Elon University
The transition back to Elon was a lot harder than expected. This gave me time to truly think about what I experienced and relate it back my classes at Elon. I took a variety of classes in Berlin from Economics, to Literature, Cinema and a language class. I am able to apply this to my future German classes. Specifically in the Fall I will be taking a German class focusing on Media. Every class I took related to Germany in some shape, which can be of help to the German professors at Elon. I am also able to connect my classes in Berlin to more of my understanding of Germany as a whole, which can be used to help describe what I learned in my German Minor classes.
CIEE Berlin
This was my building. Located on the first level and ground level were classrooms whereas the rest of the building were rooms. My program took up the top 2 floors, where the rest of the floors were for international students studying in Berlin. Usually this building would be full of students from the US studying through CIEE, but with COVID19 the numbers have been down.
This was the view from my floor. You cannot see in the picture but from the top floor you can see the TV tower.
I wanted to include pictures of CIEE to show the difference in presentation in the US versus Europe. Although my program was not at a typical German University it still is fairly different. There is not an abundance of fountains or need to "impress" students. This building used to be a factory which was then transformed into CIEE Berlin in 2015. This is super unique and the whole building is very industrial like and even the rooms have pieces of furniture from the old factory. The overall scene of this campus versus Elon is significantly different. I was located in the middle of an area called Bergmannkiez, which was so lively. There were bars and restaurants everywhere, which is so different than Elon's campus.