1) German Keyboard, and 2) Blogging Bottleneck

Earlier tonight, I finally posted a blog about the tour Sandi and I had taken through the Anne Frank house while we were in Amsterdam. We were not allowed to take pictures, so I used photos of the pictures in the book I bought in a small attempt to share this experience with you via the blog. The whole experience was very sobering for me. To be in the actual spaces where 8 people lived for so long with no sunlight, no way to see much outside, no way to move freely, and no fresh air, was powerful. To realize that in so many ways the effort was futile because 7 of the 8 people were killed, seems overwhelming. I simply cannot imagine being Otto Frank, with his entire family gone, searching for months for his daughters, and then having the question of how to deal with Anne's diary. Her words are powerful, and her age and appearance are so sweet that the comparison between her innocence and the brutality of the context is really jarring.

So, it took me awhile to come to grips with how I wanted to document my experience.

Another delay has been caused by the fact that I have for some weeks now been using a German laptop provided to me by the school because we had to send my laptop off to repair. It should have been back by now, and finding out what is going on may be problematic because I understand the paperwork is handled in one German city while the laptop was shipped to another. I had hoped to have had my own computer returned to me over a week ago. Using this one for my blog causes two problems. The more minor problem is that the software for dealing with downloading pictures is different and I cannot easily see the exact picture I want to upload into a blog. Rather than seeing a thumbnail of the picture itself, I have little standard icons for each picture and have to know the number for the picture I want.

The more major problem, however, is the keyboard on this computer. I have adjusted to the fact that the letters z and y are in reversed positions on this keyboard compared to their positions on an American keyboard. When I am typing a lot, I also adjust to the fact that the @ sign has to be done by using the "alt gr" key to the right of the space bar, in conjunction with the letter q key. On our keyboards, if I remember correctly (!), this sign is on the number 2 and is done with the shift key and letter 2. The German keyboard also has extra letters, all grouped on the right, because German has more letters, basically. Several vowels, namely a, o, and u sometimes appear with 2 dots, called umlauts, above them, causing a slight difference in the pronunciation of the word. Thus, this keyboard has keys for ä, ö, and ü. This throws the "enter" key farther to the right, which I don't always quite reach, resulting in getting a # key by mistake. There are other differences such as a set of keys above the function keys, labelled in German, and punctuation marks in different places, but you get the idea.

Left side of the keyboard. Note the location of y and z, the @ symbol under the q, and different labelling on the lower keys---
Fn, Strg, Alt. The shift lock key is the arrow key on the left with the wider base, left of the A.

This is among the worst pictures I've taken but you get the idea. Think about going from L, for example, to the enter key.

And last and definitely not least of my problems with blogging is that I recognize that my time here is drawing to a close. Three weeks from today, I get on a plane to return to the US. Although I realize that I need to return to my job, my children, my friends, my house, the 2 chis left behind-----this experience has been powerful beyond words. Several things coalesced to make it an incredible, wonderful, exhilarating, overwhelming experience from which I have learned immensely and which has changed how I look at things, some of what I believe, and a lot of what I believe about international education. I did not really understand the scope of it until Christine asked me while visiting here last week "What have you learned?" Literally, I was speechless. It is going to take a while to come to grips with what I have learned in my head, my heart, and my gut, and get to words, as my friend Jill says. So, in some ways, the things that are most important to me are things that either cannot be blogged, or I cannot yet write about, if that makes sense.

Some things, however, I know at the core of my being. One that I know is that I am different and always will be as a result of this experience. Another that I know is that I have a new direction and new energy to devote toward things that I now believe are very important and are things about which I believe we at NMU can improve. The definition of learning that I give students in my organizational behavior classes is that learning is a change in behavior as a result of experience. I came, I saw, I experienced, I did, I learned, and I am different and changed as a result. Simply having time to think on a sabbatical, and having the opportunity to be confronted by differences and by the people, beliefs, and attitudes that I have lived with here----all of this has been a challenging luxury which I have enjoyed immensely. I do not want to give it up, but hopefully I will find a way to return to the US and not have to "give up" everything about this environment and this situation.