Recognition Ceremony, June 21, 2010

It was a bit of a surprise, but I had vaguely remembered something about it. We had our Recognition Ceremony yesterday at the Duale Hochschule, which is the partner university here with Webster back home. All I was told was where, when and that I should prepare to say something about myself for two to three minutes. I left work early and Frau Brause picked me up and we drove to Schwenningen and met Frau Reinl.
We were amoung the first there, and Dan was there, too. He was frantically scribblings notes for his speech. I hadn't written any notes and wasn't really worried, but I still started thinking about what I should say. We sat down and Dan and I talked, in English, a little. Then people started pouring in. I expected to see the German students who are coming to the States in late July, but none of them showed up. Instead, all these other students.
It turns out, the "Recognition Ceremony" was really a tiny graduation for all the Russian exchange students who'd been there the past semester. There was really no point for the two of us Americans to be there. A bunch of Hochschule personal gave long speeches in English. Their English wasn't that good and they said some words funny, but I had to remind myself not to judge, because my German isn't really that awesome in the scheme of things. But finally, Frau Brusis said that the students could now speak about their time here. Let's just make it short and sweet, for the sake of my lovely readers, even though the actual experience kind of sucked.
Four groups of Russians went and all gave powerpoint presentations. I think the shortest presentation was fifteen minutes long. And I didn't know any of them, so it didn't really matter to me. They basically just thanked everyone, and showed all their vacation and party pictures. Two girls started crying when they went to give their speech. So what did we, the audience do for the crying girls? We applauded them. For crying. Then when they kept crying, we laughed at them. So, when two Russians are crying in public, you should apparently clap, then laugh at them to make it all better and show your empathy.
But finally Dan and I got to speak. Frau Brusis told us to just go up together. Dan went first and I felt pretty damn bad for him. I think I've heard Ryan (my brother) link a better German sentence together than Dan did. But he tried very hard and was nervous, so that didn't help. Then I spoke, and felt bad for upstaging him, since my speech flowed very well. But my host moms were impressed and Frau Reinl gave me a giant RitterSport because I did so well. I don't think it was that great, but that's typical of me. When everyone clapped for me, Dan asked and then told me to clap for myself and that he clapped for himself. I replied that I wasn't arrogant.
After some more speeches and receiving our diplomas, a baseball hat and a pen, we had some cake and coffee. And tea, but I only got a half a cup because the Russians really really like tea and I didn't push or race my way to the table. The cake was all right, but I think we Americans do cake better.
After hanging around for far too long, we finally left. Not before Frau Brause talked in English to some of the Russian students, I learned Frau Auer has been singing my praises to Frau Brusis (that was surprising) and I learned that Dan has to now pay more attention to the bank. Its probably bad of me to relay, but its so funny, so I can't quite resist. He made it sound like he's spent most of his money on Doener Kebaps, which is even better, since his quote on the first night, "I could eat these every day!" upon eating his first Doener.