positive sense of the word- war is not cool or anything. But before I started digging I was more like: well yeah, might be cool.The deeper I got, the more passionate I got. I couldn't stop reading and listening to Veteran interviews. I had never heard about what had really happened there. How soldiers turned into animals - or better: were turned into animals. I started talking to friends of mine who are soldiers in the US army.... soldiers who had seen war in Iraq and Afghanistan....soldiers who know what it's like. So I compared the Vietnam war to the "newer" wars. I asked them what they knew about Vietnam...what they had learned in school. Some had known all about the war crimes, others had never heard about them. Anyway, this was the coolest and most interesting thing I've ever done in my English classes (from second school to college). I even started telling Austrian friends about that war, and it was more than interesting to study the faces people made when they heard about the war crimes and how the soldiers were treated when they returned home.

Vietnam: Soldiers as Victims and Villains

In December 1956, in the midst of the Cold War era, a proxy war started that would cost billions of dollars, and even worse, millions of Vietnamese and American lives. This war would change Americans’ attitude toward their soldiers drastically. Gradually, the invincible heroes of WW2 became the “drug addicts” and “baby killers” of the Vietnam War.

In 1941, Ho Chi Minh, a communist Vietnamese revolutionary leader, decided to fight against the French occupiers in his country. The US was so afraid of communist expansion that they decided to side with France and fight against Ho Chi Minh and his followers. In 1960, communist sympathizers in South Vietnam founded the National Liberation Front (NLF), also known as the Viet Cong, to fight a guerilla war against the South and everyone who opposed communism. In the early 1960s, due to the deterioration of the situation, President Lyndon Johnson sent the first US troops to Vietnam.

Americans had never fought a war like this. The soldiers had not been trained for guerilla attacks. The Viet Cong were disguised, hid in tunnels and towns, and used their women and children to fight against the US troops. For the first time, soldiers had to fight against an “invisible” enemy. Perhaps out of desperation, the US army soon decided to use the attrition strategy to win the war. This means that they tried to outgun the enemy and win the war by raising the body count. In basic training, the US soldiers were brainwashed into seeing the Vietnamese not as humans but as heartless enemies who need to perish. In Vietnam, the officers often put great pressure on soldiers just to achieve a high body count, and consequently the soldiers stopped distinguishing between civilians and the Viet Cong. This and various other circumstances such as drug abuse, desperation, and the toll the heat and the Vietnamese wildlife took on the soldiers resulted in an unusual high rate of war crimes. In the My Lai Massacre, for example, American soldiers raped, shot and mutilated 347 to 504 unarmed civilians. According to interviews with Veterans, they had been told by their superiors that everyone who would be in the village during their attack should be considered as an enemy. They assumed that civilians would be at the market at that time. When the unit entered the village, they saw mostly women and children. Simply following their superiors’ orders, the soldiers shot all of them. The use of “Agent Orange” was another frequently committed war crime in Vietnam. Actually a herbicide, it was used to defoliate forests and deprive the Viet Cong of cover. The toxic substance had devastating effects not only on those people who came in direct contact with it but also on generations that had not yet been born. Rising numbers of disabled babies and miscarriages in Vietnam as well as in the States was the result.

Over the years, the media coverage of the war changed drastically. At first, the US soldier was portrayed as a hero who was fighting for his country. The media influenced the Americans into believing that sending troops to Southeast Asia was for a good cause. Only gradually, as more and more reporters accompanied the soldiers, did the cruelty of the war entered American homes via television. For the first time in the history of American war, soldiers openly admitted their frustration in interviews. The major turning point, however, was the Tet offensive. The Viet Cong attacked the Americans with more than 80,000 fighters and in 100 places at the same time. Watching their soldiers die and retreat, the US audience was rattled. From that moment onward, the media coverage of the war became increasingly negative. The soldiers were portrayed as crazy drug addicts and the war as a lost cause. The My Lai Massacre became the leading story and brought the topic of war crime into American households. This also changed the American attitude toward the war and those who fought in it. Never had soldiers been looked at as negatively as after Vietnam. Never had they experienced so little support by the ones they wanted to protect. Americans turned their backs on returning soldiers, spit on them or called them “children killers”. Because of the traumatic events soldiers had experienced in Vietnam, many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, due to the negative opinion on Vietnam veterans, most of them were left alone with their problems. This and the guilt many felt had terrible consequences: more than 50,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war - about as many soldiers had been killed in action.

When President Nixon ended the war in 1975, more and more information about the cruelty of the war and about how much the government had held back became public, causing the people’s trust in governmental institutions and in the Army to decrease rapidly. The anti-war movement had gained support throughout the war, but after the war it was not only the anti-war movement supporters who raised questions such as “who is to blame?” The majority of Americans, however, seemed to refuse to talk about the war. Losing Saigon to the Viet Cong again led to a loss of pride and self-esteem in the American people, who had always believed their army was invincible.
[880 words]

Some facts about Russia..

Since I have to study for my Russian exam, I thought: Why not write about Russia's history on here?
I bet there are some things you've always wondered about...for example:

Saint Peterburg- Stalingrad- Leningrad - Petrograd- Wolgograd....5 different cities?

Actually these names describe only 2 cities. Saint Peterburg used to be called "Petrograd" from 1914- 1924. This was because they wanted to be less European and change the name "Peterburg" to a more Russian version. "Grad" ("Град") is the Russian word for "Berg",which again is the german word for "mountain." In 1924 after Lenin had died, they changed the name to "Leningrad" in order to honor him. The funny thing about that is that Stalin and Lenin had always been enemies. Lenin followed the actualy theories of Karl Marx, while Stalin changed these ideas to his own benefits. The fight between them ended with Lenin's death, and as Stalin saw how much Lenin had influenced the public he decided to use this admiration for Lenin. He gave speeches about him, had his body preserved so that Russians could come and see him (btw. you can still do this today in Moskow), and namend Peterburg after him.

From 1925 (one year after Lenin's death!) until 1961, Wolgograd was called "Stalingrad" in order to honor Stalin. In 1961, Chruschtschow, who wanted to reverse everything bad that had happened under Stalin, renamed the city "Wolgograd."

Czardom, empire, USSR, Russia

From 1547 - 1721 Russia was czardom. It had been ruled by czars who had hardly any contact to Europe.
In 1721, Peter the Great decided to call himself not "czar" but "emperor". Peter had been traveling through Europe all his life, and was fascinated (even a bit obsessed) by it. He founded the city Saint Peterburg, which was built in a very European style. He hated the old orthodox Russian church, the old Russian aristocracy and the Russian's original architectural style. So he also wanted to change the whole system of ruling his country. He wanted Russia to become more modern...more European. That's how the czardom became the empire.
In 1917 during the revolution of February the emperors were first deported and later killed by the Bolsheviks. This was the end of the Russian czardom and the first steps to a newly formed government - "the USSR")
From 1921 to 1991 Russia was part and head of the Soviet Union. Russians lived through periods of great economic success, stagnation, censorship, freedom of speech....through ups and downs. Some presidents wanted to reverse everything bad Stalin had done; others wanted to step into his shoes and rule like a dictator. Gorbachev was the last president of the Soviet Union. While he is celebrated in the West, he is condemned in Russia. According to Russians, the great economic crisis after the breakdown of the Soviet Union was his fault. Many believe that the Soviet Union should have never stopped existing and that everything got worse after the breakdown.