102 slides. Just think about that for a minute. I’m going to come back to it.
The day started with a change in my breakfast routine. I discovered we had hard boiled eggs. Very exciting.
In Search, we read a couple of texts written by Kant and a text about women written by Wollestonecraft. This was our introduction to the Enlightenment. We had a debate about which of Kant’s works should be upheld—if any—given his prejudice and blatant racism. In German, we talked more about the language, especially on how to pronounce “r.” This is how to do it: don't. It's impossible. Resign yourself to the fact that you're always going to sound foreign, and roll the R in the front of your mouth like a foreigner and be happy you can at least do that.
After lunch we had another lecture, this one on Baroque. The speaker was Christine Moyer from the University of Saarland. She was an expert in British Studies, so she understandably focused a lot of her presentation on England. Her voice was lovely, very high pitched with a stereotypical “fancy” British accent. She was obviously German, but it was evident she had spent a long time in England and had adopted that accent in English. She was also very passionate about the subject, and knew a lot about it. The only issue I had with the presentation was how broad it was. She covered many, many things in her lecture - just about everything you could somehow associate with the word “baroque.” As mentioned above, her power point had 102 slides. It was very stressing to my already stretched concentration to know that we had to go through 102 slides before the lecture was over. Of course, there were some really interesting parts! As a history student, I appreciated her insights into specific historical characters and their impact on the Baroque period. Maybe analyzing one painting for up to twenty minutes wasn't entirely necessary, but I'm sure it was educational. Still, I gained a lot of knowledge from her presentation, and it was very relevant to the program and our excursions.
Over dinner, I got into a debate with Rowdy about Harry Potter. He likes Snape. Unfortunately for him, I am really good at arguing, have very extensive knowledge of the Harry Potter universe, and cannot stand the idea that Snape was a hero. He just wasn’t, ok? I get that he never got over his unrequited love for Lily, but he was also responsible for the death of her and her family. Furthermore, when he learned she was in danger, he begged Dumbledore to save her - and just her, not her husband and child. THEN after her death, he continuously bullies her child and even compromises Harry’s ability to survive when faced with Voldemort (refusing to train him in Occlumency after the incident). Snape bullied all the Hogwarts students except the Slytherins - he bullied Neville so much that his greatest fear—in the entire. world.—was Snape. What kind of “hero” bullies small children? Especially when placed in a position of authority?? In any case, this lively debate seemed to greatly entertain the observers, especially Professor Bridges.