It was two years ago. I was on the airplane to come to Emporia. I flew on Northwest Airlines. Crews on the airplane were obviously American, however, I could not understand what language they were using. It made me feel scared and disappointed at the same time because I spent 10 years on my English in Japan, and I had much confidence in my English before I got on the airplane heading to America.

Once I arrived in Emporia, I went to Country Mart to see the American products available. Whenever I travel abroad, I always visit the local real estate agent and local supermarkets. Can you guess the reason? If I know the average housing price in the area, I can tell the average living standard. From what I could gather, the average housing price here in Emporia is between $50,000 and $120,000 for one big house. That is about one fourth the price compared to houses in Japan, even though houses in Japan much smaller. I could assume the living expense in Emporia would not be bad.

The local super market is a source of entertainment for me because there are so many different products which I cannot buy in Japan. For example, there are so many varieties of meats in Country Mart, though they do not have many kinds of fishes at all. Japan is a small island, so we eat fish a lot. Emporia is obviously located in the middle of the continent, so I assumed most of people do not eat a lot of fish. I thought eating raw fishes like Sushi is out of the question in Emporia.

I had always heard that obesity is one of the biggest problems in the States. Though American foods are very tasty, they are usually bad for our health, and those foods are extremely cheap here in Emporia. I was surprised that one giant bottle of soda at Country Mart is about 88 cents. In Japan, you can find the half size bottle of soda for $3.5, so people in Japan do not drink soda as much as American people do. I think if the junk foods’ price increases by triple, the obesity problem will be quickly solved.

            After visiting Country Mart I walked around the campus for a while. I found whenever I met American people, they always asked, “How are you doing?”, even if I did not know them. People in Japan never talk to strangers. I was surprised by the friendliness of American people.

Though I enjoy the friendliness of Emporians, I know I still have some things to learn about American expressions. When one of my new American friends said “What’s up, man?” I just looked up the sky and said “There is blue beautiful sky!” I obviously didn’t have any idea what the real meaning of the expression was, haha.

So this was the first day of being in the United States of America. Coming to the U.S. was my dream since I was a child. I was very excited and scared at the same time. Most of the new international students might think the same. Welcome to the United States of America, especially here in Emporia!!

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Bruge Sunset

“Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to World Travel,” a book written by travel writer, Rolf Potts, is just what the title says it is. It is jammed-packed with advice, encouragement, quotes, and practical and theoretical guidance on surviving world travel, as well as getting the best out of the experience. Potts filled the book with “do’s” and “don’ts” that every traveler should know.

Among the most prominent messages in the book is an active effort of advising against trying to “do too much,” as Potts would say. This past weekend, I believe I violated this most basic of the traveler’s tenants.

The group I went with to Belgium was made up of nine or so people. Four Americans, two Australians, a Hungarian, one English guy, and a Scottish girl. We arrived in Bruges, Belgium and walked out of the train station to a fairly normal sight—a European train station surrounded by department buildings and corporate offices—nothing out of the blue. However, after the bus ride to our hostel (St. Christopher’s Bauhaus for anyone interested; it was a fairly nice one, and cheap as well—about €16/ night), we took to the streets to see what there was to see.

Bruges Skyline

The city is called “The Venice of the North”, and as we walked past canals separating 15^th century buildings decked out in all kinds of amazing architecture referred to by Italian and Spanish terms I am not prepared to attempt to spell (I should of paid attention in Art Apprec.), we discovered why. The city was truly the most beautiful I have been to since arriving in Europe about a month and a half ago. Words truly cannot describe a place such as Bruges, Belgium.

(Side note: Go rent “In Bruges” for a good look at the city. Colin Farrell plays what can only be described as a badass. Seriously. Rent it. Or download it, whatever it is you kids do these days.)

Group photo

After a day of sight-seeing and sampling of fine Trappist and other Belgian beverages, we got a few hours of shut eye and hopped a train to Brussels, the capital city of Belgium, as well as the European Union. In Brussels we took the metro to our hostel (Van Gogh Hostel), which used to employ none other than Van Gogh himself, though I believe it was before his absinthe-fueled, ear cutting escapades of which he became famous for later.

After a short rest, it was off to explore the new city once again. Brussels’ Grote Markt, Parliament building, and the various street art and statues along the way were of particular interest to me. The only perhaps disappointing attraction we saw was the infamous Mannekan Pis, which was, literally, a foot high statue of a baby, yep, you guessed it, peeing. The fact that it was thoroughly not fame worthy notwithstanding, the Pis was, well, it brought a smile to my face in any case.

An afternoon of sightseeing, and an evening of escapades (including a trip to the infamous Delirium Café, and it’s over 2,000 kinds of beer, none more iconic than the 2 Liter “boot”), and I willfully turned in for the night and woke the next morning to one of the brightest and awful (meaning filled with awe, as opposed to something bad) mornings I have ever experienced. Once again, it is difficult to explain it in a few simple words, but it felt to me like I was breathing for the first time, if that makes any sense.

Eric Hemphill

As I walked along the streets attempting to find some coffee, I thought of all the people who had walked along the streets I then meandered through. I thought of a young Vincent Van Gogh, walking down the street by our hostel just after getting off work, towards some café or bar with a pocket full of tip money and thousands of brilliant ideas running through his head. I was captivated by thoughts like these throughout the morning, until the group was ready for our next destination—Antwerp, Belgium.

We took a train to Antwerp, a student and shopping city in the North of the country, and arrived at around noon. We spent the day walking along the cobblestone streets of the city, and enjoying Antwerp’s many cafés and restaurants. A friend of one of my travel companions acted as our “travel guide” for the day. He had lived in the city since a few months prior, and sort of knew his way around, though most of the information he told us sounded more or less like “Uh, this building is important… but I don’t remember why.”

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the city a lot, and had no qualms about knowing nothing about the city two and a half hours after arriving in it. After all, that is what Wikipedia is for. We left Antwerp and headed back to Brussels to spend the night talking, perusing through bars and clubs, and ultimately getting in touch with the city and each other in the process.

After sleeping for about four or five hours, I awoke and prepared for the train ride home, feeling tired and disillusioned, yet pretty satisfied about the way the trip went. But, after returning home, I thought about the things Potts had said about doing too much too fast. Suddenly, it seemed that the whole trip had dissolved into one long stretch of scattered memory, with no real physical location to attach them to. I found myself forgetting what church was in what town, and which restaurant we ate at was located in each town. It was a mildly depressing realization, and I resented my lack of attention to each place immediately.

It seems Mr. Potts has a great point, but surely he had to find out the hard way as well, so I think I will give it another try. I hope that next time, I don’t forget the things Rolf Potts, and other travelers like him, have said along the way. Let me paraphrase: Don’t try to do too much, because it will end up feeling like you didn’t do anything at all.

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Okay, so to anyone who has been reading my past entries, I owe you an apology. From looking over my past posts, I’ve realized that I have failed horribly in my attempt to capture the true essence of this place. I feel I have at least loaned some insight into my situation, but this place, this physical point in the world, longitude and latitude and all that man-made junk, is an entirely different story.

Up until this point, the words to truly describe the ways in which this city has brought me to the brink of tears on more than one occasion, have escaped me. I won’t go into to some deluded, water downed passage about how this place is beyond words, because, well, it isn’t beyond words, I have just failed to use the correct words to give you, the reader, whoever you are, a true depiction of what this city is, and how it become what it is, and, in turn, how it has effected me; until now.

Nijmegen is not an industrious city and, as far as I can gather, relies almost entirely on the services sector of the market for employment and commerce. When I say services, I include education, and healthcare, along with normal services such as small businesses and the like. The city is fairly small, about 160,000 inhabitants, which still seems like a lot to me, but in the overall scale of things, it is pretty small. In 2005, it celebrated its 2000^th year in existence, making it the oldest city in The Netherlands (though this is disputed by a city in the Southern part of the country, Maastricht).

On Feb. 22, 1944, allied troops bombed the city, mistaking it to be the nearby German city of Kleve. The bombardment left more the half of the city center in ruins, and took the lives of more than 750 people. Sept. 17, 1944, in an attempt to gain ground on the Nazis, and to prevent them from blowing up bridges on the Rhine River and its tributaries (including the River Waal, around which Nijmegen is situated), the allied mission named “Operation Market Garden,” was put into action. On the 20^th, the allies captured Nijmegen and the Waalbrug. For these reasons, as well as others, Nijmegen was a very notable city during WWII.

But there is something more to this city than what a Wikipedia page can tell you. This city and its inhabitants have been required to take an attitude of being unbeatable. No matter what happens to the city, they always bounce back, and have been doing so for over 2000 years. This city’s ability to bounce back from tragedy and hardship has astounded me.

It is like nothing I have ever experienced. This city inspires me to the point where I feel as if nothing can bring me down. It is hard to let little problems bother me when I have this city around me as a tangible example of all that a group of people can overcome when put to the test. Still, it seems bad luck may have a habit of finding itself in Nijmegen. Think about it—the city was in neutral territory during the war, yet it was the first city to be taken when the Nazis invaded, and then, after they had been occupied by the Nazis for four long years, they were bombed to hell by the side they thought was going to help them.

Then, as if to put the proverbial cherry on top, it was the site of an enormous battle six months after it was bombed into oblivion. This five-year span of bad luck seems to still reverberate throughout the city, but even so, the citizens of Nijmegen bounce back, perpetually it seems.

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“The honeymoon’s over, I suppose.” I jokingly told my friend Erik, rain covering every inch, or sorry, centimeter (got to be European, you know… of any other country besides the U.S…), of our bodies as we walked home from the “after-orientation” party on the Waalkade, the riverfront district of bars in Nijmegen.

We were walking due to a series of unfortunate events, culminating in the decommission of my bike, and my first close encounter with Nijmegen’s finest. This story, I’m afraid, would take far too much to explain thoroughly, and I feel it really would not make a difference in the end. So, therefore, I believe it will suffice to include the results—bike wrecked, body and clothes soaked, and a long walk home.

I meant the statement as a joke, an attempt to take a light-hearted approach to the fact that the part of this trip that consisted entirely of food, beer, and fun (preferably in that order) was probably over. Classes had started, the year’s first homework had been tied to the proverbial saddle bag of every student until they resembled a pack mule on two wheels, and there was an air of settling in for the long haul.

It wasn’t necessarily a sad occasion, aside from the situation in which the statement was made. On the contrary, school meant an opportunity to learn about this country in a way completely unlike that of the first couple of weeks, wherein learning was done in the “field,” as it were. The learning that began with the start of classes, to me, seems equally essential to the task of grasping the true heart and soul of this country. Different perspectives from the point of view of others were highly rewarding, even in the first lesson.

I feel I should take a quick moment and explain the differences between school in the U.S, or at least at Emporia, and school in the Netherlands. At Radboud, classes meet once a week for seven or fourteen weeks, depending on the class. The classes usually consist almost entirely of class discussion of reading materials and assignments from the previous week. Oral examinations, presentations, and class participation translate into a large part of the final grade, so talking in class, one way or another is the top priority.

This is perhaps much the same as at Emporia State, however, the difference is that most of my classes count class participation and oral presentations at about 80% of the final grade. This seems, at least to me, a bit higher than at home. The advantage of only meeting once a week is a ridiculous amount of free time in which to explore the city more thoroughly, or study… I suppose. For instance, I only have class on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Wednesday being the only day on which I have more than one class. This is helpful because I have ample time to read the assignments for my classes, and still have the proper amount of available concentration for the more “hands-on” part of my education in Nijmegen.

Even though classes have been very interesting thus far, I still feel as if I would much rather be out in the world, taking it all in, learning by way of exploration and personal discovery. Don’t get me wrong, learning in a classroom setting is obviously a very effective way to gain knowledge through conservative means, and I have just stated that I find it essential to the whole overhanging process of experiencing another country.

However, there are, what I would call other, sometimes more effective ways of learning about real subjects with real people who are really dealing with the problems currently– discussing the state of the monarchy in Spain with two Spaniards from Madrid, or police corruption in Eastern Europe with a Romanian and a Polish guy, just to name a couple. Neither of these conversations took place in any classroom, as the term is commonly defined, but I still feel as though I learned more from them than I could have in any sort of conventional classroom or school setting. I am not calling for the disbanding of schools or anything ridiculous like that, all I am saying, is that I feel as if actually attending classes is taking away from knowledge I could be gaining about the rest of the world and the people in it. Maybe Mr. Twain can help me out on this—

“I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.”

There. All I wanted to say, in clear, precise terms that are understandable for all. Gee, maybe learning about Mark Twain in a classroom really could help me in the real world…

But still, I think Marky Mark is right… There are some parts of every class that I feel are pointless in the grand scheme of things. Worksheets and 200 word response papers, these things should not be brought into a classroom simply to make sure the students are reading the material they are supposed to be reading—this is college, the pinnacle of higher learning and all that jazz, and yet, there are still some people in academia that feel as though they have to “catch” the students not reading the material or critically analyzing it for themselves.

Obviously this quote isn’t calling for the death of formal education. It seems to just call for the death of any form of formal education that does little or nothing to expand the students knowledge of the subject. Most people are in college because they are passionate about the subject they are pursuing. These people ARE reading, ARE reflecting on the material and ARE deciding what it really means in context. All the rest, the people those worksheets and response papers were made for—leave them for the dogs. If they aren’t taking initiative, then they don’t really want to be there. Case closed. Thanks Sammy.

At least that is the hope I cling to.

Anyway, somewhere in my tirade I hoped to convey the duality of my education this semester. And hopefully, for my sake, two halves equal, or at least resemble, a whole.

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In the nineteen and early twentieth centuries, New York City experienced a boom in immigration that brought about the mixture and infusion of the various cultures brought to the city from the “old country.” This “melting pot,” as it has come to be known, spread throughout the rest of the country as the United States grew and evolved. Many ancestors of Americans today passed through places like Ellis Island in NYC and Angel Island in L.A., in search of freedoms and the pursuit of “The American Dream.”

During the past two weeks, the city of Nijmegen and the ISN (International Student Network) have become a virtual melting pot of sorts. A few days ago, I ate a dinner in which each of the 20 members of my mentor group (a group of international students with two Dutch mentors), representing ten or fifteen countries, brought a dish that was typical food of their culture. So, dinner consisted of pierogi, a Polish dish similar to fruit turnovers, only with meat and cheese instead of fruit; tortilla de patatas, a Spanish dish which is their version of an omelet with fried potatoes, and of course, a selection of exotic Latvian, Hungarian, and Polish alcohols. I added my own touch by bringing a “dish” that surprisingly few of the Europeans I have met have had—the good old-fashioned American staple, the infamous, “P.B. & J.”

Sunset on the North Sea. Eric Hemphill/The Bulletin.

Anyway, this dinner, though on the surface appearing to be just a dinner between new friends, was more complex to me than that. Every person in the group introduced their dish with a certain degree of excitement and energy about the opportunity to share a little part of the culture they left behind when they came to Nijmegen. It made me proud to be a part of this version of man-kind; that these people were together, enjoying the company of others in this neo-melting pot of sorts, wherein every experience, however enjoyable or momentarily uncomfortable, or even down right ridiculous, is a brilliant opportunity to learn and grow and adapt. Somewhere along the line, it changes a person.

I felt a certain degree of haughtiness about the whole situation. I felt that old nostalgia kick in, reminding me of where I was and the situation I had gotten myself into. I was reminded of all the paperwork, the bureaucratic, forgive me, bullshit, that I had to wade through to get to this point—sitting in a kitchen, surrounded by people talking together in a language not native to them, as if they were old friends, eating good food, and learning what it means to be alive in a place like this. I felt the burning desire to learn more, to drink more, to eat more…. Anything to prolong this moment in time. Maybe it was this desire…or maybe it was Polish vodka reminding me it was there… either way, I got the point.

Eric Hemphill/The Bulletin.

The remainder of the week leading up to classes was very enjoyable. I biked the city with friends, sampled good beers, ate like a king, laughed, learned, and discovered more than I thought possible. This city; this country; all the people I have met; everything has fit together to construct a new, more hopeful version of my reality. A reality that allows me to see the negative through a positive scope, because, no matter what happens during the day, no matter how horrible or trying everything gets, at dusk, there is always the opportunity for good drinks and good food with good friends in a place that has become a haven for me; a kind of promised land that I have been searching for… figuratively speaking, of course. This, to me, has been the most important discovery during my short time here so far—that the tangible, nearly hedonistic act of relaxing with good friends and a good beer can overcome almost anything. I, too, like my ancestors many generations prior, am searching for some kind of American dream. Though my ancestors searched for it in the possibility offered by the United States, I will search for it in the possibilities not available in the U.S. The possibilities that lie at the point where cultures mesh together into something new; something profound. All things considered… I like it here. To say the least.

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