Hank Keeps Track: A Daily Almanac

Rate Your Study Abroad

2008-08-31T00:59:00.003+02:00

My friends and I have created a website to rate study abroad programs. Check it out: www.rateyourstudyabroad.com

one day at Oxford, England

2005-12-27T21:44:00.000+01:00

The train ride from Scotland to Oxford was pretty long; I was on the train most of December 7th. But this brings up an important element to all these journeys -- the books I´ve been reading during all these plane and train rides. My godparents suggested several books for me to read which I ordered from Amazon while I was still in Wuerzburg. I brought along one great book Truman, by David Mccullough, which one the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. It´s a really wonderful book; in my opinion, Truman is one of the most interesting, significant, and human presidents in American history. That book really affected me, how I feel about leadership, about people in general, and how to lead a full life. Truman accomplished an awful lot in his life, and he didn't even have a college education.

I´ve also been reading books in the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. This series, suggested to me by the infamous Pat Barry, are about a gruff British infantryman in the Napoleonic wars; sort of like the Patrick O'Brian series, except on land. I also ended up reading a rather silly book called Prep by Curtis Sittenfield, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Saturday by Ian McEwan, the very interesting Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis, and a little bit of Barry Gordon´s Intelligent Memory. As you can see, inbetween visiting all these places, I had a lot of free time to read.

But anyway, that evening I arrived in Oxford to Jamie Butler, who had fallen asleep waiting for me in a plastic chair at the train station and had to be awakened. Soon he was showing me around; we slipped into a few of the colleges that were closing just as we arrived. There are 39 different colleges at Oxford, all with their own traditions and history. Jamie is at St. Catherine's, which is one of the newer ones. I think some of the colleges he showed me that night were Christ Church College and New College. Jamie is at St. Catherine's College -- you can see their coat of arms to the right.

Afterwards we went to a great bar packed with students, and then we met some of Jamie´s American friends for dinner in the dining hall of St. Catherine's. Usually, all the students file in after the dons and then can't start eating until the dons have or something like that, but by that night, unfortunately, Oxford had already finished classes and exams, and most people had left, other than the teems of prospective students who chatted nervously. It was an interesting experience -- we were served a three course meal by waiters -- and then we went out to a club.

At the club we were with two of Jamie's friends from the lacrosse team, both Americans, one at Gettysburg College and one at Boston University. You can see them in the picture with Jamie on the right side. A pretty wild group. We stayed out late, but Jamie and I woke up at 5:00am -- he was flying back home for Christmas break, and I was taking a bus to a London airport for the next adventure. It was a great bus ride, early in the morning, Oxford students around me talking and reading books. Finally, I got to the airport, boarded my plane, and flew to Florence, Italy.

three days at St. Andrews, Scotland

2005-12-27T16:56:00.000+01:00

My flight brought me to Glasgow, from there I took the train to Edinburgh and from there to St. Andrews. I was quickly impressed by how friendly people in Scotland are when I struck up a forty minute-long conversation with the first person I asked for directions. He was a middle-aged Scottish man who had been living and working in the Netherlands for the past three years with his large family (I think he had three or four children). We had a discussion about life on the European continent versus life in Great Britain, and we shared a strong preference for the "Anglo-Saxon" social model over the "Franco-German" one. He explained that his family would be moving back to Scotland when it came time for his children to pursue higher education; like me, he did not approve of the education system in many continental countries like Germany and Holland. Among other things, we agreed on our dislike of the early decisions forced on students in these systems -- at a very young age, the quality of teenagers is assessed by the state, and the teenagers make decisions about their careers, all with wide-ranging consequences for the rest of their life. But anyway, you can read more on my opinion about education in Germany towards the middle of the page here.

After catching brief but wonderful glimpses of the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, I arrived in St. Andrews and met up with my cousin Alex Ames, who is a junior here. On the bus ride over, and then at a nearby bar, we were soon sharing gossipy details about different parts of our enormous family.

The town of St. Andrews is beautiful and so is the university. Comparisons to Hogwarts are inevitable and appropriate; there are lots of towers, castles, and ruins -- all in all a very magical place. There is also, of course, a very nice golf course and several very wealthy citizens. For me, maybe the best part about St. Andrews though was that it's right on the ocean. There are seagulls and great big waves crashing against long piers and fishing ships and clean-smelling air.

Alex has two great roommates, Natalie (from England) and Ya'ara Barnoon (from America). Unfortunately, I arrived just in time for exams, and most of the time Alex, Natalie, and Ya'ara had to write papers, but I still had a great time. Alex and Ya'ara are majoring in international studies, apparently one of the strongest departments at St. Andrews, and they were working on interesting papers about very interesting topics. It was great to hear a little about what their studying and what their opinions are.

Alex introduced me to several other interesting people, including one student applying to law school in London who explained a little bit about the very old, complicated, and intruiging way that law is set up in that city. I also got to meet a medical student who grew up in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar and explained a little bit about the history there. There are a lot of interesting people studying at St. Andrews.

There were also some very nice Americans studying there, like Alex's boyfriend Jack and his group of friends, which included a guy named Henry. Most people named Henry are very nice and thoughtful, and this Henry proved no exception. One night, Jack invited us over to play beirut in his apartment (which, by the way, is right on the ocean) and we all got pretty tipsy and had a great time. After the beirut died down and most everyone had left or gone to bed, Jack introduced me to some of his favorite television shows -- The Office and Extras, both originally created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Both series have become cult classics in the United States (the original The Office was already a hit in the U.K.).

Earlier that same evening Natalie, Alex and I had a drink with another Alex -- Alex Huggins, a St. Paul´s alumnus from the year after me. Alex was not the last (or the first) St. Paul's person I bumped into in Europe over the course of my travels, as you will see. But anyway, we sipped on some very good, very expensive beers and talked about Baltimore and his philosophy major, and it was very nice.

But eventually it was time to go. To sum up -- St. Andrews is beautiful, the students are interesting, and everyone is really nice. Not a bad place at all to spend college. The morning of December 4th I boarded a train to England; my next trip would take me to another place of higher education at the other end of Britain -- Oxford University, where Jamie Butler is studying.

at the beginning - one day (by accident) in Brussels

2005-12-27T11:47:00.000+01:00

To be honest, I still struggle to understand exactly why I was so unhappy in Wuerzburg -- was it ultimately my own attitude? the people around me? -- but I do know that within hours of leaving, a big grin spread across my face and, so far as I know, it hasn´t left there since.

I left Wuerzburg on a 3:30 a.m. train having furiously packed and distractedly prepared a last-minute schedule for my travels over the next five weeks. I also left a note saying goodbye to my roommates; I had not even taken the time to explain to them that I was leaving. I´ve felt bad about not leaving a note ever since.

The series of trains took me, through the night, to Brussels, where I planned to catch the first flight on my grand tour of Europe. I had planned things poorly, so I wasn´t all that surprised when my bus to the airport arrived about forty minutes too late and I missed my flight and found myself stranded in Belgium with a small backpack and no one to turn to. I was exhausted and felt defeated, yet somehow I didn´t care, and the grin persisted -- I was just so glad to be someplace else.

The map shows every major city I visited over the course of this great month. There is at least one story from each city, and I hope to write down as many of them here as I can. Mostly, I visited friends and family. It is so much better to visit a city because you know someone who lives there. Not only do you have at least a floor to sleep on, but they will introduce you to the people there, show you where the best bars are, and help you find the must-see sites. Cities may have lots of concrete, stone, metal and glass, but ultimately they are made of people; if you see a cities buildings and museums without meeting any of its people, you are missing out.

Along the last leg of the trip to Brussels I met two Brazilian girls who had been studying in Belgium for the year. They were very nice and easy going, and talking with them reminded me that it was not so difficult for me to meet interesting people as being in Wuerzburg, for whatever reason, had made me think. For a while, everything after Wuerzburg was a reminder of things like this. Before long they were telling me about the differences between Brazilian and Belgian weather and culture -- Brazilians, apparently, are much more friendly, and Belgians are rather stiff -- and soon we were discussing South American languages and the Treaty of Tordesillas; Spain's non-enoforcement of the treaty is the reason Brazilians speak Portuguese. They were very pleased to hear that a friend named Taylor Ansley, who has been studying all over South America, had been to Buenos Aires and snapped a picture of their World AIDS day celebration (you can see the picture by visiting Taylor´s blog).

But anyway, to get back to the story, I was stuck in this little Brussels airport having missed the only flight to Scotland that day and I really didn't know what to do. I considered abandoning my trip to the U.K. and maybe going to visit Jarred in Tours; I did not consider returning to Wuerzburg. But then I asked the pretty Belgian girl at the airline ticket desk and she told me that I could buy another ticket for the flight tomorrow (€49 is a lot of money, but not all that much) and so I did, and I caught the crowded bus into Brussels -- the girl selling bus tickets, by the way, was also very pretty.

Brussels is a beautiful city, although like most cities it looks muddy and dark in the winter. I asked a nice French-speaking woman where a good hotel was. Ultimately, the hotel I slept at was one she had warned me against and described as "not fine." It´s true that the inexpensive hotel proved to be nothing special, but I suspected later that the real reason for her disapproval involved the owners (they were Turks) and the guest list -- most of them were black. Brussels felt like a very international place; many, if not most of the people I saw or overheard on the street did not seem to speak French or Dutch (the native languages in Belgium), and there were a lot of British people, as well as Turks and Africans.

After sleeping in my room until around nine in the evening (I hadn´t really slept since the night before in Wuerzburg) I walked around this section of town -- clearly an immigrant section -- and stopped at an internet cafe. Inside, everyone stared at me. I must have looked very out of place, I was certainly the only white person inside. But they were very nice and fair to me. I was still wearing that grin I mentioned, and eventually they grinned back. Most people are nice, I thought, and you have to be careful about judging them based on what they look like.

Afterwards I stepped into a cab at the train station and asked for him to take me to a bar. After driving for ten minutes, I suddenly entered another world. Around my hotel it was dark and empty, but here were dozens of little streets brimming with restaurants, bars, young people, and christmas lights strung across rooftops. At a main square in front of an important-looking building there was even a light display and an outdoor art presentation of giant glass Christmas ornaments. I went to a little bar (the first one the taxi driver had taken me to) and asked the friendly waiter what the best beer there was. As I drank the dark, very heavy beer he had brought me I ate a platter of tiny sausage, cheese, and olive appetizers for dinner and listened to the couples and groups sitting around me. Of course, I didn´t really understand the ones speaking Dutch or French, but there were several English people sitting nearby who seemed to be having a good time. Even though I was on my own, I had a good time too.

Afterwards, I wandered around the city, took the subway to the big park and palace in the middle of town, and then caught a taxi back to the hotel around 1 a.m.

The next day, having been scared into behaving by missing yesterdays flight, I woke up early, arrived at the airport three hours too soon, and flew to Glasgow, Scotland.

vrolijk Kerstmis!

2005-12-23T14:36:00.000+01:00

---------------------------------

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Merry Christmas

AND

Happy New Year

from the Netherlands!

as the sun sets on an adventure, a new one is born

2005-12-02T05:59:00.000+01:00

MY DECISION
Yesterday I concluded the longest and most torturesome decision-making marathon in my life: I decided that I will return to Davidson College for spring semester 2006 rather than stay here in Würzburg, Germany.

I suppose by one measure the back-and-forth on this decision has lasted since my freshman year of college in 2003-04 as I sat in Dr. Henke´s German 201 course; in other words, I had been debating this decision for about two years when I decided to go to Würzburg, and now, even though I´ve been here for four months, the debate has somehow continued. Until now.

As I have found repeatedly at other potentially critical junctures in my life, I am extremely bad at decision-making. I am massively cautious; I scrape together a superabundance of evidence and carefully balance my options on crammed sheets of paper with long lines running down the middle. For every decision, I search for an almost mathematically explicit "solution." Worst of all, when all this fails, as it usually does, I end up leaning heavily on the advice of my friends, who understandably have grown deeply weary of my perpetual ambivalence and pleas for them to, well, make the decision for me.

This of course all bodes very poorly for my future, because important decisions are, well, important, and going back and forth a hundred times is surely worse than just choosing a path and following through on it. A few weeks ago on the phone, my dad put it exactly the way it is: sometimes you just have to make a decision and stick with it, even though you aren´t 100% sure that it´s the "right" one. The most successful people, he said, are the ones who get it right just 51% of the time.

There are a lot of good reasons to stay, and sometimes, glancing over the list, I am still moved by it: the ever-present chance, hope, faith, dream that it will all work out for me here somehow; the chance to see all of Europe; the desire not to abandon a plainly unbelievable and rare opportunity; the chance to achieve fluency in German; the spirit of adventure, because, who knows what would happen next semester?; and finally, the belief in not "giving up" -- as Harry Truman once put it, "I´ve had a few setbacks in my life, but I never gave up."

But then, after all that, I remember: I am sad and lonely here, and the people around me do not stimulate my interest, or seem interested in the things that I interest me. And it´s really just that simple, because all those other things don´t matter very much if you aren´t doing them with people you care about.

WÜRZBURG WAS WORTH IT
There´s snow in Würzburg today, and it´s beautiful.

To those who say I was a fool for ever coming, read this: I will never regret coming here. The chance to be alone with your own thoughts for a long period of time is, I think, a much rarer opportunity than one might imagine, given our world that is beeping and buzzing and vibrating with cell phones, blackberrys and instant messages. I rediscovered a patience and simple love for books that I had forgotten in the hurricane of lectures and essays and internship possibilities. I remembered how much I care about people and how much more sensitive I am than I sometimes choose to seem.

I decided I don´t want or need my life to be about waiting to achieve some magnificent accomplishment that will elevate my status in the eyes of other people. I decided I´m just as much a Romantic as an "Age of Reason" man, and just as much of a bleeding-heart Pascal as a rationally analytical Bacon or Descartes. "Does one need to love?" Pascal wrote, "don´t ask -- feel it."

Moreover, as is so often said, by temporarily giving up so many things that I care about -- my family, my friends, my professors, my college -- I won a deeper appreciation of them forever. Lying in my room in Würzburg, and just thinking about stuff, changed a lot about me. I´m a better man for coming here. Nobody can tell me that one semester in Würzburg was not "worth it."

A NEW ADVENTURE IS BORN
It is 5:59 in the morning December 2; I have one month and four days to see the rest of Europe. Until now, restricted by courses, the trips mandated by the program, and my own weirdly self-imposed sentence of imprisonment here, I had not even escaped to a non-German speaking nation. But informed that my decision to return home annulls my Würzburg course credits anyway, I´ve decided to abandon them and spend the next month traveling to as many friends and family as I can in the short amount of time I´ve got. In about 21 hours -- at 3:36 AM tomorrow -- I will begin yet another adventure that should take me to Edinburgh, Oxford, Florence, Madrid, Tours, Paris, Rotterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Switzerland, and finally Davidson, North Carolina. I don´t know if it will all work out -- if any of it will work out -- but it´s time for me to go now. The original mission statement I typed here in June, six months ago, explains that the purpose of this blog was "to keep track of my time abroad in Taiwan, China, and Germany"; that motivation to write here will cease tomorrow when I leave the last country on the list. I will have to come up with a new mission statement.

DOING THE RIGHT THING
Leaving Würzburg behind is hard for another reason -- over the course of all my constant back-and-forth decision-making, several professors stood by me, patiently tolerating my spoiled, self-important nonsense. And now, by leaving, it may seem to them that I have abandoned everything they wanted me to find here. But they would be wrong. If rediscovering how much I love my family and my friends and my Life is not what it´s all about, then what is it about anyway?

Every week I´ve been meeting with a German woman named Karin who meets with several students in our program to help them improve their German. Karin, a true lady and a wise person, had this to say yesterday: "big personal decisions like these can´t be made because of what you owe to professors you respect, or because of what they believe -- you have to make a decision like this for yourself."

And for once, tossing aside my sheets of pros and cons and bringing my head up from the tired shoulders of over-relied on friends, I am casting my fate to the wind and making my own decision. Maybe, on top of the other things I´ve learned here in Würzburg, I am finally learning how to make decisions, too.

the good times - a German fraternity meeting

2005-12-01T22:50:00.000+01:00

It wasn´t long before Mauricio was convinced by the brothers in his house to join the fraternity in which he was already living, and soon the campaign was on to get John and I to join one, too. There were two big problems from the outset. The first problem was that John and I are Episcopalians. Mauricio, who is Mexican and Catholic to the bone, explained to us that we might consider converting, and noted that being a Catholic wasn´t "all that bad." Besides, he said, we could do a year of Catholicism as "you know, a sort of test run." He also argued that the Episcopal church is a lot like the Catholic church and little more than the result of the cantankerous Henry VIII, which has some truth to it, but becoming Catholic seemed like a very big step, and to convert in order to become eligible for fraternity membership -- especially as a "test run" -- would have been obviously ridiculous.

But on top of it all anyway, as a member of SigEp back home at Davidson i swore I wouldn´t be joining any other fraternities after I joined SigEp so as not to dilute the system and so on. So you see, joining Mauricio´s fraternity was out of the question on several levels.

Nevertheless a German gentleman named Sebastian Krems from another fraternity across the street -- they´re called Studentenverbindungen, by the way -- decided that he wasn´t going to be dissuaded by silly things like these, and what followed was a flurry of invitations to functions at his house. John and Mauricio and I attended several of them. But the best one, depicted in the photo, I attended by myself.

The history of the Studentenverbindungen goes back to the early 19th century, especially that year 1848 when everybody in Germany became a communist and the mobs in Austria forced Metternich to resign. All the links lead to articles about the histories of these subjects in Wikipedia, in case you´re interested in them further.

In any event, it was at one of these Verbindungen that I was invited to observe rituals, which date back to those heady days in the 19th century. Getting all dressed up like old-fashioned German soldiers, singing roaring songs, drinking great flasks of beer and playing with big swords is really what they meant by "rituals." I had a blast. There are some great traditions and some not so great ones: for example, if you don´t take care to close your song book as soon as everyone´s finished singing, all your neighbors will set their beers on the open pages until you notice you´re mistake; then you have to drink them all. But the not so great tradition is that you may not go to the bathroom for long stretches of time due to an obscure fraternal law that was put in place to prevent members from getting atrociously drunk during this sort of semi-serious event. Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell me about this rule until half-way into the evening; later I only avoided the most appalling of accidents by the narrowest of margins.

These were good times.

the good times - parties at Mauricio´s "bar"

2005-12-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

Two or three times in the last few months my friend Mauricio has thrown terrific parties where he lives. Mauricio, you see, couldn´t find a room in student housing. Instead, he lives in the basement of an amazing German Catholic fraternity house.

In some ways, it may not look like the most desirable of living conditions, but in fact Mauricio has got it very good. He has a very nice handful of rooms, and although there can be quite a ruckus from time to time, it´s the sort of ruckus that tends to happen on weekend nights when ruckus is really welcome. Moreover on the main story is a massive refrigerator that gets restocked weekly with literally hundreds of beers from the best German brewery´s. Mauricio has been told he should never hesitate to help himself.

But anyway, Mauricio often has the four story house -- really a mansion -- to himself, and the brothers declared long ago that he was more than welcome to throw parties whenever he saw fit. The best part is that in the basement of his house is a large but cosy room completely decked out like a German bar or Kneipe. This
room is no joke -- there is a full bar, bar stools, dark wood paneling, a piano, old German paintings on bar-room type themes, a glowing chandalier -- but not too bright -- several tall wooden barrels carefully positioned so you can place your drinks there, and even an ancient stuffed fox -- you can see him on the left-hand side in the picture to the right. All in all, a room best described with the German adjective gemütlich which means cosy but much more. Most young hosts could only dream about having a room like this to throw parties in.

So we did. And it was great. The assembled guests were an unusually diverse group because when the first parties commenced we had only just recently completed our DSH course and Prüfung - exam - which is a pre-requisite for admission into the university. And a crash-course in the German language means exchange students from all over the world because, well, who else is going to be studying German grammar?

So at the parties were students and acquaintances from Germany, but also from the United States, Mexico, the U.K., Paraguay, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, and Eastern Europe. Ashish can be seen above on the left near one of the barrels.

These were good times.

the good times - wine tasting

2005-12-01T12:03:00.000+01:00

There have been some very good times for me here, and recording them has now become a goal of mine.

Well over a month ago, Mauricio, a Mexican Law student here who speaks excellent German, invited several of us to a wine tasting hosted by the wonderful Herr Dr. Schlagbauer and his wife, both of whom can be seen to the right. Dr. Schlagbauer is an older gentleman, but he remains hard at work as a dentist, bursting with energy, hosting parties and flattering young ladies. He and his wife, both of whom constantly wear big grins, are such an open-hearted, free-spirited couple -- they get life, and they always seem to be having a blast.

Certainly Mauricio, myself, and the other friends Mauricio invited were the youngest in attendance at the party; for the most part, everyone else there were older adults. Würzburg in Autumn is the perfect place for a wine tasting, as the city and the surrounding hilly vinyards are famous for wine. There were four wine servings, along with an assortment of fine cheeses, little salami pieces, and bread.

We all grew merrier as the evening progressed. Inbetween servings Dr. Schlagbauer would lead us in singing roaring songs, and his wife would recite beautiful poems about Autumn and life. My favorite song from that night is "Die Gedanken sind frei." A website I found describes the song´s history as originating as "an old song of protest that goes back to the German peasant wars of the 16th century." Banned by the Nazis, the song is wonderful to sing and carries a powerful message: "Die Gedanken sind frei" means "The thoughts are free." The first two stanzas of the German lyrics are as follows:

Die Gedanken sind frei,
wer kann sie erraten;
sie fliehen vorbei
wie naechtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen,
kein Jaeger erschiessen;
es bleibet dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

Ich denk was ich will,
und was mich begluecket,
Doch alles in der Still,
und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren
kann niemand verwehren,
es bleibet dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

It´s difficult to translate songs of course, but I found one translation online that isn´t really a translation so much as English lyrics that possess the same tone as the German ones. But you get the idea:

"Our Thoughts Are Free"
Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower,
My thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them,
No hunter can trap them,
No man can deny:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure,
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure;
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny--
Die Gedanken sind frei!

The picture shows wine being poured for Claire, an English exchange student also studying in Würzburg for the year. The last line of the song is practically yelled, especially by the third or fourth round of a wine-tasting, and the energy is magnificent. Then his wife would read a poem, as can be seen to the left. She very kindly gave me the list of all the songs and poems sung and read that night. But my favorite one, about wine and Autumn, is called "Oktoberlied" by Theodor Strom, and reads as follows:

Der Nebel steigt, es fällt das Laub;
Schenk ein den Wein, den holden!
Wir wollen uns den grauen Tag
Vergolden, ja vergolden!

Und geht es draußen noch so toll,
Unchristlich oder christlich,
Ist doch die Welt, die schöne Welt,
So gänzlich unverwüstlich!

Und wimmert auch einmal das Herz -
Stoß an und laß es klingen!
Wir wissen's doch, ein rechtes Herz
Ist gar nicht umzubringen.

Wohl ist es Herbst; doch warte nur,
Doch warte nur ein Weilchen!
Der Frühling kommt, der Himmel lacht,
Es steht die Welt in Veilchen.

Die blauen Tage brechen an,
Und ehe sie verfließen,
Wir wollen sie, mein wackrer Freund,
Genießen, ja genießen!

I won´t try to translate it, except sort of the first stanza:

The fog it grows, the leaves they wither,
Send on the wine, let´s drink it!
We want to take this dark gray day,
And turn it golden, yes, golden!

Anyway, you can imagine how merry things got. Afterwards, I had a long conversation with a German investor about lumber prices, and the surprising fact that, at the moment, Germany is exporting timber to the United States -- I think it has something to do with American tariffs on Canadian wood. Anyway, if you´re interested in little facts and curiosities like that, then we can discuss it further, but I won´t write any more of it down here. The picture here shows Mauricio, who invited us, and also had a great time, I think.

It was a fine party and a fine evening; Dr. Schlagbauer and his wife know how to throw a good wine tasting. I will never forget it. If someday I can throw half as good of a party, with friends and family all gathered around enjoying themselves, I would count myself very lucky.

These were good times.

a dreary day in Dresden

2005-12-01T01:30:00.000+01:00

Visiting Dresden in early November several weeks ago was not one of the "good times" for me -- in fact, it was one of the lower moments, when my loneliness and heavyheartedness were intensified by drizzly gray weather. But Dresden is a beautiful city, and Í have a few pictures, so I decided to write a little bit down.

John, Jesse and Chris were also there with me, but I´m sad to say that in my despondency I treated them poorly; I was just a downer during these times, you see.

Preferring to spend time on our own, we saw most of the city sites independently. One of the more important ones is the "Zwinger" which is a rectangular palace with green gardens in the middle and four large museums housing several large and relatively important collections of art, medieval weapons, and scientific -- mostly astronomical -- instruments from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

The weekend I was visiting also happened to be the first Sunday of services open to the public at the newly reconstructed Frauenkirche cathedral. The Frauenkirche, a truly magnificent building, was destroyed by fire bombs, like the rest of Dresden, on Valentine´s day, 1945, during World War II. The cathedral is impressive and unique because it has many, many levels inside -- maybe ten stories -- where you can sit and observe the service; it´s a completely vertical experience. This having been the first public service since 1945, the line stretched forever, but fortunately Chris and I, arriving early, were able to get in without too much trouble. I sat next to an older couple, the wife spoke to me extensively about her experiences as a little girl in the Cathedral before it was destroyed; this was the first time she had entered it since 1945.

Sometimes in Europe when you sit at a table in a crowded restaurant or cafe the waiter or waitress will seat a group of strangers at your table. I wish it was the same way in the United States, because it´s really a wonderful custom, especially if you´re alone -- odds are, in that case, you will soon be striking up a conversation with them, and then you´ve met someone new.

This happened to me in Dresden. Reading and sipping hot chocolate by myself in an elegant cafe, as rain battered against the awning, an elderly couple sat down at my table and ordered coffees. For a while I didn´t say anything, because, as I´ve rediscovered, I´m really a rather shy person, and most of the time I wait for people to engage me in conversation, rather than taking the initiative to engage them. But on this day as I twiddled my thumbs waiting for them to speak to me, I decided that wouldn´t do, and I started asking them what they happened to be doing in Dresden on this miserable chilly day.

As it turned out, they were Dutch, which of course got me very excited (my heritage is Dutch, by the way) and before long we were talking about all kinds of things, like their five children, one of whom had moved to Warsaw and started another big family after falling for a Polish woman. The old Dutch man was full of energy and questions and excitement. I felt from the way that they spoke happily of their children that they were enjoying a very rewarding life, with a great big family that they had created and nurtured.

Chris and John and I gathered together briefly to attend an Opera by Richard Strauss, which was in the handsome Dresden opera house, which used to be quite famous. You can read more on the history of Dresden here.

Later, under a dark causeway, I paused for several minutes listening to a group of excellent Russian street performers who had drawn a small but devoted crowd. I guess they were a woodwind quartet -- a flutist, a bassoonist, and two clarinetists. Anyway, they were so professional, during a pause between Mozart´s Turkish and Strauss´ Radetski march I went up and bought their CD from them for €15. Afterwards I was extremely tickled with myself, convinced that I had become a magnificent patron of the arts.

And so that was Dresden for me. But you see, I was all alone for these little adventures. And that´s what made me sad; Dresden could have been a blast. It´s not where you are, it´s who you´re with.

why friends are all that matter, why I´m sorry about last month´s entry, and the true story behind why I´m unhappy here

2005-11-21T22:13:00.000+01:00

What is missing for me at Würzburg is very simple: I don´t have many good friends here, and I don´t see that next semester I somehow will.

The frustration I exhaled a month ago was misdirected and I regret the form it took; I have nothing against the city of Würzburg. I won´t take the post down, because that would be dishonest -- it was how I felt at the time. I don´t regret expressing my real frustration, but the form it took was stupid and hurtful. I am sorry.

My original understanding of why I´m unhappy here had been akin to one of Pascal´s conclusions. As Jacques Barzun writes, paraphrasing Pascal´s insights, "A tumultuous life pleases good minds; for it keeps feelings astir and action continuous. Man at rest is unhappy, bored (as we say) to death." Concluding that in comparison with the intellectual and emotional stimulations at Davidson, a "tumultuous life" with "feelings astir" and "actions continuous" was an impossible expectation here, I considered myself consequently doomed to being "at rest" and therefore unhappy.

But I had to tweak my understanding of Pascal´s intuition, and my application of it to my situation here, because an environment that engenders that kind of intellectual tumult and emotion has less to do with where you are and more to do with who you´re with. There are exceptions, but most of the friends who I care about and make my life interesting are not here with me. It´s a people problem.

Würzburg is beautiful. There are a lot of great things to see, hear, and do here, if not in this city, then certainly somewhere close-by. My "state of rest" seems pathetic; I am in the middle of Europe. But, you see, that´s not the point -- on a 42 hour bus ride through barren desert terrain in western China, I was happy (even if I complained sometimes), because there were five people around me with interesting stories and thoughtful conclusions and passion and curiousity reading books aloud to each other. Good friends are what make my life worthwhile; in comparison, my location -- whether I´m on a bus in the desert, or in a Würzburg cathedral -- almost doesn´t matter.

Of course, resisting the desire to import great friends from home, and cultivating new friendships, is part of studying abroad. My time in Taiwan, and later China, proved to me again that -- in general -- making new friends comes relatively easily for me. Several friendships grew while I was in Taiwan, not just with Taiwanese, but with French, Canadian, and American students, and one Swedish guy, too.

But the Germans careful guardianship of their social circles, and my disappointment in what I percieve as a lack of intellectual curiousity in many of those I´ve met, have combined to produce, well, predictable results. I have not, and no longer expect to, forge many lasting friendships here.

There´s no point denying the brazen arrogance of it: in comparison with extremely thoughtful friends from my family, high school, college, and Asian experiences, I´ve found the students I´ve met here -- potential friends -- to be lacking intellectual passion, and, far more damning, the ambitious curiousity about the world around us that drives people and makes them worth talking to. As one still degreeless student, who has been here for 17 semesters (that´s 8.5 years) exclaimed to me, "Why leave? Where´s there better to go to? There are plenty of parties here." Unlike a senior at Davidson who is studying at Air Force ROTC because he wants to be an astronaut, the students I´ve met at the University of Würzburg are content to remain where, and who, they are. They are not reaching for anything. For me, it´s the ambition to improve ourselves and learn about the world -- necessarily bundled together -- that makes us interesting, and worth becoming, well, a friend.

Zooming out of my very personal experiences, certain continental trends and numbers, which should be considered only cautiously, also reflect my point. The graph below, taken from this week´s Economist, shows dollars spent per student per year in several different nations on higher education. Dollars may seem like a poor way to explain why I have not made close friends here. But those numbers for Germany mean overflowing lecture halls, Professors who have no personal contact with their students and mediocre learning facilities, and that means, in a very general way, students with minds ashumdrum as their higher education system. Moreover, as Adrian Wooldridge writes in his Economist article, "In Germany the universities have limited power to decide whom they educate or even whom they employ. The result of this has been a twofold catastrophe. Universities have been progressively starved of resources as governments have forced them to “process” more students without giving them significantly more money. Universities have also found it increasingly difficult to excel... so far most European countries—Britain is a semi-exception—are doing little more than tinkering with a broken system." It´s a generalization, but a "starved" and "broken" German higher education system is not going to produce interesting people comparable to top college graduates in the United States, or in other countries with stronger education system. Near-term future prospects seem dim, moreover, given Germany´s unsustainable birth-rate that, unchanged, will slowly but massively shrivel the student population. You can read the full text of the Economist article here. To view the PDF population projections of the Berlin Institut for Population and Development entitled "Deutschland: 2020" (in German, but with charts) click here.

There are, of course, exceptions to a big generality like that -- at Würzburg, and I´m sure at every other German university. Some of the students I´ve met here have impressed me, including my two roommates. But I believe the overwhelming culture of this university is as I have described. The director of my program argued that I should stay here for those "exceptions." But why should I look for the exceptions in a pool of mediocrity, when I can wallow in a sea of thoughtful, curious, and ambitious students and professors at Davidson?

Ultimately everything I´ve written here is summed up easily: I miss my friends. I miss our thoughtful, engaging conversations. I miss the "tumultuous life with feelings astir and actions continuous." And without great friends by my side to make it worth it, all the cathedrals and art and music in Europe only have so much value. After a while, I just get lonely.

some considerations

2005-11-19T18:13:00.000+01:00

Several people wrote me disappointed e-mails after my "I hate it here in Würzburg" post. They called what I wrote pathetic, and they were right. In retrospect, I shouldn´t have drawn up a post that made me sound like a spoiled teenage girl with too many cupcakes on her hands.

But the frustration I unleashed in that posting was real, and ultimately if expressing how I feel -- however ridiculous and angry -- is not part of writing a blog, then what is? The fact is, I have been lonely and pretty sad here.

There´s an upside to everything, and the chance to be alone is not bad; I´ve had oodles of time to think, calm down, and set better priorities for my life. In these important ways, this time has been healthy for me. I think I´ve grown up a little bit in the last three months.

I´ve also had time to read a lot of books. I started with Pride and Prejudice,
and His Excellency: George Washington, then came a re-reading of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court, the latest Harry Potter (in German.. God I´m amazing at German), The Great Gatsby, The Guns of August, the Communist Manifesto, Wages, Price and Profit, and The Grapes of Wrath, which I just finished. Right now, I´m re-reading the Power of Myth interviews with Joseph Campbell, and reading for the first time The Prince, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, and Moby Dick. I still haven´t finished Jacques Barzun´s From Dawn to Decadence, but I´m real close to the end and dip into it from time to time.

In other news, my beautiful golden locks were shredded by an angry Würzburg barber on Thursday. What was left of my dignity is gone.

I´ve gone to see the latest Harry Potter movie twice because I really like it and I´ve connected with it in a strange way. Also.. is it wrong that I think Hermione is hot? Just tell me if it´s wrong.

Still, being alone a lot becomes depressing, and I miss a lot of people. Sometimes I wonder who I would be hanging out with at Davidson right now, and what I would be reading and learning. I don´t know if I will stay here in the spring. I just wrote an e-mail to a friend, and while writing I realized exactly what the question is before me: do I need another semester to calm down and think, or is life too short to sacrifice 5 months being unhappy?

If you´re reading this, I probably miss hanging out with you. Send an e-mail if you get the chance, even if reading my earlier angry post made you want to "throw up because what you say is bullshit" or you think "not the university but what you do is dumb and sucks!" as one offended reader explained to me in an e-mail message. "Anonymous" took the time to post a response, writing: "really pathetic and selfish, spoiled, trivial, and foolish." You can read the full text of Anonymous´s response at the bottom of the page here. But they are right.

I hope it gets better here, I really do.

Visiting Vienna

2005-10-23T21:19:00.000+02:00

A couple weeks ago the program took us to Vienna, which was really neat. Vienna is a very active, interesting place with a lot of history, and I appreciated the chance to visit it.

We saw two operas: "Werther", an opera in French by Massenet, based on Goethe´s novel, and Johann Strauss´s comedy "Die Fledermaus." There was also a really cool event going on during one of our few days there: "the long night of the museums," in which all of the great museums in the city are open until 1am. I spent most of the night at the Art History museum, which has a lot of original masterpieces, such as Bruegel´s "Tower of Babel" that I included below. On other days, some of the other places we visited included the Natural Science Museum, the Schönbrunn Palace, and the history of Vienna museum. The history museum was particularly interesting, and John, Ashish and I stayed for almost half a day. There were these enormous paintings of the 2nd seige of Vienna by the Ottomans in 1683. The Ottomans almost captured the city, but a Polish army arrived in the nick of time to rescue the Austrians.

The city of Vienna is interesting, because it´s a modern city of 1.6 million where people still live, but it´s like the whole city is a monument to an Empire that no longer exists. Vienna´s days of glory are long over. Today, the city´s population is still significantly smaller than it was a century ago, when the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was at it´s peak.

I´m glad I saw Vienna. Würzburg is still an unhappy place for me. This week I´m trying something new: I´m ditching the laptop and internet access i have in my room, as well as my TV. Tomorrow I will go to the library and check out a bajillion books. Maybe, if I don´t have anything else to do, and my room is covered in books, I will read them. Maybe something good will happen here this week. Otherwise... i don´t even know.

See below for more pictures from Vienna.

Pictures from Vienna

2005-10-23T20:40:00.000+02:00

Schönbrunn Palace.
Bad picture of the Staatsoper (National Opera House).
John Rice at the opera in all his glory and beautifulness.

And now an update: Germany BLOWS

2005-10-20T16:35:00.000+02:00

I am sorry for not updating my blog in so long, but when I tell you why I refrained from posting, maybe you will forgive me.

Germany is LAME. Everyday here I´m bored, unstimulated, and don´t really learn anything. The reason I haven´t posted in so long is because my typical daily entry might have looked something like this: "Today I was bored and hated Germany. Another day wasted. The end."

Today, October 20, I skipped a class that I´ve never gone too but I´m sure would have bored me, I took 5 showers and ate like a half-dozen cupcakes without getting dressed and sat in my room with the window open without clothes on but didn´t care because the people here suck. Why did I take 5 showers? I don´t know. I just don´t know.

Würzburg feels smaller than it really is because the people here are dumb. Everybody is nice and very relaxed. BORING. I already knew that I´m happy and challenged in an energetic, competitive place like a big city or Davidson. At the University of Würzburg, people kind of lounge about for decades getting tuition-free degrees. Then they don´t get jobs and complain for the government to fix it even though it´s their fault because they´re boring.

SO the point is, actually by not posting on my blog, I did you a favor by not making you read about this place and how it sucks. Sweet. Check back soon for more stories about why people here are lamos.

Oh yeah, and definitely send me e-mails. I love getting e-mails and I PROMISE I´ll write back.. i don´t have anything else to do.

Part 2: Beijing - Xian

2005-08-24T09:16:00.000+02:00

At the Beijing train station (the date now is July 29, 2005) I reunited with David Crane and Becky Nolin, and met up with the newly arrived John Henry and Jess Davis (also of Davidson), as well as Bill Dixon, an engineering student at Boston University. It was great to see David and Becky again after more than a month living by myself in Taipei. Just hours after arriving, all six of us boarded a sleeper train for the city of Xi'an. We had great beds and the time went by without us noticing it.

In the morning we woke up to find ourselves in Xi'an, famous for its city wall and the thousands of terracotta warriors buried during the short-lived, magnificent, and brutal Qin dynasty (the first and only Qin emperor also began construction of the great wall). In Xi'an we also visited a large and famous mosque built in the 1400s. The further west we traveled, the less people we met who were not Muslim. In Xi'an we also experienced the infamous "Chinese do not respect lines" problem, whereby people in China (unlike in Taiwan or Hong Kong) refuse to line up for anything, and just push as hard as they can to the front. As we were boarding a bus, we had to push our way through a screaming, kicking crowd. It was unbelievable.

We did not stay the night in Xi'an. Instead, we boarded an overnight train to the desert city of Dunhuang in Gansu province. Unfortunately, there were no sleeper cars left, and so we sat -- and slept -- in the regular seats. For 28 hours. It was pretty miserable, but somehow it didn't bother us that much; we were in a really good mood and having a good time. The scenery outside was sort of rocky desert, but sometimes it was really beautiful, lush green fields. Everyone else sitting on the train with us was very poor, some were Muslim. Everyone started at us -- for the whole trip. The staring can seem unfriendly at first, but if you talk to someone, they usually laugh and get excited, and you understand that they're not hostile -- they really are just curious. That being said, the policeman on the train did warn us to watch our bags closely and find him if we had any trouble. The Chinese police may work for a communist government with a history of unmitigated oppression and brutality, but it must be said that throughout the trip, a Chinese cop anywhere was someone we could depend on for efficient and honest help. They know that foreign tourists have to be protected and looked after -- we bring a lot of money to these far-away western towns and cities. Finally, exhausted, (only having sort-of-slept) we arrived in Dunhuang.

Part 1: Hong Kong - Beijing

2005-08-24T07:56:00.000+02:00

Before I talk about the train ride, one last important moment for me in Hong Kong was visiting their excellent and brand new history museum. I spent the day learning about Hong Kong's fascinating history: it's growth from a cluster of 5,ooo fishermen and their families to the stunning modern metropolis it is now after the British took over management of the territory following the Second Opium War (1860). Strong management by British governors, constantly growing international trade with China (including the trade of Opium), Hong Kong's deep harbor, and its existence as a relatively orderly toehold on the chaotic Chinese mainland all contributed to the cities spectacular growth. It was interesting to read about how the museum portrayed the British, the Japanese invaders in WWII, and the Chinese behomath that now governs the island.

The 24 hour train ride from Hong to Beijing was a beautiful, very individual experience. No one else stayed in my sleeper cabin, so for the most part I had 24 hours to myself. This time for myself is in contrast with my time in Taiwan, which was very hectic.

I did speak with a few passengers. Sometimes I would talk with a really nice Hong Kong family (originally from India) who had been living in Australia for a few years. The dad wasn't there, he was already in Beijing on business, but the mom and their three sons were really friendly. The oldest son was learning Chinese in high school (they were all in high school). The three boys played around a lot on the train. It was interesting to see how a Hong Kong/Australian/Indian family acted. They reminded me of an American family. I don't know this for sure, but another interesting sidenote is that there are a number of Indians living in Hong Kong, at least some of them descended from Indians the British brought over in the late 1800s as police and firefighters (there was considerable interaction between the Indian and Hong Kong colonies the British governed, including the Opium sold in China, traded at Hong Kong, and grown in India, and Indians were considered very reliable, making good policeman). Anyway, it is very possible that this family is descended from some of the Indians who moved to Hong Kong in these times.

I also spoke with two young Canadian school teachers from Novia Scotia who were both very friendly. One of them had been teaching English in Japan, and the other Canadian history (in Nova Scotia). They were taking the summer to ride across China. After Beijing, they were taking the Siberian express all the way to Moscow. I was pretty jealous -- what a beautiful trip.

Finally I arrived in Beijing in the afternoon of the next day. A new adventure was beginning, this time not an individual experience.

And now a message brought to you by Jrod

2005-08-03T13:59:00.000+02:00

Hello readers of Hank Keeps Track: A Daily Almanac. My name is Jrod, and I am writing on behalf of Henry as he sallies around Hong Kong. He emailed me this morning asking me to post an entry for him, noting that the authorities that be (read: "communists") have made it impossible for him to access Blogger. He believes the automatic censor's fingerprints are all over this, and I agree. In a time when technology is empowering the individual more and more, it is only natural that the state would want to control, or deny, access to such technology.

Henry also wanted me to let you know that he will have some fantastic images and stories to share with you and me, his devoted readers, when he reaches San Francisco on August 19.

Hank left me with this final message:

Right now David Crane, Becky Nolin, John Henry, Jess Davis, a BU engineering student and I were just in the ancient silk road desert city of Dunhuang, in Gansu province, China. Right now we're in Xinjiang province on our way to the city of Bole.

Borrowing a tradition from my blog, I leave you with imagery from Google Earth of Henry's recent location:

Dunhuang

and where he is headed:

Bole.

Hong Kong

2005-07-27T11:25:00.000+02:00

Please see below for two posts on the conclusion of my trip to Taiwan.

I arrived in Hong Kong on Monday, and yesterday I did a whirlwind walking tour of the city that took many hours and left me totally exhausted. But of course it was worth it.

The past two nights I've been staying in a tiny room in a tiny apartment where Jon Atkinson '06 is living, it's about half an hour outside of downtown. Jon has been here all summer, he's working for a Taiwanese electronics company that has offices here.

The first night, I stayed up until 1 in the morning talking with Benny, Jon's Taiwanese roommate, who works for the same company as Jon. Unlike people in Hong Kong, who seem relatively apathetic, Taiwanese people everywhere seem to care a lot about their complicated political world. Benny, whose wife and children were all DPP supporters, had strong opinions about both the DPP and the KMT, as well as his experiences working for two years in China. Benny's parents immigrated to Taiwan after the Chinese civil war. He felt that the DPP harped on racial tensions to draw out votes, their platform was outdated, and their track record on business was poor (he cited the past scuffle with the German company Bayer). He also noted that there are now 200,000 Taiwanese living in Shanghai (I'm not sure if this number is right), among them many friends, and he said that among many of his friends and their families living in Shanghai there was a clear pattern: at first they would come back to Taiwan every month, then every six months, then every year, and then... suddenly they were really living in China. It was a fascinating conversation.

I guess it's typical to say so, but Hong Kong really does feel like the future -- a vast urban paradise of glass and cutting-edge technology where long walking paths have been converted into escalators (the longest in the world is here, it takes 20 minutes to walk to the whole thing). It's also peculiarly British, with colonial buildings inbetween skyscrapers here or there, and twisted, old world cobbled streets, double-decker buses, tons of pubs, and cars driving on the left side of the road.

I agree with Bryan, who pointed out to me that Hong Kong truly is an international city, much more so than Taipei. When I first arrived downtown the people and languages around me were all so different -- a businessman walked by on his cell phone talking in Danish, two well-dressed English investment bankers hustled past me, a brightly-colored American tourist family was looking at a big map. Later, I spent some time praying at St. John's, the beautiful Anglican church here, and when I walked outside listened as a Hong Kong family passed by speaking Cantonese and the English pastor, his wife, and two children, spoke with a visiting Irish woman.

Unlike the overwhelming hospitality I experienced in Taiwan, people in Hong Kong aren't nice, but they aren't not nice either. From what Jon tells me, they work very, very hard, they love to earn and spend money, and they don't have much time for anything else -- like being nice to foreigners or politics. Jon made a comment to me that I find very telling -- whenever he asks someone from Hong Kong what they do for fun, the answer is invariably "shopping at the mall."

I purchased my visa to enter the People's Republic yesterday, as well as my ticket for the 24-hour sleeper-train adventure to Beijing. Through my train window, I will see a long, thin slice of China that cuts all the way down the East coast of the country. I will meet up with five dudes in Beijing for a few hours, before all of us head out together for Western China.

I'll keep you posted.

hong kong photos

2005-07-27T11:00:00.000+02:00

St. John's church, I stayed here for a while. Right outside here I listened to the English minister and his family talking.
Bad picture of me. But you get the idea.
Double decker style. On the left side, no less.

The old and the new: chinese junk floats by with skyscrapers in the background.

Taiwan, the conclusion

2005-07-27T10:44:00.000+02:00

It was sad to leave Taiwan, it had really started to feel like home. People here are really nice, and it's so easy to get comfortable.

My last week (July 18-24) began with a typhoon that gave me school and work off on Monday. By Tuesday it was back to long days beginning at 6am when i would wake up to head to four hours of one-on-one instruction and class, and then seven hours of work (although work got more and more relaxed as the week drew to a close). My main project at work was researching the U.S. defense departments recent release of their annual white paper on China's military build-up. Because it is relatively explicit about China's ambitious military activities, the report generated a lot of press in Taiwan and in China (in Beijing, the U.S. ambassador was summoned to defend himself). If you haven't read it already, you can access the white paper here.

After work on Friday, the international department took me out for dinner, (see picture) and after dinner some of us went to KTV (Karaoke), along with a few members of the youth department (see pictures below). There's a specific kind of Chinese love song that they love to sing to over and over again, deep into the night and early time. It's a painful experience, but it would have been rude to turn them down or leave too early.

Evelyn is 23 and fluent in Portuguese, French, English, Mandarin, and native Taiwanese. I hung out with her a lot over the weekend.
After cleaning up my apartment for Dr. Rigger and her family, who will be living there in August, I left for Hong Kong on Monday morning, where I am now. I'll tell you about that in the next post.

See below for more pictures from Taiwan. There's a lot more I would like to write about Taiwan, and I hope I get the chance to share my experience with a lot of you (and hear about your summer experiences) when I get home.

last pictures from Taiwan

2005-07-27T10:10:00.000+02:00

at KTV (Karaoke). They love this stuff. God help us all.

the stoic but enormous apartment where i lived, it's owned by the incredibly generous Dr. Kao and his family. Candi Kao is an awesome senior at Davidson who Henry is eternally grateful to.

Another pic of Evelyn and Hank, looking more serious this time.

handsome American explores Taiwan's coast

2005-07-21T05:44:00.000+02:00

This past weekend I explored the East coast of Taiwan along a 5-hour highway that runs parallel to the island. The Pacific ocean splashes against a long stretch of giant green mountains, making it maybe the most beautiful drive in Taiwan, and probably among the most beautiful in the world. My pictures do not do justice to this place (most of them can be seen in the post below).

The Japanese (who ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945) built the road we drove on in the 1920s and 30s at great cost and effort; it winds its way up mountains and smashes through others -- all inches from the Pacific ocean, churning hundreds of feet below.

I was accompanied by two friends who know the area well. We rented a Toyota and in one very long day drove down the coast and right back up again. One of those friends, Evelyn, drove most of the way.

Evelyn's father is French, but she grew up in Brazil and Taiwan. Evelyn's driving, like her mixed roots, is an unlikely combination of European nonchalance and third-world frenzy. As we swept blindly around sudden corners -- teetering along massive cliffs with only a thin metal rail seperating us from a fall of hundreds of feet to the ocean below -- she would sometimes abruptly add a burst of gas and plunge into the oncoming lane, trying to outpace a slow-moving truck blocking our way. Indifferent, in a European way, to the wails of her worried passengers, Evelyn's strict enforcement of a self-imposed rule "never to use brakes" sounded a note more fitting to the frenetic boulevards of developing countries. As frightening as it sounds, her mixed-culture driving was impressive.

For those of you who know Taiwan, our trip included stops along Taroko gorge and terminated in Hualian. I drew our route in red on the map. See below for more pictures.

photos from exploring the coast

2005-07-21T03:11:00.000+02:00

2005-07-21T03:10:00.000+02:00

Jarred's wrong about the French EU vote, here's why

2005-07-17T18:24:00.000+02:00

It turns out the typhoon here has given me a free day from class and work to catch up on other things.

On July 7th, Jarred posted a very thoughtful blog inspired by a recent Francis Fukuyama lecture given to Davidson students in Washington. Jarred's blog is a consideration of the motives behind the French rejection of the EU vote. Read the full text of his post here. In his post, Jarred concludes that "the French have decided, and probably not consciously, that they value the history and culture of France more than they value their ability to cross swords with the U.S." Although he makes many insightful comments that reflect his palpable understanding of French politics, this conclusion Jarred reaches is flawed: the no-vote does not reflect a conscious or unconscious cultural "decision."

As Jarred correctly explains, one bundle of reasons French voters rejected the EU constitution is concern about Muslim immigration and Turkey's admission into the EU. But Jarred himself notes that this is only one reason for the no-vote. There are more important reasons why so many French citizens voted "no."

I discussed the French no vote, and Jarred's thoughtful considerations, with a French graduate student here named Mathiew, (he's pictured napping in a post below). Mathiew listed two concerns for French voters that outweighed "unspoken" worries about Turkey and Muslims: the ailing Franco-German social model, and Chirac himself. I wrote down what Mathiew said after I explained Jarred's post:

"It might be true, but I don't think that's a good framework for analyzing the vote. I think the two main factors still are the kind of social-economic factors of the EU that French people still reject, and that Chirac implied himself too much in the campaign ... so it became a protest vote against Chirac."

Like Mathiew, I think that both of these explicitly important considerations dominated thinking for French voters. Turkey, Muslim immigrants, and French identity were no doubt a part of the EU vote for some French people, but seeing a cultural "decision" about these concerns is too much, and drawing such a conclusion deemphasizes these two other important reasons why French voters voted "no."

Another flaw in Jarred's conclusion is the assumption that many French voters have a shared concern about Turkey's EU admission and immigrants from the Middle East. I agree with Mathiew, who noted that "even people who voted no, who had very clear economic and political reasons why they voted, even members of the far-left... if you asked all them to let Turkey in, many of them might say yes, why not?" There's no doubt that these issues worry a lot of French people, but there is not unity of opinion in France about issues like Turkey or Muslim immigration, and therefore it is inappropriate to conclude from the "no" vote that decisions have been made about preserving French culture in the face of a European or Muslim cultural onslaught.

It's important not to "read too much" in a vote. That's not to say that votes don't tell us a lot about how voters are thinking -- of course they do -- but voting "no" in a constitution referendum that is important and controversial for many reasons does not necessarily amount to a single, big cultural decision. In his post, Jarred writes: "their choice is the France of old, but weaker, or a new France, and stronger. They have chosen the former, and the full implications of that decision have yet to reveal themselves." Consciously or unconsciously, I think very few French voters had such a grand decision in mind when they voted "no" in the referendum.

Jarred's post is very thoughtful, and it's unfair for me to attack his conclusion when, as he noted, his post was an off-the-cusp reflection on Fukuyama's speech. I agree with a lot of what he wrote. Ultimately even if I disagree with his conclusion, Jarred's right that Turkey's admission to the EU and Muslim immigration are important issues that the French need to come to terms with, whether or not they were trying to make a decision about it during the EU vote.

good news and bad news

2005-07-17T12:29:00.000+02:00

Good News
In the next few weeks, the postings on this blog are going to get more interesting. This week I will finish up my time in Taipei and head out to visit friends in Hong Kong, take the 28-hour train across China to Beijing and visit friends there, travel with four great Davidson people to see the desert of Xinjiang province, live in yurts, maybe get close to the Pakistan-China border, and more.
Bad News
In the next few weeks, the postings on this blog are going to get a lot less frequent for the same reason that they're going to get more interesting -- I'll be traveling a lot. Hopefully at least twice a week I'll still write a post and upload pictures.

In other bad news, even though I just got back from a beautiful day driving through the mountains along the coast of Taiwan with two friends from work, I can't write about it today, because a typhoon is pummelling Taiwan, and I need to go home (in fact, classes and work might be canceled tomorrow).

I know I owe some people e-mails, I promise I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

French cheese eaten, moped driver clobbered, and Emily leaves forever

2005-07-14T15:46:00.000+02:00

To celebrate Bastille Day, the French "trade and culture office" in Taiwan (i.e. embassy) threw a great lunch-party in a hotel near Taipei 101. I've always felt that there were a lot of French people in Taipei, and the overwhelming attendance at the event today only added to that impression. They don't eat cheese very much in Taiwan, so the chance to gobble up slices of French cheeses was especially memorable. At the party I had a chance to talk briefly with the "security coordinator" of the Israeli bodyguard that protects their representatives here in Taipei; he said he had also noticed my attendance at the Randy Schriver speech on Tuesday. He's returning to Israel in August -- he's one dude here I don't plan on pissing off.

However I did piss off someone else today -- namely an irresponsible, unfortunate moped driver. I'm always careful about opening taxi doors onto busy streets, and today was no exception. I had been waiting for about 20 seconds to open my door as cars and mopeds passed by, when I finally saw that traffic had cleared up, and I opened the door. Unfortunately, this driver had been idling out of view behind our taxi, waiting for the same free moment to dart past us, and he collided with the door. Thank God, he seemed alright, and only sat their dazed for a few seconds before resuming his trip without a word to us. The taxi driver received a small two cm dent that I may have to pay for at a future date.

Most importantly, though, today, tragically, was Emily Drew's last day in Taiwan. It all happened so quickly: just last week, after a year spent in Taipei, she left her job at the Taipei Times and decided to seek new adventures in New York. Although we tried to figure out a time to have lunch or dinner, her packing schedule was so tight that it didn't work out, (she only had about a week to get her affairs in order and get out of the country) so it may be some time before I ever see her again. Since she's fearless and real smart, I bet there will be new adventures to come for her soon.

In other news, Bryan returned from his adventures in Thailand and Japan today, and we had dinner tonight.

The pictures are all from the Bastille Day celebration; the younger women is Evelyn from the DPP office, and the older women on the left in the last picture is the French "ambassador" to Taiwan (technically trade and culture "representative", since France, like most countries, does not recognize Taiwan).

photos added

2005-07-13T06:23:00.000+02:00

Photos have been added to the last five posts.

Baltimoreans descend on Taipei

2005-07-12T18:09:00.000+02:00

After work today, I had dinner with Jen Lally, a Baltimore native who went to Roland Park and Washington & Lee, and now works as a teacher at Westminster school in Atlanta. After dinner we strolled around the presidential palace and peace garden area for a while. Jen is staying for three weeks at Christ College outside of Taipei, where she is teaching English.

Although she doesn't get back to Baltimore all too often, it was still good to hang out with someone from home. I had never met Jen before, but for those of you who don't know, even though the greater Baltimore area has more people than the greater Boston area, it is a ridiculously small town, and so of course we knew about a hundred people in common.

my dad's magazine article

2005-07-11T18:22:00.000+02:00

Before I left for Taiwan, my dad gave me the March 2005 edition of Forbes magazine, which contained an article entitled "the best advice I ever got." I've been flipping through the magazine occasionally when I'm sitting down for dinner, and I've been meaning to post some of the best advice.

"You're right not because others agree with you, but because your facts are right."
- Warren Buffett, CEO Berkshire Hathaway
"Make a fool of yourself."
- Richard Branson, Virgin Airways, Virgin Group
"Be nice, do your best -- and most important, keep it in perspective."
- Meg Whitman, eBay
"Don't listen to the naysayers."
Sallie Krawcheck, Citigroup
"When 'everyone knows' something to be true, nobody knows nothin'."
Andy Grove, Intel
"Let others take the credit."
Brian Roberts, Comcast
"Keenly visualize the future."
Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO Siemens (a University of Wuerzburg graduate)
"If you love something, the money will come."
Donny Deutsch, Deutsche Inc.
"All you really own are ideas and the confidence to write them down."
Brian Grazer, Film writer
So far as the last one is concerned, I hope that's what I'm doing now.

two canadians, one frenchman, and an american

2005-07-11T17:03:00.000+02:00

The Canadians
I met two interesting Canadians in the last 24 hours. Louis, from Quebec, I met last night. His first trip to Asia was to Mongolia at the age of sixteen. He told a great story about being lost in the Gobi desert for two days on a horse that was supposed to know where it was going, but didn't. The other Canadian, Mei Su Wee, is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, her mentor in the graduate school program there is Joseph Wang, who gave a great lecture at Davidson this past spring. Her thesis involves a comparison between democratic reform in South Korea and Taiwan.
The Frenchman
That same night I also had a great conversation with Mathiew, a very articulate and thoughtful French graduate student studying cross-strait politics here on a fellowship from a political university in Paris. Although part of our conversation centered on the recent political game we both participated in, discussed below, a lot of what we talked about regarded Jarred's thoughtful blog regarding Francis Fukuyama and the French rejection of the EU, accessible here. Mathiew explained his belief that "the two main factors still are the kind of social/economic factors of the EU that French people still reject... [and that] Chirac implied himself too much in the campaign, so it became a protest vote against Chirac."
The American
Tonight I attended a talk at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy given by Randy Schriver, the former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs. Mr. Schriver, a Democrat who served under both Clinton and (until recently) Bush, spoke about Taiwan's importance as a democracy and the opportunities and challenges of China's increasing importance. He noted that "democracy is Taiwan's greatest asset, and it's what binds Taiwan together with the United States... there was a little poking fun at President Bush after his inaugural; people counted how many times he said 'freedom' or 'democracy.' But I think for places like Taiwan the memory is still more fresh -- how hard it is to get these things."

He made an interesting comment about Chinese diplomats, explaining, "their diplomatic corp has grown extremely effective, extremely skilled... it wasn't so long ago that if you bumped into a Chinese diplomat at a state function, you could excect a response that stuck pretty close to the script... but they've become very creative, very clever." In response to a question about America's attempt to "contain" China, he said "if we were trying to contain China, why would we be the largest source for China's direct investment, the ones who are training many of China's elite scientists and engineers?... some analysts say that even if they become democratic, confrontation between the United States and China is inevitable, but a powerful, democratic China is something in the future we would welcome."

But in response to a question I asked him about a nytimes article discussing tiny democratic reform efforts taking place in China, he explained that "I see little indication that the central government, the authorities in Beijing, are ready to launch on an experiment towards greater political participation, I think if anything, there's been a crackdown on things like use of the internet, there's been a crackdown on house churches... i read the same article, and i've seen the same reports, but i think on the whole i'm skeptical."
To read more about his visit and speech, go to: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/07/12/2003263183

2005 Taiwan-Strait Political-Military Game

2005-07-10T08:10:00.000+02:00

It started on Friday and continued through the weekend -- about 100 young DPP staffers and future leaders attended a "political-military" game designed to help them learn about the thought-process of policy makers in the United States and China, and maybe more importantly to teach them how to prevent conflict in the Taiwan-strait.

Probably because I'm American, I was assigned to be one of the advisors to the U.S. president. It was enormously challenging since my mandarin is pretty bad and I'm not nearly proficient enough to understand what was going on, but I was able to pick out some sentences by myself, and two girls sitting next to me helped translate a lot. Today (Sunday) the DPP chairman arrived back from the U.S. to deliver a short speech at the conference and to congratulate us.

It was very interesting to see how these young Taiwanese handled the crises the "control room" staff would throw at them. One of the other advisors to the U.S. was a young woman who recently attended a model U.N. conference in Geneva -- she really knew what she was doing, as attested (at least partially) by her willingness to abandon Taiwan in circumstances where it was no longer in the U.S. interest to support it -- she understood clearly that the U.S. has it's own interests in mind, and that those interests might not always be the same as those of Taiwan.

It was the first time the DPP had hosted a conference like this, and although they did a really good job organizing and coordinating all the events, their inexperience in manipulating the delicate mock-crises eventually took a toll; in the span of forty minutes Saturday night, ( it was a pretty long day, from 8:00am til midnight) we learned that China was threatening Taiwan unless they immediately accepted the one-China policy, a Taiwanese dissident had assassinated the Chinese premier, Muslim extremists had captured and blocked the Singapore strait, and Pakistan had inexplicably seized the opportunity to invade India. Perhaps more restraint on the part of the control staff would have been more appropriate.

Even in the U.S., unhindered by language differences, I've always performed poorly at these kinds of mock-crisis conferences. I've thought a lot about why this might be, because it worries me that I can't respond quickly and effectively to crises. Certainly I'm not very comfortable with having to respond to something too rapidly -- I like to carefully and slowly think about what's going on. Moreover, there is very little information available, which can make it hard to see the outcomes that your decisions will produce. I'm also bewildered by the impersonal nature of the situation; events unfold and the control room tells us that the leader of a faraway country has declared war on his neighbor, but we can't personally confront that leader and communicate with him or her personally. This kind of ambiguity is very frustrating for me, (and ultimately, I think, relatively unrealistic), and combined with the expectation of a rapid response and the lack of important information, I become paralyzed and can't offer any useful suggestions. Although I enjoyed this conference and I learned a lot, my dismal performance echoed my failures at model U.N. conferences throughout high school. oh well.

Anyway, it was very interesting.

jarred and erika go to DPP chairman's speech in D.C.!

2005-07-10T08:05:00.000+02:00

It's a little late news, but Jarred and Erika attended the speech given by our fearless and mighty DPP chairman in D.C. last week at CSIS, the same think-tank where Jarred works. In an e-mail, Jarred described the experience as "really cool" and unique because he "had never been to a speech with an interpreter before, so that was also interesting." Today the chairman arrived in Taiwan back from his speeches in the U.S. and came to visit the conference I was at, reminding me once again just how small the world is becoming. In the first picture, you can see on the right the back of the heads of Jarred and Erika attending his speech. In the second picture, the woman standing behind the chairman in this picture is my boss, or more like my boss's boss, Bi-khim Hsiao.

"der spiegel" reporter interviewed

2005-07-07T16:58:00.000+02:00

At work today I interviewed by phone Stefan Simons, the Asia editor at the foreign desk of Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine. Their website can be accessed at www.spiegel.de. (On an unrelated note, the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the recent London bombings took credit for the attacks by writing to Der Spiegel).

I interviewed Mr. Simons for an article about German attitudes towards Taiwan that will be published in the DPP's small English-language newsletter. Tragically, as a result of my chronic ridiculiousness, I neglected to turn on the tape recorder I was using to record the interview until the last few questions. Unfortunately I think a lot of the best questions were at the beginning of the interview, and now they're lost forever. But I think the questions I did take down answers to are pretty interesting. I copied the transcript of what I did record below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW: HENRY VAN WAGENBERG (TAIPEI), STEFAN SIMONS, (HAMBURG)

H: Do you think that they [Germans] would see the military aid the U.S. gives to Taiwan as being dangerous or unwise in the sense that it could potentially upset the status quo? How do Germans, those who do know about it, how do they react to the U.S. military aid to Taiwan?

Mr. Simons: ... I think the political and military threat of Beijing to Taiwan, i think that's quite obvious even if people in Germany don't know exactly about the numbers or figures attached to it. On the other hand, where people are more reluctant to support Taiwan's cause is when the independence claim is used a political gimmick in election campaigns as was the case in the last few years, I think that -- Chen Shui-bian's very obvious, well rumors, in terms of political independence, I think very much in the United States was viewed as a gimmick, and I think that was seen [by Germans] as rocking the boat in the Taiwan straits.

H: Do you personally think that Europe should be more supportive of Taiwan as a young democracy? What's your personal opinion about Europe's relationship to Taiwan? Should it be closer to Taiwan, or is it good the way it is?

Mr. Simons: Well personally, I would think that the Europeans as a whole could be a lot more outspoken in their support of Taiwan, because it's one of the few countries in Southeast Asia which already have a quite brilliant historical example of military dictactorship to full-fledged democracy, that alone I think deserves more support, more outspoken position-taking on the side of the Europeans, but i think everything is overshadowed by the economic bermuda triangle that kind of sucks in the political good will. Personally as I say it would be much better if there was more of an equidistance, but sure enough Beijing cannot be left aside, it certainly has to be treated with the due respect it can demand as an upcoming superpower. On the other I don't think that should go to the detriment of Taiwan.

H: Do you personally think that the U.S.'s military support of Taiwan is dangerous or unwise, or should be rethought?

Mr. Simons: No. I think that the US under the current administration, Bush 2, has not changed its political stance, in a way it's going back to the equidistance. Politically it has reiterated the Shanghai comminique position, and all it does now is underline the committment with military hardware. The military balance was certainly tilting towards Beijing; I think what the Americans do is a reaction to the perceived threat, rather than venturing into dangerous territory by itself.

H: Ok. Just one last question. As a journalist, do you think that when articles are published about Taiwan, vs. articles about China, do you think that an article about Taiwan attracts a lot less attention than China? Is Taiwan sort of less on the radar screen for Germans?

Mr. Simons: Yes of course. We're talking about two different countries, with two different economies -- 1.3 billion people on the move to become the second superpower, in 20-25 years, of course will command much more public, journalistic attention. absolutely, there's no doubt about it. And that Taiwan compared to China will see its light in the public eye be diminished. I think that's only normal.

H: O.k., alright, well thank you very much.

Mr. Simons: If there's anything else, just let me know.

air conditioner fixed, visa rejected

2005-07-07T16:21:00.000+02:00

Last night, the old Taiwanese couple that lives below me knocked on my door and begged me to turn off my air conditioner.

I bought a new air conditioner with my friends on Sunday; it seems since the day it was installed, the water from the back had been noisily dripping onto the tin roof of their porch, and from what i gathered, they hadn't really slept since. I didn't want to torture them for another night, so I slept without air conditioning one more time, and then at 7 am, before class and work, the building super and i installed a rubber pipe to drain the water to less troublesome places. Hopefully my neighbors will catch up on their sleep soon.

In other news, today I skipped my lunchtime to go to the consular office and switch my visa to student status so that I can stay in Taiwan (my 60-day visa expires in one week.)

My application was rejected.

I had all the paperwork and authentification certificates from my school, but it just didn't work. Although everyone I'd spoken with had told me that it was possible to change my visa to a student status (since i'm a student), apparently there is no way to change it while in Taiwan; I need to go to there Hong Kong office to do that. Theoretically I'm supposed to leave the country about a week from now. I'm not sure if my Taiwan trip may be coming to a premature end, or rather, if my trip to China is enjoying an early start. We'll see soon.

africa and molly langer

2005-07-05T19:31:00.000+02:00

This afternoon I e-mailed Molly Langer with a controversial nytimes op-ed by Nicholas Kristof (it's a few days old now). She offered a very thoughtful response and included an op-ed of her own. I copied the articles and our conversation below. Molly is working at the Brookings institute this summer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: HENRY VAN WAGENBERG July 6, 2:42 PM
Molly, I imagine you read this op-ed already, but just in case you didn't, I copied it below. I'm not sending this to you to say "I told you so" or even to defend Bush -- the op-ed itself is ultimately critical of him. But I think it makes the point very well that things aren't black and white; Bush and republicans are not "bad" for developing countries, liberals are not "good" for them. I also find Kristof's skepticism of financial aid both appropriate and healthy.
link to article I sent: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/opinion/05kristof.html?ex=1120795200&en=b1e9fb1ad01d25bc&ei=5070
--------------------------------------------------------------
FROM MOLLY LANGER July 6, 10:27 PM
Henry,
thanks for the article, i thought it was pretty interesting and partially accurate. Kristof, as im sure you know, has been closely following Bush's response to the genocide in Sudan and has been highly critical of the administration. He knows that the G8 summit represents a rare opporunity in that Africa is at the top of the agenda, and my opinion of the article is that he is kissing some bush administration ass in a last-ditch effort to get Bush to make real commitments. That said, "conservative" has a lot of meanings, and the part of conservative that equates with morally conscious and, in most cases, religious, I have no problems with. In fact, by that definition, I come from an extremely conservative, catholic family. And i agree that the religious right does a TON of good social work, more than most liberals who go blabbering about doing good work but never actually get around to doing any. However, as I said, when it comes to Bush's actual commitment to African aid and development, I am highly skeptical. Mostly because I am working here at Brookings with a couple of scholars who specialize on U.S. policy toward Africa, and when you actually look at the numbers versus what Bush says he is commiting, there is a huge discrepancy. Similar to the Iraq issue....more than anything I just wish this administration would have an honest discussion. I've attached a Washington Post op-ed from yesterday, written by a woman who works here at Brookings. Remember the difference between the individual conservative and this conservative administration in terms of which is effective and which follows through on big talk.

link to article Molly sent: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/04/AR2005070400863_pf.html

americans came to work today

2005-07-05T18:55:00.000+02:00

A delegation of almost a dozen professors and researchers from the U.S. dropped by our office today. My boss, Huai Hui, held a meeting with them for about an hour; she let me sit in and listen as they questioned her about legislative elections and rejected-weapons packages.

Most of them were from the Cato institute, GW, the Naval War College, and the Center for National Policy, but two of them were from closer to home -- professors at UMaryland and Towson.

It goes without saying that I love people in Taiwan, but after so many weeks here, seeing twelve American faces was a refreshing moment for me. Having spent so much time in a foreign country, it also made me appreciate something: Americans might have a reputation for being loud sometimes, but most of us really are friendly people. I mean that.

I added two more pictures to the account at http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=1385542. They are pictures of me standing with this girl Evelyn who is another intern at the DPP office. She's French-Brazilian, but her family has lived in Taiwan for several years. She graduated from college here in Taiwan this June.

new pictures

2005-07-05T16:26:00.000+02:00

Johann (Swedish), Anya, Ellen, (both Taiwanese) and Lionel (French), having dinner sunday night. Ellen works in the DPP youth office.
at dinner with people from the office and visiting professors from France
Me, Dave, and Emily
Bryan, his friend Dave, and Emily at "the Brass Monkey," a restaurant where all the australians and americans hang out

The black and white picture with the mopeds shows the apartment where I live

my chinese classes and a change of heart

2005-07-05T14:46:00.000+02:00

My Chinese school, called the Taipei Language Institute or TLI, is a private language company not affiliated with any university in Taiwan. Originally there were four students in my class, including two French students and a South Korean woman, but attendance has withered; this past week I was the only one who came to class until a new Japanese student enrolled. Although my classes are generally well-taught, this trend, and other observations, have shaken my faith in commercial education programs, or education "businesses".

Until recently my instinct had always been to support private language businesses because more immediate exposure to the market makes teachers and administrators far more accountable to their students -- who are, after all, paying customers. Certainly the benefits of these pressures can be felt at TLI, where teachers are extremely responsive and flexible to the requests of their students. For example, when teachers were late to class several days in a row, students complained to the CEO, and the next day teachers who were late by a certain time saw their salaries slightly penalized and they were not allowed to teach the class. In contrast, my friends studying Chinese at universities sometimes complain that their curriculum is traditional and rigid, and that teachers and administrators are strict and unresponsive to suggestions or requests from their unseasoned students.

I've come to realize, however, that this very unresponsiviness at the universities has important advantages. There are clear benefits to the flexibility offered by TLI, but as more than one classmate has remarked to me, they are a business, and in the final analysis they "really just care about your money." This does not mean that their teachers aren't good --they are -- but it does mean that students are rarely chastised when homework goes undone, and they aren't scolded for not paying attention during a lecture, and no one protests when the entire class (except for Hank) skips for a week. After all, we're not just students, we're customers -- and perhaps if we were hassled over these relapses we might just look elsewhere for friendlier, more accommodating service.

I'm beginning to think that the very "flexibility" TLI shows it's students is a fundemental problem with language program businesses -- the relationship between teacher and student is inverted when students who should respect the training of their professors are transformed into almighty customers. Mr. Brown, one of my favorite English teachers in high school, once reminded our class that learning is about being uncomfortable. When teachers are demoted to service-providers, it is hard to fight a natural impulse to keep their customers as comfortable as possible.

In contrast to my French and South Korean classmates who skipped a week without reproof, Bryan, who studied at a university, remarked that skipping one day of class earned him critical and unsympathetic comments from his teachers, who pushed him to make up the work and warned him that he'd missed important topics. Somehow the maxim "the customer is always right" is fundamentally inappropriate in an educational setting.

what i do at work

2005-07-04T14:04:00.000+02:00

This past week all we did at work was preparation for the DPP chairman's week-long visit to Washington and other parts of U.S. A lot of scheduling went down. I wasn't able to help that much, since my Chinese isn't good, but I did help them whenever English was involved.

The chairman left on Friday so work changed (by the way, if you're in D.C. on Wednesday July 6th, he will give his only public speech at CSIS at 3:00pm). Today I e-mailed German journalists and organizations in Taiwan to try and set up interviews for an article I'm writing in the DPP's international newsletter. The brief article will be a very broad inquiry into how Europeans, and especially Germans, feel about Taiwan.

It goes without saying that Germany and Europe have a very different relationship with Taiwan than the United States does; although Taiwan is the EU's 10th largest trading partner, Germany recognizes Taiwan as a part of China, and the Taiwanese president, vice-president, and foreign minister are all barred from ever entering Germany. This apparent antipathy towards Taiwan reflects Schroeder's careful effort to strengthen ties with China; the EU's recent willingness to lift the arms embargo on China is another example of their surprising lack of interest in the troubles of the young Taiwanese democracy. The upcoming elections in Germany will determine a lot, as opposition candidate Angela Merkel (CDU) is supposed to be more skeptical politically of China.

Anyway, that's what I've been working on. Everyone in the office is very nice to me, at least partially because I'm a foreigner, but the same can't be said of how they treat each other. Who would have thought that the staffers in the office of a political party would engage in office politics and inter-departmental bickering? Little did I know when I changed from the youth dept. to the international dept. that I had entered the middle of a protracted war. My friends in the international dept. complain about the youth dept. and their incessant requests to fund expensive and unproductive projects (which is true), and my friends in the youth dept. complain that staffers in the international dept. are pretentious (which is also true). In any event, I hope none of them ever see this blog.

an important goal

2005-07-02T13:11:00.000+02:00

Today I explored market streets around Ximen after my trip to the visa office proved futile (they're not open on the weekends).

I've also been thinking about how best to achieve my most important goal here -- improving my Chinese. I need to take my Chinese classes here more seriously; right now I'm not taking as much out of them as I should, mostly because I don't write as much homework as I should. I may add another hour to my schedule of classes.

Tomorrow I'll buy air conditioners with Anya, a Taiwanese friend.

Summary: Conclusion

2005-07-01T15:42:00.000+02:00

So that's a really short summary of what's happened so far. David and Becky left about three weeks ago to go to the mainland (where I will hopefully join them and other Davidson students in August, more on that later).

Most days my schedule is the same: I go to school and work, and then in the evenings I go out with friends from work (mostly from the youth and international departments), or with Bryan and Emily. Going out with Taiwanese is fun but crazy -- sometimes they expect a lot of drinking and then of course everyone heads to the Karaoke lounges to sing the night away until the wee hours of the morning. This will tire anyone out, especially with classes and work starting early the next morning (since these are weeknights we're talking about).

On Wednesday I got off work and went to the historic port town of Danshui with Bryan and his friend Dave (as you can probably see from some of the pictures). There are Dutch and Spanish forts there from the 17th century. And yes, of course, the Dutch were the first Europeans to set up trading here. Eat it.

From now on, I will continue this blog everyday as best I can, and I will post three times a week at least. Right now it's almost 10pm on Friday night, and its time to do sweeter things than sitting in the internet cafe.

More pictures

2005-07-01T15:13:00.000+02:00

sweet picture of taipei. this really gives you sense of what the city looks like. you can see the raised mass transit system heading off into the distance. also the mountains behind the buildings.

This is an older picture but you can see the Japanese-built presidential palace in the background. Those resourceful Japanese built it during their time ruling Taiwan -- from the late 19th century until the end of WWII.
This is a non-active volcano in the mountains. Still though, it's pretty warm, and you can see the sulfur smoke.
Danshui is very pretty.
Bryan and I take a moment to reflect.
A picture of Danshui. A lot of Taiwan looks like this -- lots of buildings on the flat parts and valleys, and then big green mountains in the background. Most of the island is mountains where they can't build anything. The Taiwan Strait at sundown. Across the water is mainland China.
We noticed the other day that some people's pets aren't dogs or cats...
Bryan Stevinson and his high school friend Dave who graduated from Notre Dame a few years ago. They're standing in front of a Buddhist shrine. Bryan and Dave will soon be visiting Japan and other nearby destinations.
A different part of that same shrine, which is in Danshui, north of Taipei on the tip of the island.
Part of a Christian university in Taiwan. This church building is pretty new. I'm not sure which denomination. You can see the Pacific -- it's the darker blue in the background.
In front of a garden in the Chang Kai-shek Memorial park in Taipei.

Summary

2005-06-30T16:08:00.000+02:00

I've been in Taiwan since early May, and a lot has happened, but I feel like it wouldn't make much sense for me to just start writing entries. The purpose of my trip to Taiwan has three parts: to build on the Mandarin Chinese I studied at Middlebury, to intern at the headquarters Democratic Progressive Party (the DPP) in the international department, and to help Dr. Rigger by informally researching how young Taiwanese (ages about 15-30) feel about their future as businessmen and women -- especially how they feel about potentially working in China.

I originally arrived with David Crane and Becky Nolin. The three of us stayed with Andy Liu's parents for about a week. You can see the three of us together in Andy's apartment sitting on the sofa. During those first two weeks, we spent a lot of time with Andy, Andy's mom and dad, and Dr. Rigger. Dr. and Mrs. Liu took us all over the place, including into the mountains about Taipei. We also got to meet the president of the Taiwanese legislature, and Annette Lu, currently the vice president of Taiwan. Our world changed quickly at the end of our first two weeks when we moved out of the Liu's house and into the extra apartment of Candi Kao's family. By then, Andy had gone to Australia and then on to the U.S. for summer courses at Brown, and Dr. Rigger had also left us.

I began studying at the Taipei Language Institute (TLI) in the mornings and then also working at the DPP office, and this is what I've been doing everday since - class in the morning, work in the afternoon and evening. Both have been great experiences. Work usually ends around 6:30pm, and then I explore the Taiwan night scene with friends. During this first month, I got to spend a lot of time with my flatmates David and Becky, and two Davidson alumni, Bryan Stevinson '03 and Emily Drew '04. They've both been here for about 9 months, Bryan has been taking Mandarin classes at National Taiwan University, and Emily has been working as an editor at the Taipei Times, one of the best English-language newspapers in Taiwan.

The picture with everyone standing around is of my class at TLI and my two professors. The two students next to me are French, and there is also usually a girl from South Korea, but she wasn't here this day for the picture.
In this picture (you can sort of see part of my head to the right) I'm shaking hands with the president of the legislature, and David and Becky are in the middle. The legislative president is a member of the KMT (Guomindang) party, the oldest party in Taiwan, and the same party that Chang Kai-Shek led in the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after World War II. They fled to Taiwan in 1949.
The woman in a pink dress in the middle is Annette Lu, the VP, (a DPP member). We are standing outside of the office building where I work. There's a good chance she will run for the Presidency in 2007 when Chen Shui-bian steps down as president, but most people don't think her odds will be good of winning. The sweetest aspect of this picture is the fact that Andy Liu is in it (standing on the right).

Here's what happened over the next few weeks (I actually kept track of these few events):
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6/02/2005
Hanako Kawabata, a Davidson student who is part-Japanese, came to live with us for a week, and right now another Davidson student, Park Mcarthur, is here for a visit, along with a PBS producer filming our every move, as she films a documentary about handicapped students traveling in Asia (for those of you who don't know her, Park moves around in a wheelchair). If all goes to plan, this documentary will air on PBS in the next few months.
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6/03/2005
This past week we lived with two Presbyterian missionaries in the South of Taiwan who have been in Taiwan here for 20 years, (in areas called Hengchun and Kenting), spending their time growing their church, teaching, and working at the hospital. They had interesting thoughts on Taiwan and Christianity in Taiwan. Their three sons are very lucky -- they've grown up fluent in English, Chinese, and a native Taiwanese dialect.
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6/11/2005
Today, Saturday, was the Dragon Boat festival in both Taiwan and China, when 36-person teams race along rivers/canals in long thin boats that look like dragons. One of my friends at the office is involved in the races and his dragon boat team, so David, Becky and I got up very early and went with him to his race. Their team happened to be missing three people, so we all got to participate in the race! There's one man sitting in the front of the boat banging on this big drumb as we time our strokes to the beat. It must have been pretty neat to see us in these very long boats sliding through the canal, with 36 people dipping their red paddles into the water at the same moment. We lost the first race, but we won the second one. It was a great morning.
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introduction and thanks to a friend

2005-06-27T06:19:00.000+02:00

It's too bad that I am starting this journal so late into my summer in Taiwan; I would have gotten a lot out of recording my thoughts earlier. But better to start late than never to start at all.

Jarred Taylor inspired me to write this blog. Jarred, I hope you can forgive me for copying your idea. Jarred has been writing thoughtful and engrossing blog entries for about a month at www.journeyswithjrod.blogspot.com. Although his aim of keeping in touch with family and friends while away in D.C. and France is certainly worthwhile, the most inspiring part of Jarred's reasoning for creating a blog is his mission of self-exploration. By keeping a daily journal of ideas, opinions, observations, and photographs, he is correct in believing that he will earn rich insights into his experiences in D.C. and France, as well as insights about himself.

Because I am starting so late, in the next entry I will summarize what I've done in Taiwan so far.

Mission Statement

2005-06-25T10:05:00.000+02:00

It's About Family and Friends

This blog is a public journal. I want to keep track of my time abroad in Taiwan, China, and Germany for my own benefit, but I also want to let my family and friends read about what I'm doing and see pictures from my sweet new digital camera.

I deeply enjoy reading e-mails from friends and family, and I appreciate the time anyone takes to write to me -- I hope I can consistently return the favor by writing a thoughtful response. If something I write on this blog results in a few more friends or family members e-mailing me about their own ideas and experiences, then these responses alone will be a deeply worthwhile dividend for the time I'm investing in this journal.