Heyo peeps.

Today was a fun evening.

I have a mandatory class that I have to take as part of my exchange, and in that class me and the other incomings were divided up into groups based on geographical/cultural similarities. No surprise that the Canadian students and the American students were paired together. There were 7 of us in total.

Our assignment throughout the semester was to make a video presentation about our “Cultural Shock Experience”. Each group was put together because our different cultural backgrounds were meant to give each video a unique perspective. Things in Europe are much different from things in Asia, etc.

So our group met several times, wrote a script, a shot script, storyboard, etc.

Afterwards we spent a couple days filming the video, and then I spent serverl hours editing it all together.

I have the smallest cameo in the video, but I wrote, planned, directed, and edited the video. So I ended up spending about 12 extra hours doing all the “behind-the-scenes” stuff, including almost 8 hours editing. I’m so lucky.

So I was very happy when our team’s video won  Best Video for the semester!! Iit was a small reward for all the work I put in. There were 3 teams tied for 1st: Canada/USA, South Korea, and Slovenia/Netherlands/Romania/Georgia. Every team member got a goodie bag filled with Austrian sweets and specialties, many of which will be brought back home for my family and friends to try! (saves me money on buying sweets myself!)

I really enjoyed making our video. We had a pretty good team — and thankfully everyone wanted to put in effort, which can be rare in group projects.

So tonight was the presentation night, and all the incomings, international faculty, teachers, ESN kids, and Austrian students came together to watch all the other team’s videos. I had seen a couple of my friend’s videos, but I really enjoyed watching the other team’s videos. Everyone did something different, and I thought they were all really creative and funny! It was a pretty fun evening.

If you want to watch our video, you can watch it here.

Having this community of incomings has definitely made life here much easier – we all experience similar things and are in the same situation. So we all can depend on eachother to figure out this whole exchange thing together. And I may not hang out with all of them, but in many ways they are all more like me than anyone else I’ve met.

I’ve found that you develop certain characteristics and attitudes as an exchange kid. And so the kids I go to school with and meet all have similar views and attitudes as I do. I think its pretty cool to walk into a room of people from all over the world and feel a sense of kinship and mutual understanding. We all help each other out when we can, sharing stories and travel tips.

So yeah, I’m not friends with all of the 64 incomings, but I do consider them good people who I can always talk to. And I think that’s pretty cool.

So I’m pretty lucky.

Almost time for finals!! And I have been SUPER unproductive, which has definitely not been a source of stress for me. Nahhh, I’m doing great.

I’m sure I will not regret laying in bed with zero motivation and unable to sleep. Yay for finals.

I’m a little disappointed because my grades here will most likely only count for credits and not GPA. And I think I’m going to crush my ACC final, and my IBB and INC classes don’t have finals, so I’ll ace them too. But it is nice because my German test is making me pretty nervous. I’m sure I know more than I think I do, but its been a long time since I’ve properly learned a language – and how much of my 6 years of french in school have I retained? I learn best by practicing in the real world – that’s how I learned Greek, and after years I still retain almost all of it!

But I really don’t want to dispoint my teacher either – Petra is a lovely and wonderful teacher. I definitely feel pretty lucky that I got put into her class. And so I’m really going to try to ace that test, even though I’m really nervous.

Isn’t that what finals are all about anyways?

All in all, a rollercoaster of a day. Hope you are all doing well!

emma.k