Students’ lives in Germany: Independent, living on their own, renting flat with some college friends.

What did I find most interesting, strange, funny, and awkward?

-most interesting: I find the course itself is the most interesting. The idea was already in me since the course was firstly introduced to us, students at the Department of Media and Communication, the course that I’ve ever dreamt of many times, but never experienced one.  

-Strange: most of German students said it’s their first time having their own blog. I have ever heard of blog many times, but never have I cared to create one. While some of my classmates have had ones, I just saw advantages of creating personal blog when I was joining the course.

-Funny: what remains funny but sometimes awkward to me is when some German students visit my blog n drop me some questions concerning lives of university in Cambodia and others. Frequently, I kept them waited for the reply for at least a week or sometimes almost a month. What was curious of them at the time became something that was uninteresting and never expected to get reply.

Another thing I find awkward is when we were asked to have a look at production either video, audio or text of German students. Honestly, until now, I have watched or read only some of their assignments. I believe I would have learnt more if I had gone through everything posted.

What was easy, what was difficult in the communication process?

Because the course is designed to use Internet as a means of communication in this cooperation project of Cambodian and German students, the use of blogging is extremely helpful. We can freely express and share our favorites, activities and events in both study and life time with each other. Also we can post some comment on particular text or production we are interested in. Since the beginning till the end of the course, the blog remains a useful tool in recording daily activities for some students, of course.

However, within a few months of cooperation, I find Internet access is the most difficult issue irritating the smooth of the cooperation. Providing the fact that the Internet is very slow or sometimes inaccessible, uploading text, photos, audio or video is never made on time. In addition, most of us agree that to open the Moodle website is also a challenge. When we want to post link in the website, we have to try many times. Frankly speaking, this can also make us miss a few assignments.

What would I still like to find out from the other students?

Since it’s become a norm of the country, children when reaching suitable and lawful age do not stay with parents unlike Cambodia, we stay with our parents even until we get married though this trend is changing day by day. I would like to know how the relationship between parents and children and siblings in Germany is after they independently move to live apart from their parents.

Also, in their perspective, what they think about the press or media in their country. Is it free enough? Another is, according to what has been posted in the blogs, some students say they study and work at the same time. How they can manage the time is another thing I would like to know more about German students.

Usually I listen to radio early in the morning, before going to school and late at night until there are no more programs on radio, around 12 o’clock, before I go to bed. To get news on radio, I listen to three programs—Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio France International (RFI).

 Voice of America is the least favorite program among the three. As its name suggested, VOA’s most of news content is about America while only a few is about Cambodia. Radio Free Asia is quite an important source to get news for me. Repeatedly, RFA is said to have a tendency to criticize government because it reports what a so-called sensitive issues in Cambodian society. Most of the time, it broadcasts news which other media do not frequently report such as poverty, corruption, land grabbing, land eviction so on and so forth. However, this is not always a case. RFA also professionally reports news about government achievement and main activity like meeting of Cambodian and Thai officials on the issue of Preah Vihea temple. If you want to know other side of Cambodia, RFA is recommended. Radio France International is a French radio program speaking Khmer. RFI is my most reliable source of news because it reports in balance both good and bad sides of government and society. Moreover, RFI has various formats of news reporting including hot news, feature, commentary, interview and review. The news review in RFI is very interesting in a way that every day the presenter quotes important piece of news from some main newspaper like Raksmey Kampuchea, Koh Santepheap, and Monesica. Raksmey Kampuchea and Koh Santepheap have tendency toward government whereas Monesica is opposition-party affiliated. However, recently I miss most of news content from RFI. This is not because I miss the day but it’s because RFI has some internal problems. Because staffs of RFI join demonstration in France, there is no broadcasting at all. Despite the problem, RFI remains the most consistent source of news, personally.