Well - Watch out your Emersonian is showing

A common saying among castle dwellers is “watch out, your American is showing.” We do our best to blend in as much as we can and try to be more of a traveler than a tourist, but there is only so much you can do when you can’t speak the language, take pictures of everything, and travel in large groups. Over the past few weeks I have noticed that it is not only about watching out for our American, but also our Emerson-ness or inner Emersonian.

Emersonians are a different type of student when it comes to just about anything and that definitely includes study abroad. I mean what kind of student lives and takes classes in a castle with 82 other students from their same school in a tiny town in the Netherlands? We take classes and have hands on experiences that I am sure some people would not even consider being something you could get credit for, but they are amazing life experiences that you can’t get anywhere else.

This past week I completed by project for Portrait Well, a photography assignment for History of Photography. We were assigned a local Dutch student to work with and were asked to call their house, make an appointment, and take a picture of them surrounded by natural setting that highlighted things about their culture and things they liked to do. It was an amazing experience. I only talked to Amy for a little while before taking a picture of her, but we exchanged contact info and now I actually know someone in the town I am studying. I finally feel like I fit into the life of a castle student.

Just before travel break we had an interesting week at the castle. Not only was it mid-terms week but it also turned into a very pro-active week as far as extra-curricular go.

We had an Open-Mic night followed by Jazz Night at the Lindon (our local pub). I was amazed by the turn out of talent. We had a slam-poet, a stand-up comedian, two singers, an improv troupe, and an amazing rendition of the popular song Single Ladies, which has taken over the castle.
There is not much to do at the castle other than class, travel, recover from travel, and plan for more travel. We are moving non-stop and actually spend very little time at the castle doing nothing. But being Emersonians, we couldn’t just be busy, we had to be busy with extra projects and events to go to and work shops to take. So we did just that.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have been going to dance rehearsal (I believe we are also the first and only group of castle dwellers to have regular yoga classes, because one of the students is a licensed yoga instructor). Our dance rehearsals started because three students taught themselves the Single Ladies – Put a Ring on it dance by Beyonce, and of course everyone else wanted to learn it. Within a matter of days Rachel found a music video competition for us to enter and the fun began. The majority of the castle showed up for the three night rehearsals, if I had to guess I would say 60-70 students were up till about 11 PM learning as much of the fast paced dance as they could so we could begin shooting. 

Which brings us to 6:45 AM on the Monday of finals. About 40 students showed up, give or take, as well as a decent sized crew (6-10 students I would guess). That is about half the castle (83 students) in total. We filmed out in the inner courtyard and then the three dancers that had taught the rest of us the dance, Justin, Rosie, and Kirin had two more shoots and then the crew had a full day of editing and the music video was in the mail about a week and a half after we heard about the competition, just making the postmark deadline and moments before we all left on the required excursion for Prague.