Fulbright Radio Broadcast, Tuesday, September 16 @ 1:00 PM (EST)

Hi everyone. I'm writing this in English so it will be comprehensible to everyone. Our Fulbright group will be broadcasting an hour long radio program this Tuesday @ 1:00 PM EST, where we will be discussing American popular culture and our Fulbright projects here in Germany. The website is: http://radio-rum.de/content/. If you click on the "Live-Stream" link in the top-center of the page, you will be able to listen live. I hope you enjoy it!

Josh

Auf Deutsch?

Also, ich habe gedacht, dass ich mein Deutsch üben sollte, und vielleicht dieses Blog ist ein gute Weg, mein Deutsch zu verbessern. Ich hoffe, dass Sie mir verzeihen werden, wenn ich ein paar (oder eine Menge) Fehler mache :)

Diese letzten drei Wochen haben sehr gut für mich sein. Mein Sprachkurs ist sehr interessant und ein bisschen schwierig (na ja, manchmal sehr schwierig für mich) gewesen, aber ich denke, dass ich täglich immer besser werde. Meine Lehrer sind sehr aufmerksam, und sie horchen auf, wenn ich eine Frage frage.

In dieser Woche habe ich sich mit Kollegen von der Universität treffen, und ich kann nicht beschreiben, wie nett und einladend zu mir sie waren. Wir sind ins Café gegangen, um Kaffee zu trinken und ein Gespräch zu führen... und es hat viel Spaß gemacht :)

In zwei Wochen, werden wir (meine Klasse) eine Radiosendung übertragen! Ja, Sie haben mich richtig gehört. Wir schreiben und erschaffen eine eigentliche Sendung. Wir werden Musik spielen, und über ein paar Thema diskutieren. Ich werde über meinem Projekt sprechen.

Okay, ich denke, dass diese Informationen genug sind... vorerst.

Tschuß!
Josh

So, here is the translation (hopefully I didn't do too poorly):

"So, I thought that I should practice German, and perhaps this blog is a good way to better my German. I hope that you will forgive me if I make a few (or a bunch) of mistakes :)

These last three weeks have been very good for me. My language course has been very interesting, and a little difficult (ok, sometimes very difficult for me), but I think that I am getting better and better each day. My instructors are very attentive, and they listen closely when I ask a question.

This week I met with colleagues from the university, and I cannot describe how nice and welcoming they were to me. We went to a Café to drink coffee and talk... and we had a lot of fun :)

In two weeks, we (my class) will broadcast a radio program! Yes, you heard me right. We are writing and creating an actual broadcast. We will play music and discuss a few themes. I will talk about my project.

Okay, I think that is enough information... for now.

Bye!
Josh

My First Week

Well, it is Saturday morning here in Marburg, and I thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know how my first week went. The plane ride was nice, although an inflatable neck pillow provides less comfort (to me, anyway) than what I had imagined. The train ride, however, was a bit of a problem for me. I'm not used to public transportation, and I couldn't figure out how to purchase a ticket from the Frankfort terminal to Marburg. So, I asked a young woman if she would lend me a hand, and she walked me through the process (though I'm still not sure if I could remember how to do it again).

Once at the Marburg train station, we were picked up by a member of the language course team and driven to our dorms. They are quite nice, and if I can figure out how to post pictures of them at some point, I will be sure to do so :) I have my own room, with a sink, desk, bed, closet, and shelves. My window looks out into the woods, which I enjoy.

The land here is quite hilly, and we do a lot of walking, so I'm sure that exercise will not be an issue here. I am looking into joining a local gym; we are trying to negotiate a reasonable membership fee, as I will only be here for five more weeks. The city is beautiful, and I really enjoy walking along the old cobblestone streets.

The language course began on Wednesday, and I have been placed in the advanced group. There are times throughout the day that I wonder why I was placed there, but my German skills appear to be developing rather quickly. It is interesting how a small amount of nervousness can derail logical thought patterns in my brain. I can walk about outside and interact with people in shops or on the street, but when I step into the classroom, it becomes exponentially more difficult to speak. I'm sure that I will become accustomed to the context soon, however (ich hoffe).

Well, it's Saturday morning, and I've finished my homework for both Monday and Thursday (we have different instructors who assign different sections of the book), so that means... wait for it... time to get ahead in my German, and do some of my dissertation. Have a great week, everyone! Tschuß!

The time is coming...

Well, I have not posted on this blog for some time, and I fear that my organization and writing here will lack some of the precision that I prefer. However, I know that I will not keep this blog updated if I require a high level of style and readability in each post. So... please bear with me.

 I am only a few weeks away from leaving, and everything seems to be in place. I have arranged for a place to stay in Tübingen, and all of my paperwork is complete. All that is left is for me to do is calm my nerves :)

The majority of this summer has been spent trying to work on my dissertation, while simultaneously interacting with my wife and two daughters as much as humanly possible. I feel like a struck a pretty good balance. The workers at Starbucks have become quite familiar with me, as they open early and make coffee available throughout the day :) I have completed a great deal of my research for the remaining chapters of my dissertation; all that remains is the work that I must do with Prof. Volk on the unorthographic Emesal texts.

I suppose I should take a few minutes and talk about what I'm going to be doing for my research project. Unorthographic texts... that does sound a bit esoteric. So, orthography is the way in which words are spelled in a language. If something is orthographic, it follows the normal conventions that a language uses to spell something. For example, if I type the word "dogs," it would be considered to be written with a normal or conventional orthography, because that is how we spell "dogs" in English.   However, if I were to spell the word "dogz" (spelling it as it is pronounced, not as it is actually spelled in English [phonetically]), we would say that it is spelled in non-conventional orthography, or unorthographically. In other words, if a word is spelled differently that it is normally spelled, we can call it unorthographic.

Okay... I am working on a group of cuneiform tablets that were written in the middle of the Old Babylonian Period (some time in the 18th century BCE) in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Specifically, these tablets were written in the city of Kish. The excavator of the site, Henri de Genouillac, found ca. 1400 tablets in an area of the site. Many of these tablets contained portions of religious liturgies, or compositions that were used during a liturgical performance.

We know that in later periods (during the 1st millennium BCE) these liturgical texts were used at times when a god might be tempted to leave his temple and not return. For example, let's say that a temple was starting to show signs of deterioration, and the people wanted to tear down a section of the temple and rebuild it. This type of destruction might cause the god to vacate his house, and possibly not return. In order to ensure that the deity would not leave, the priest would perform a liturgy, which described all of the horrific things that would happen to the city should the god decide to abandon it. The composition would plead with the god not to abandon his/her home.

So, the cool thing about the city of Kish is that a large number of these types of liturgies were found there. What makes them even more intriguing is that the tablets from Kish are often written unorthographically. Specifically, they spelled many words phonetically. Remember the example of "dogs" being spelled "dogz?" That's often what they did in these texts. They used different spellings that made the words appear on the tablet as they would have been pronounced. This is most likely because of their use in performance.

Now... the problem. Because the Sumerian words are spelled differently, it is sometimes difficult to determine the words that they are trying to spell. As a native speaker of English, you could probably piece together something like, "Eye am egg rates peeker wen eyed rinks um al kohal furst," but it might take you some time ("I am a great speaker when I drink some alcohol first.") However, we are not native Sumerian speakers, and we are not even certain about how Sumerian was pronounced in some cases. So... the task of deciphering what the priests were intending when they wrote these texts is a bit daunting.

Fortunately, both Prof. Delnero (my wonderful advisor) and Prof. Volk have a great deal of experience working with these unorthographic texts. I too have picked through all of the tablets from Kish, and I have generated a set of rules that seem to apply to the majority of the tablets that contain these phonetic writings. In Germany, I will pour over these tablets again and again, and with Prof. Volk's help, we will hopefully decipher much of the content that we find in these tablets :)

Surreality

I doubt that anything could have prepared me for that e-mail. "Josh, remember, the same board that selects the DAAD winners works jointly with the board that awards Fulbright scholarships. If you get one, you won't get the other." I suppose I was at peace with that idea. I mean, who cares which one you get? Sure, the Fulbright is VERY prestigious, and it would be quite a feather in my cap to be awarded such a grant, but as my advisor said, "Its a long shot." I wasn't expecting much.

The weeks leading up to that e-mail were interesting, to say the least. It all began on a Tuesday morning in the basement of the library. I was working on my dissertation (no surprise there), when I received an e-mail from my scholarship advisor. She informed all those who were applying for the DAAD Scholarship (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, "German Academic Exchange Service") that the selection board was notifying the applicants via their new website this year. I was encouraged to sign on and see if I had won.

Of course, I had forgotten the log in information by that point; such was my luck. I scrambled about on my computer (which was on its last leg), trying to find a file that I had so creatively labeled "passwords." Ah, there it is! I quickly entered the username and password, and after a bit of searching, I discovered my name with the words "selection made" next to it. Selection made? Is that a good thing? I looked back to the e-mail, where I read that "selection made" seems to mean that I was awarded the grant. WOO HOO!! I thought. I got it! Probably...

I called my wife to inform her of the likely good news. Her response: "Find out." Of course. So, I e-mailed my scholarship advisor back, who worked her magic, and responded that it may not actually mean that I was awarded the grant. Apparently there has been a bit of confusion in the notification process; selection made apparently meant that the board had made their selections, not that I had been selected. My heart sank. I had allowed myself to believe that I might have won this thing.

I was informed that it would likely take until the end of the week to find out whether I had been selected or not. Ugh. Those were very long and depressing 24-hour periods. My iPhone is linked to my e-mail account, and each time an e-mail arrived, my eyes would immediately lock onto the subject line to see the sender. But nothing. No word. I began to loathe all those who thought it appropriate to send me an e-mail that week, for each "ding" brought the hope of a final conclusion, followed by the realization that the end had not yet come.

Friday morning. I had come back home to give my wife a well-deserved break from taking our 1-year-old to work with her. I tried to focus on my Sumerian liturgical texts (the subject of my dissertation), but my mind could not leave my phone. Would today be the day? Would I get this scholarship? I had all but given up hope (yes, I am quite the pessimist). Then, as Piper (my daughter) was crawling again toward our DVD player, I heard the all-to-familiar "ding" of my phone, but this time the subject line began "DAAD..." My heart raced as I opened the Gmail application, watching that STUPID colored pinwheel spin around as the phone processed the information. I held my breath as my eyes focused: "Congratulations..."

One cannot describe the look that my baby had on her face watching her father jump about the living room like a man destined for Bellevue. "I got it! I got it! I got it!" I couldn't believe it! "There must have been some kind of a clerical error," I reasoned to myself. Just to make sure, I decided to forward the e-mail to my scholarship advisor, knowing that she could confirm that I had actually won the award. Of course, my interpretation of a notification letter beginning with, "Congratulations, Joshua Bowen, you have been awarded..." was correct... duh.

The next few days were filled with many pats on the back, congratulatory phone calls, and sightings of General Tso's chicken at our house. Of course, I was well aware that I could only win one award, but I didn't care; I was going to go to Germany, and winning a DAAD grant is a GREAT honor, to say the least. I all but forgot about the Fulbright.

About a week and a half later, I was back at the campus, again sitting in that all-to-familiar room that we erroneously refer to as D-1 (where D-1 actually is, I don't know). I was again working on (you guessed it) my dissertation, trying to work out the patterns by which consonants front in unorthographic texts (yeah, that's right). It was at this moment that fate decided to again tap me on the shoulder. I heard that wonderful "ding" from my phone, which no longer sent me into a panic, for I was expecting nothing in the way of notifications. The subject line read "Fulbright...," and my mind immediately returned to that wonderful, but now out of reach, scholarship to which I had applied so many months ago.

"Hey, look! It's my 'Fulbright Rejection Letter,'" I said aloud to a group of grad students studying in the room with me (they are accustomed to me speaking, probably more than they would prefer). Again, I slid the notification on my iPhone lock screen to the right, and again was faced with the colored wheel, though with a quite reserved and accepting demeanor. I had won a DAAD, so this wheel no longer bothered me :) I actually glanced away from the phone for a moment to look at the document I was working on, so little did the e-mail capture my attention. When my eyes returned to the small screen, however, they expanded to quite a large size. "Congratulations..."

I sat there, motionless, unable to speak.

My mind turned back on, and I instantly knew that there had been a mistake. Don't they know that you can't win both scholarships?

I lifted my eyes to the all-to-familiar sight of grad students typing away on their laptops, returned my gaze to the phone, and softly spoke into the nearly silent room, "I won the Fulbright." The sound of typing stopped... and I started to cry.

After a somewhat odd and unorthodox period of excitement, I again forwarded the notification to my scholarship advisor, certain that she would set things straight. I held out some hope that MAYBE I had actually won the Fulbright, but I was convinced such a thing was impossible. Despite my constant self-deprication, I learned that I had indeed been awarded both the DAAD and the Fulbright.

I was very honored to have the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University, very graciously add the following announcement to their website:

"Joshua Bowen Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship

The Department of Near Eastern Studies is delighted to announce that Joshua Bowen, a Ph.D. candidate in Assyriology, has won a Fulbright Fellowship to Germany.  He will spend a year in Tübingen studying Sumerian liturgical tablets from the city of Kish that date to the Old Babylonian Period (2000-1600 BCE). These tablets have resisted translation due to their fragmentary state and enigmatic Sumerian dialect. It is hoped that this study, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Konrad Volk, will expand our understanding of ancient Mesopotamian religious practices and beliefs."

Two e-mails, two scholarships, one very fortunate grad student. So it begins...