Yesterday (I seem to be on a perpetual 1-day lag) I attended a meeting regarding the Zertifikat Internationalles. This certificate is issued to RWTH students that demonstrate sufficient engagement in intercultural activities. Boy do the Germans like documentation.
At the info session, I received a list of required and elective components to the certificate. Having joined the BeBuddy program as a mentee and attended a language course with Goethe Institute, I'm already practically a third of the way done. One of the required components is an intercultural training session. With any luck, I can attend one next week! Other elective components range from attending certain classes to helping organize Aachen's "Tag der Integration" or integration day. I'm personally interested in attending a career center course on how to apply for jobs in Germany. Call me crazy, but that seems practical.
For full information on the program, click here.
On the way back from the info session, I made a very good choice. I decided to take a back way to my dorm rather than following the main street. As a result, I happened to walk by the chemistry building just as a gaggle of students came out laden with juice, coolers, and buckets. I wandered closer, asking what was going on. "Sie machen Stickstoffeis," a helpful onlooker explained. They're making stickstoff ice? What's stickstoff? I thought. Peering at the table they had erected, I could see students diligently stirring bowls of juice. As they worked, they occasionally poured what seemed to be liquid nitrogen into the mix.
So, was Stickstoff some weird alternative word for fruit juice? While I puzzled over the new word, a boy grabbed the cooler, a water filled bucket, and beckoned to the students to gather round. Not too close though. I could guess what was coming. With a flourish, he emptied the cooler's contents into the bucket and a plume of fog surged forth. The old dry ice and water trick never gets old. Once the roiling vapors had settled down and I had grabbed a cup of juice slushy, I headed home. Here, the good old internet answered my question regarding what I had just eaten.
Stickstoff- is the German word for Nitrogen. Sticken means to asphyxiate, and stoff basically means stuff or substance. Nitrogen earned that name because when it displaces oxygen...well we certainly don't last long.
Some other fun German versions of element names are:
O - Sauerstoff so named because oxygen was once thought essential for making acids (Säuere)
C - Kohlenstoff so named because coal (Kohle) is mostly carbon.
H - Wasserstoff so named because hydrogen is a key element in water (hydro is also greek for water)
Na - Natrium and K - Kalium The origins of these words are not German. I just include them because it finally makes sense why Sodium is Na and Potassium is K. We simply use the English terms instead of the Arabic ones that gave them their symbols.
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