After having a really interesting conversation with Betty Goodman on our first workshop day, we went on for our next appointment with Margaret and Sean Cannon earlier today.
As their daughter moved to Washington D.C., USA in September 2001, they had a lot to contribute with.

In the afternoon we went through all the material we have gathered and prepared our questions for tonight’s interview. We also tried to get in touch with other inhabitants to get more appointments but unfortunately we did not succeed.

In the beginning we were really worried about not getting enough information for this project. But after two interviews and one to go tonight, we believe that we have what we need to finish the work on our final product.

Anke Rosenmüller

You might think that the same animals make the same sound in every culture, whatever country they live in. But actually, while the British firmly believe that pigs “oink”, Germans call the sound they make “grunzen”, while in Lithuania, they sound like “kriu-kriu” and in Sweden the pigs say "nöff nöff". Indre Cesnakauskaite (Lithuania) and Laurent Borgman (Germany) used such onomatopoetic differences to introduce us to Hofstede’s concept of culture being the software of the mind. Indre opened the lecture by singing a Lithuanian song and making us guess what animal it was about. After that, some of the participants had to imitate “Lithuanian” animal sound, while the others had to guess which animals made what noise. Laurence then pointed out that obviously there is different cultural software of the mind, which makes people from different countries hear different sounds when they listen to the same animals. Exploring the idea of different software, participants were asked to look at different means to save data - very old floppy disks of 5 ¼ inches , tapes like our fathers used, brand new mp3 players – and find out which are compatible and what interfaces are needed to make them communicate with each other. We realized very quickly that sometimes you have to make quite an effort to make different software compatible or even find an intermediary between the two, just as you have to think about how to make different cultures compatible.
If we accept the metaphor of “software of the mind” what are the updates that most of us get but others miss? How many people in a culture subscribe to the update and how many give up and stay with their old software? We explored this phenomenon discussing the arrival of the internet and the legal acceptance of homosexual marriages in some countries. This showed that even younger people do not immediately switch their software when new versions are available.

Alexandra Haas

Writing Workshop

The members of the writing workshop met this morning at 8:30 am for a special guided tour through the island. Theo, our friendly “cab driver”, was kind enough to drive us to the Deserted Village.

Guido, our insider who knows Achill like no one else showed us some hidden spots which impressed all of us. I am afraid I do not remember the correct names. Some of the other things we saw as already mentioned the Deserted Village, Achill harbour and last but not least many sheep. Only two little things lead to complaints by our female group members: The muddy way through the nature, and supposedly scary angry sheep.

But the other group members made the best out of the situation and took this as a sportive challenge. They jumped over the muddy spots which actually was a lot of fun. In this way we combined work and sports which felt really good after having had so much food the night before… Nobody wants to gain weight.

We got many breath taking impressions which will be very useful for our writing workshop. On this trip we also found out that Swedish people walk much faster than German people. That is why the group split up in two parts, a German part and a Swedish part. But by the end of our trip we finally found each other again and discussed the remarkable experiences we had shared this morning.

Matthias Göring

On our first day we decided to visit one of the ”National Schools” on the Island because we wanted to teach the children something about our countries
After setting up the goals and mission statement we made posters with some words and phrases in the different languages that we will bring to the school.
Today we got in contact with the principal of the school in Dooagh and made an appointment for Thursday. Then we went on with the planning for our presentation which will include general information about Sweden and Germany, a song and a game that we thought would be interesting for the children to learn.

Marie Nilsson

Amazed, astonished, excited....................... What can I say.. I LOVE THE IRISH COUNTRYSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!

We (The landscape workshop) have just gotten back from an amazing day hiking with Peti. Peti was our guide and she is a lovely Dutch woman who has lived here in Achill for thirty years

.
She took us to the lovely village of Dooega. There we walked along the seaside and saw the most beautiful cliffs
that were shaped into tunnels, caves and some even looked/worked like bridges. Peti told us about the landscape and how people have affected it over centuries, about what the buildings used to look like and we even saw some good examples of those buildings.

Next we came up to a haunted house............ and we got the whole creapy scary story. At the end of our tour we came to the foot of a mountain were we were told that you could see our "own" village Keel, from the top. Stubborn and "wildlifed" like only two Northen Swedish girls can be, me and Jonna decided to climb the mountain. We started of by running (not a good idea) and by the time we got half way our cafs were burning like crazy, but we are just as crazy so we kept going.But it was worth it! The view from the top was amazing and we feelt really proud and happy.

The walk back to the car was very tiring and I truly believe that we will have some trouble walking tomorrow. But as long as we are ok by Thursday it is alright, because then we are heading out again and I can not wait!!!!!

Lina Zackrisson

Interculturell Quiz

All the students took part in an cultural interchange when the people from Achill invited us to a karaoke night.
A bus took us to a traditional local pub, where a quiz with very tricky questions about Ireland and especially Achill, had been prepared.
Maybe I should mention that the Rumanian team did a very good job answering the 30 questions. The quiz was very funny and we enjoyed being in groups with the Irish people, some groups took advantage out of this but I guess nobody is concerned with this.

After we found out that the Rumanian group was on the very top we started singing karaoke. It was quite interesting to hear some of the Irish songs that the inhabitants sang for us. Now I know why there are so many Swedish people on the singing workshop because in the whole they are very good singers. No doubt Jonna´s song was the best
and she won the singing contest. Maybe we will hear some more nice songs when the singing workshop meet the Irish people tonight.

Alexander Gogoll