OK so today might not be one of the greatest days I have ever had.
We got some homework yesterday from our INTRODUCTORY seminar...always nice not. The problem is that it is really really ambiguous! I mean totally and as it's in an architecture related subject...it's just worse because they don#t care what you do or how you do it! So basically we have a "title" which is.....
Alle anderen sind schlecht (in english - everything else is bad)
and it's up to us to interpret it how we want....and that may or may not be related to architecture....but you also need (i think) to link it to
Wohnen ist leben (which is hard to translate as they both mean live in english but it basically means where you live is your life...ie. your home is your life)
and also how we present the work is also up to us. it has to be in a pdf and submitted online 24hours before the next seminar and I'm pretty stuck atm!
The seminar itself wasn't too bad. It's meant to be 4 hours long but was only 2 as it was introductory....there are only 4 non german speaking erasmus students in the class - scott, jeannine, me and Ivana a girl from Slovakia. It's led in german and I can keep up and understand but the amount of concentration it takes and the fact that I need to make sure I know exactly what has been said in case the others haven't understood is just so hard. I think the tutors realised that my german isn't entirely shocking and that I was following and understanding what was going on but still. The courses themselves may not be hard but it is twice the amount of work for us to actually do them because of the langauge barrier. Hopefully as we go on it'll start to get a little easier on the german front as we learn more.
The other issue is that I told Scott that he needed to speak more german....which he apparently can only do if he keeps asking me questions and tbh after concentrating on german for so long and so hard I really don't want to have to be correcting someone's german when my own isn't even good enough to really do so. So then he gets pissed off with me because I'm not helping and that's how he learns - buy a grammar book, speak to an austrian - I'm only english and there's only so much I can do.
I found out today that the Christian Union meetings are on thursday nights at 8.30pm which is great as I really want to be a part of it as I still haven't met any Christians here really. But guess what....the ONLY night I have a lecture is a thursday night from 8-10 so I can't make it which is jsut fantastic. uurrrggghhhhh. I haven't been to church for 2 weeks now due to going to Budapest and going to Venice (although I really did want to go to church in Venice but wasn't able to). I'm not sure how I feel about the church here and was hoping that through the CU here I'd beable to meet other Christian students and maybe go to their churches or meet some who go to the one I've been going to.
It really sucks and is so annoying as I didn't join any sports courses or anything else i nthe hope (partially) that I'd beable to be part of the CU. That's probably the only thing I actually miss about Liverpool - being part of the CU and going to church there. But there isn't a lot I can actually do about that right now.
OK so in the afternoon we had an introduction to our design course. I'm pretty excited about it because the project isn't actually set in Graz - the site is a coastal town in Croatia. I mean at Lpool the best you do (in 1st yr at least) is Chester which tbf isn't that great when you come from there anyway! So next weekend I get to spend a 3 day weekend working and visiting Croatia (the place is called Novigrad). It's so weird that I've been here for jsut over a month and already visited 4 countries in that time - it's just so easy and pretty cheap too to get around everywhere!
After ranting a LOT about that homework further up....I now have an idea for it so just need to put it into action - it's pretty complex so I won't bother explaining it now but it'll be on facebook if it's any good in the end!
Thursday nights I can tell are probably going to be pretty bad - we have a class from 8-10pm. The class is a computer one (ie you sit in front of a computer and supposedly get taught!) called Digitale Methoden der Darstellung (or in english Digital Design Methods). We spent the 2 hour slot learning how to use a programme called Autodesk Maya which does 3D stuff, animation and renderings. The course is run in german like the rest of my courses which isn't a problem in general for me. Plus it's run by masters students who speak pretty good english if we do get hopelessly stuck!!! It didn't start off too badly (especially as Maya operates in English so at least we understood what was going on a bit! That was until they made us use scripts. I'm not like a complete technophobe - I can use most normal programs but because there is so much to learn it takes me ages to learn the design ones. I think it might have something to do with me not enjoying them that much too sometimes. Last year it took me forever to learn how to use sketchup - I've got that now but Maya is just weird. After a 2 hour speed through everything we could possibly need to know about it, we have an assignment due in next friday at the latest. Scott can't get the program on his mac and my computer will def not run with it on as it struggles with sketchup (old computer, didn't think about what I'd need for architecture when I bought it as I was only 17) so we're gonna have to find a computer room and do a long stint in there - hopefully get it done quite quickly, maybe! 