My reflection about the cross-culture course

After about a few months spent with the cooperation project between Cambodian and German students, I feel like I learn not only a lot of similarities but also differences among us all students.

*What did I find most interesting, surprising, strange, funny, awkward?
First and foremost, during my communication with more than several students , I found that we are as busy as one another. We have our hective individual school and family lives, which sometimes result in late responses. That’s to say, I replied to their emails late and they to mine. However, this is pleasing enough. In fact, there are not many surprising things about us all because I have been quite informed about German students’ life. A lot of German younsters like independence and adore living independently though they from time to time visit their family.

What’s the most interesting I see is that a lot of German students have their own goals and they will go for it no matter what. They also spend a considerable amount of time socializing with friends and traveling, which gives them social skills to be able to communicate with other people all over the world.

* What was easy, what was difficult in the communication process?
What was difficult was the difference between time and yes, sometimes the lateness of reply. And, the hard access to the website. I have access to the internet most of the time, but because of the unknown technical problem, doing the assignments and communicating was a bit difficult.

As for me, I wanted to make a video of my favourite activities. However, it failed because it was the busiest time. We had exams and all the like, which stopped me from fulfilling the projects tasks very well. Actually, I surf the internet for nearly 2 hours a day but I can’t just quite get through the site most often. That’s because of the internet speed problem here in Cambodia. What was easy was our conversation between German students. They have good-natured temperament, personalities, which even made our communication go smoothly. We understood one another but we seemed to lack a bit more of interest to go on and on emailing each other. The only problem I found during our communication was that we were all busy and had school/life tasks to fulfill, which is no mistake at all.

* What would I still like to find out from the other students?
I would still like to find out from the other students how old they should be to be able to support themselves and whether they still need financial support from their parents or the state/government. I want to know what they think of students with two jobs while studying and whether there are many students who work to support their studies in Germany and of course whether jobs and studies affect each other … in what way?

My Favourite Media

I’d like to make this post clear and concise. ‘Media’ is what I am taking classes to understand more and more. Historically, it has done so much work to the people with good and bad impacts, as known.

Media are very useful and authentic in the way they can help improve society and people’s living conditions. It also shapes the structure of the society and how it is run depends on many factors, but one of them is the media itself.

It turns out to be very hard for me to decide a favorite among different media outlets. As we have all known, media are divided into three big divisions: print, broadcast/electronic and new media. Print consists of newspaper, magazines, books, bulletins, newsletters, billboards…etc. Whereas, broadcast includes: radio, television…while the new media is the Internet. Every day, I consume some of these divisions. I like reading newspaper, magazines and watching interesting movies and shows on TV. But my all-time favorite is obviously the Internet; that’s why I’m called ‘net devil’ at school. Not funny .

Why do I like it? You guess . I can’t find everything I want to know in newspaper or radio because they have a limit of coverage, while the Internet can provide everything I’d like, such as virtual communication with different people throughout the world. What’s more, I realize the world is flattened by it.

Book I’m reading

Book I have attempted to read

Book I’ve scanned through and planned to finish soon

+I read news online almost every day, by typing www.google.com/news and type in Cambodia into the box of directory.
+I read several books during the day and at night to keep my head clear of the Internet .
+I watch TV only sometimes.
+I read newspaper, just several of it when I have time aside from surfing .
+And, I am a news maker (a euphemism for journalist).

my family photos

my mother

my father

my older sister folding my clothes

my mother is nail-polishing her fingers

my youngest sister is working on the laptop

interaction

my favourite baby rabbit

Link to Family Photo

http://whisper-from-heart.blogspot.com/2008/05/family-photograhy.html

I have posted my family pictures before… I hope you enjoy looking at them here.

My Class & University

Inside the class at the DMC

inside DMC

This is a picture of my class. There are about 23 of us in the class. We have 10 girls and now 13 boys, after two of the boys left for the US and India in pursuite of a better study. After spending almost three years learning many exciting but tough things together, we have been developing siblingship and fratenity.

We have never departed since 2006 at the start of the academic studies of Media and Communication. We are studying at the Department of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. The university has many faculties, and this department is a part of Department of Social Science and Humanities. The Royal University of Phnom Penh or RUPP is one of the oldest state universities in Cambodia. It mosty provides scholarships to student, and is now so popular as well as attractive to many students from different provinces. They have to come to Phnom Penh and study there.

What do we think about our university? Many believe that it’s been one of the best so far, but it needs to be improved administratively and strategically. Every year, it receives new foreign teachers with good qualifcations. It is a good sign. It now hosts more than 9,000 scholarlarship and full-paying students. But what’s more is that the designed curriculum should fit the students the best and also has a sense of competitiveness not just within the countries but other countries included. Many a Cambodian student is poor at researching matters, and if this is able to achieved, then more will be improved. Yet, it remains to be seen.

But we media students really like our department. Even though this media department isn’t very old (officially launched in 2001), this is a very good start. As far as the quality is concerned, the DMC (department) has produced a great deal of qualified media practitioners here in Cambodia. We hope this will blosoom non-stop, so that the betterment of the Cambodian media situation can help strengthen the democracy and especially the development of Cambodian society itself.

What do we do every day? The DMC students study from Monday to Saturday (first year/third year students) while the second and fourth year students only from Monday to Friday. The department curriculum vary from one academic year to the other. Many of the students live far away from the school. They don’t take buses or taxis to school. First, it’s hard to find a bus and second, taxis are expensive. The gasoline price here is nearly a dollar per litre. No surprise it’s high cos it’s an exported product . Some students go back hom after classes, some stay until the next classes.

 

 

Hello to Students of Flensburg University

Hello Readers,

Below is the funny picture of my best friend. I am sitting on the left and she on the right. The captions are quite for a good laugh if you have a Cambodian sense of humor. It’s been almost three years I have been maintaining this blog. I have felt somehow very closely connected to this blog. It’s been my sister or brother, whatever cool name I can give to it.

For new readers from University of Flensburg, Germany, you may not know about me quite well yet. My name is Kounila (first name) Keo (family name). I turned 21 years old this March. Well, I am feeling just like 20 years old. What else could be better? I am nowadays a third year student of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. At home, I have three sisters and one brother. I have a lot of friends at my university. Most of my friends are funny, hard-working but sometimes quite annoying. Well, this happens. Media in Cambodia are still a big concern but these students of media are perseverant to get this big ball rolling, I feel.

What have we been taking during this third year? We have taken “radio classes” and “short-documentary classes” besides research, advertising, applied communication research and news writing classes. Lately, we were quite miserable enough after one of our best teachers, Eva Rhode from Germany, left Cambodia for her new-again life in Germany. What a heart-broken moment! We are missing her very much. Generally, we like German people because they are hard-working though sometimes a bit too strict for us. But as a German, Eva has instilled a lot of knowledge into us students. Of course, we do appreciate every moment she taught us here.

Kounila (left), Eric (right)

I think enough is described about me and the courses I have been taking this year. If you are interested, keep coming back for more. Don’t forget to let me know what you think. They say, “Sharing is caring.” And I believe so. Therefore, share what you have in your mind.

From Nila