Blog Entry #1 / 8-30-16

Since my mind and mouth are constantly running in English I will try to write this in English, too. If you want you can let me know if I make less mistakes over the next blog entries that will come in the future. ; )

Here we go:

I’ve been here in Nashville at the Belmont University for just over a week and there is just so many things happening so quickly. My guitar and I travelled safely from Berlin to Chicago to Nashville and made friends at the Nashville airport with a German businessman who spent us the taxi ride to the University. That’s one good start!I live in one of the dorms, the „Dickens Hall“ which has at the level of P1 a little apartment. Most of the Belmont students don’t even know it exists. Here I live with two German girls, Vanessa and Johanna who both studied at the University of Regensburg and two Americans, Carleigh from Nebraska and Ella from Texas.

The campus is way bigger than I know it from my super cute ~550 students University of Music in Dresden. At the Belmont is has about 8,000 students – among them 30something new International Exchange Students who arrived this semester.The following image shows a map of our campus. I live right where #42 is placed.

Campus map

 

And here are a few more photos of the campus:

   

„Belmont Mansion“ was the summer home of Adelicia Hayes and Alexander Acklen and was completed in 1853 which is quiet old for a house in America. It was put on the top of Belle Monte (now Belmont).

 

 

„Beltower“ – constructed as a water tower in 1850 for the Belmont Mansion and gardens

 

   

The so called „Disney Fountains“ on our campus just in front of the McWorther building

 

The „Lawn“

 

„R. Milton and Denise and Johnson Center“ – Music Business Center and Dining Hall

 

People in the US or at least here at the Belmont are very communicative. It is sooo easy to make friends just by sitting in the lobby of any of the dorms and talking to people passing by. Most of the Americans are excited to get to know someone from Germany and many of them have already been there and always say they loved it.These photos are from the Welcome Week:

 

BreakdownBeaman Breakdown (Welcome Week Dance Party) 8-22-16

 

Battle of the Belmont Bands 8-27-16

The first days I spent on getting to know my flatmates and the campus. Another big time consumer was the organization of my schedule. The Belmont Uni is structured in 11 different colleges. You can find all of them by clicking this link. So classes like composition, voice and guitar lessons would be covered by the „College of Visual & Performing Arts“ and it’s „College of Music“ and classes like Songwriting and Music Business would be gathered under the umbrella of the „Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business“. The end of the story is that I ran form building to building and was a little lucky in getting to know the right people at the right time and finally made it into one of the „Survey of Music Business“ classes. I am particularly excited that – although the Songwriting classes are limited for people studying a Songwriting major – one of the songwriting mentors has agreed to work with me this semester for a one-on-one songwriting mentorship after he watched my playing guitar on a Youtube video.

Ultimate Frisbee in the US. About one week before the journey to Nashville began I was connected to an Ultimate Frisbee team from Atlanta/Georgia called ‚Bucket‘ (yep, that’s our name!). Last weekend on August 27/28 we played our first tournament here in Nashville. We won ‚Sectionals‘ without a loss and now proceed to ‚Regionals‘ on September 10/11 in Atlanta (Atlanta is a 4-hours-drive away from Nashville. That is a stone’s throw here in the US). By winning that tournament in Atlanta we will be allowed to compete in ‚Nationals‘ and play against the best American teams. Thrilling! The Bucket team has the tradition of singing a particular song each time one of their players catches a goal. So when I scored for the first time they sang the only two German songs they know which were ‚Oh Tannenbaum‘ and Nena’s ‚99 Luftballons‘… Yai Nena!

  

And finally something to make you even a little more envious:

taken on 8-30-16

People here told me those temperatures are not normal, even for the south… This might be the longest summer I have ever had in my life!

 

Best, Judith