The first few weeks of the ISU pushed us into a whirlwind of new impressions consisting of lots of historical and cultural visits all around Berlin, lectures and seminars on Prussia’s history. In between, there are the small night escapades that all of us made individually. Somewhere in the middle of ISU week two, I
CategoryCampus Life
A Question Of Expectations
“So, are you looking forward to going to Berlin?” my dad asked me the day before my departure. I thought about it, wanting to reply genuinely, but the only answer I could come up with was “I don’t know.” Of course I wanted to go, but I wasn’t like a little girl on Christmas Eve
Spray Paint Workshop
On June 11, ECLA organized a spray paint workshop in which a group of students got together under the leadership of student Josefina Capelle and the professional artist Guillaume Cayrac, whose work can be found throughout Europe, to learn how to create a stencil template and employ useful methods for cutting it out, as well
Two Loves
We spent the whole of last term talking about love and the many different ways it strikes us. Coming from the East, I was introduced to a whole different set of values associated with love and its manifestations. A very basic observation is that in Eastern cultures when people fall in love, they avoid public
Eurovision Song Contest 2011 (Or what does Europe want?)
Although I promise myself, each and every year, that I will stop watching the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), this annual moment of laughable grief (meaning that the initial enthusiasm that accompanies some of the songs is ultimately destroyed by the final results), I always end up doing the opposite. 2011 couldn’t have been the year
Welcoming Stefan The Chef (Or Culinary Tales and Theories My Mother Taught Me)
“You better learn how to cook or your life will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” was what my mother’s advice sounded like four years ago before I left home for college. Despite being a big fan of Thomas Hobbes, my mother prepares the most delicious food known to man. Her food is not
Postcard From New York
Dear ECLA, This is to proudly share I graduated from Columbia this weekend. The ceremony was outstanding, with an inspiring speech by Kofi Annan. The speech is here. I would like to thank you for my time at ECLA before Columbia. While I have undoubtedly learned a lot this year, it all fell in place
Think Aloud Or Debate
The art of speaking is hard to master. I began my debating career almost three years ago in Pakistan. Slowly and gradually I climbed the ladder of public speaking. It was right after I had achieved a big break in debating that I came to Berlin and found myself in one of ECLA’s seminars, dumbfounded