It's Not Easy Being a White American Male in the 21st Century

It's a little strange here, being one of the only Americans. I actually met a few people who had never met an American. I'm used to it being a big thing to other people that I'm from the US, for good or bad in their eyes, but now I'm just another foreigner.

Though I do get more respect in the business school (where I'm the only American masters student) than other internationals. And teachers like me because they can ask me questions in class about US business stuff. Everyone has this idea that Americans are naturally better business people than other nationalities, and American practices on a personal and firm level are held up as the golden standard. This means that I'm in high demand for the group projects (they're all group projects) because I have a huge advantage in giving presentations and writing reports. It's hard being a white American male in the 21st century.

It's hard to make Belgians understand that W was right.
It's pronounced A-Mur-Ka

Regardless, living abroad, you certainly become either more of a patriot or much less connected with your home country. For me, the inner George Washington is rearing its fearsome, wigged head. Or, in my case, the inner Ben Franklin is raising its beer soaked, opportunistic head.

It certainly is easier being American abroad than it was 5 years ago, the first time I was here. Part of that was probably that most have forgotten that we're in Iraq and the other is that I'm the only American and so neither threatening nor obnoxious. Or maybe they're just tired of the Russians. That's probably it.
People complain about obnoxious and arrogant Americans, but I promise you, we have nothing on the damn Russians. It always starts when the professor - even in classes 0f 150+ people - ask where everyone is from. Immediately, the Russians, who are normally seated together yell, "RUSSIA!" in unison, at which point everyone who knows me looks at me until I stand up and say"US".

Last Tuesday in our Political Economics course

It's like they're waiting for a fight to break out. Of course, make a bad Russian joke at the wrong time and you may have to fight someone. They are completely convinced that Russians are God's perfect people, and don't let you forget it. It's really amazing how easy it is to forget the last 100 yrs of Russian history...and to gloss over Putin.

That's me on the right.

That being said, the best part about living in an international community is that I can stereotype so many more groups than ever before. Three weeks ago, I could never have laid out gross misrepresentations of Poles, lithuanians, Ugandans, Urdu or pacific islander.

At breakfast I got to see one of the Indian priests show a Nigerian how to use soap to wash dishes. One of the better things since I've moved in.

Movin' On Up or The [Wo]Man is Keeping Me Down

NEW ADDRESS IN BELGIUM: [American College] 100 Naamsestraat, post Box 5556, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.

I passed by Krakenstraat the other day, which sounds like a bad-ass place to live. I sure beats drinkwaterstraat (prohibitionists?) and penitentienstraat (Methodists?)

The sole resident of Krakenstraat 15

Firstly, classes are time consuming and I'm taking a lot of them. The biggest thing though, is that I moved. My place was tiny and crappy, tiny, and my landlady unpredictable, ornery, racist and barely spoke English.


The Old Place



The old room - short on amenities, long on Turks

A few weeks ago, I found out that American College, the former American seminary, was going to open spots for about 15 theology students. I applied on a whim to see if I could get an RA job or something. I didn't, but I did get in. I planned on turning it down, but when I stopped by AC to tell the director that, I changed my mind completely. The place is huge, old, beautiful and empty.

One of the entrances to my house. On the right is our church.
Score one for God.

There are about 15 tenants, mostly African/Indian priests, living in a complex built for hundreds. Have a great room with a great view. Not including basement levels, it is 6 stories tall - high ceilings- has huge gardens, it's own gothic style church, and great kitchen  facilities among other things. I told Marcelle it's like living at Hogwarts (if it were a vacated seminary). Needless to say, I moved in, even though it put me at some risk.

Some of the gardens.
Not shown are the patios and the treed areas with paths, benches.

Anyway, it took me a while to convince my landlady to let me find someone to take my place. I was so ready to get out and into the new place that I would have sacrificed my deposit for the cause, but I didn't want to screw over my roommates by sticking them with my share of the rent. Only problem is - besides getting yelled at often in Dutch - is that the landlady is very, very racist. I found an Armenian guy who needed the place once a week, but that was a no go - "I don't like them, from Turkey! can't trust them!"
Same for Spaniards, though that I understand. If a group of Spaniards move in, it'll be a half hour before there are holes in the walls and unknown substances smeared on the ceiling. Africans were obviously out (they cheat and steal), so were anyone resembling the color of some Muslims (they bad people). Finally we found a great guy, a UK citizen from Hong Kong. She refused to meet with him ("I hate Chinese, they too dirty! No Chinese!"), so we had to promise her he wasn't Chinese and later forewarn her that he was of Chinese descent. Eventually, she let him in, but made him pay 3 months rent as deposit instead of the normal 1 or 2 ("you will pay 3 month deposit, because you are dirty").

So I'm out, and it's great. I'm still fighting for my deposit, but that's another battle. So now I've got a home base and things are easier. The AC is still full of furniture and stuff like books, kitchen equipment, and the first thing I was told was that we could upgrade our room furniture with what we found on other floors. Most of mine is now antique. The attic was completely full. Also has a great garden, which comes complete with hedgehogs.

Diclaimer: The guy on the left is actually white and not a priest.
Luckily, the rest of them have something of a duty to feed the poor.

Mostly I live with Indians and Africans, who I like a lot. If I go anywhere near the kitchens when they are cooking, they insist I eat . I get almost as much curry as I did with Dayaamayi, but not as good. She gives me a lot of street cred with them, which helps.

They Seemed Harmless at First....

A week here has been enough to convince me that the Dutch are the strangest people I have ever met. They are completely obsessed with organization and efficiency while simultaneously stuffing life as full of bureaucracy as possible. There is definitely a preference for someone to tell them what to do then to expend the energy making up as you go along. There are rules for everything and anything and more get created every day.

They go so far out of their way to not offend anyone and be civil and modern while at the same time being completely racist, mostly against Muslims. Open racism against Muslims is completely socially acceptable, but it is preferable to veil everything else. They speak three languages, but only acknowledge 2. In general, the way they make decions and reason things are completely incomprehensible to me.

On a similar note, I passed a little fair the other day, and the carousel's 8 bit music machine was playing "Dixie".

I also made the mistake of going out with a bunch of Russians. First thing I learned is that any night club that a Russian wants to go to is probably not one I want to go to ("Obi-Wan, you should not have come.") Also, Russian women are extremely aggressive ("Chewie! No!") and strike without any warning ("It's a trap!").

'No' is not something, that they are used to hearing. Fighting them off was not working ("Captain, Our shields cannot repel firepower of this magnitude!") So I had to make an undignified retreat (fake to the bathroom and make for the door).

She may be cute, but she'll kick your ass.

I did learn one very valuable life lesson: "Da, there are rules, and then there are rules for rules."

I just spent about 4 hours organizing my schedule. I am going to try to do the whole MBA and abridged bachelor in one year. Even two full programs is only 13 class sessions a week, each one 2-4 hours long. So as long as I start studying and working on my masters and bachelors thesises now, I should be able to do it. That also means that next year will be easy by comparison. Also means that I have classes like "Finance for cocaine and sex addicts," "marketing substandard loans: regulatory evasion and statistical manipulation" and "parting poor people from their money" right next to "Contemporary Sexual ethics" "Embracing suffering: fasting, abstinence and penance" and "spiritual asceticism".

As far as I know, I'm the only American studying in the faculty of business, out of  several hundred of us in the international program (there are over 40,000 students of which %10 are international.) This means that sometimes group work gets a little tense. The Chinese and the Japanese don't always get along, then there's the Pakistan/India, Palistine/Israel, Ireland/UK, Ireland/Ireland, African atrocity (var.), Russian/Central Asian, and Russian/any country they've occupied, tensions. The first rule was, "For safety's sake, there are no patriots allowed in the Library." This only barely proceeded, "No food or drink near books or computers," "Smoking indoors is forbidden," "Please treat East Europeans, South Belgians, and brown people with the respect you would normally afford to people," and "While in the library, please treat Muslims with the same respect you would normally afford the Irish."

So far, I've been hanging out woth mostly Chinese and Poles, but we'll see.

Food situation is OK, though I would KILL for a small thing of Tony Chachere's. Belgians don't believe in seasoning their food. Luckily I live next to the asian/african/indian stores.
Anyway, I'm going to run.

Late Arrival

Anyway, leaving was miserable as always. Saying goodbye to Marcelle and Dayaamayi in particular was bad - like normal. I was really hoping Emile would piss me off before I left that way I'd be happy to leave him (if only briefly), but he failed to do so. And to make matters worse, he had to go and inherit some of my luck and hurt himself.

Transit was mercifully uneventful, and after a 10 hour layover in a cold and rainy London, I was picked up at the Brussels airport by my friend Samira, who hosted me for a few nights. At always, her family (kind of like mine) went all out and cooked me a beautiful Moroccan dinner to celebrate my coming in. Good people. They made the transition much easier.

Monday I got to Leuven, where it was cold and dreary. It was a bit of a shock, going from a sunny 90 to a cloudy 50-60 degrees.  Turns out that getting there 10 days before the start of term is very late to find a house. Pickings were very slim and I couldn't find anything the first day. I managed to get a prepaid cell phone (+32.04.70.31.31.33) and meet up with Calvin.

I failed completely, however, at coming to grips with the Belgian bureaucracy. It has a reputation, especially in the business world, but that con't compare with reality. It's going to take me over a month to get a bnk account here, because I have to have a binder full of other very specific documents that can only be got, sequentially, from 1/2 dozen university then city offices. Then most of these have to be stamped, signed, copied, lost, found, and filed by all the departments. This got Calvin in trouble as he set up a bank account through the university, but can't access it until he has a residency permit. Unfortunately, he can't get that until he has a housing contract, which he can't get without paying rent/deposit...

On my end, because I am enrolled in 2 different faculties, about half of the university offices assume that I am actually two different people - if they acknowlede the existence of my other half at all. I finally realized this and got it (mostly) sorted yesterday.

Tuesday I found a house with Calvin and a Turk. It's tiny. It's a tri-level, three room place and each room is about15x10, but we got a good price.

 The kitchen is wide enough to fit a skinny person and for some reason the toilet/shower is situated in the kitchen. I get to my room - the top floor - via a series of ladders and hatch doors.

Luckily, our landlady - who is completely senile, it would seem - likes us and let us heavily modify the place, even to the point that we put up sheetrock walls in the living room to make another bedroom. Best part is, my street name is Zevenslapersstraat.  It's something to do with seven sleepers, which I think also could mean hedgehog. I don't know. At least I don't live on Ooiendonkstraat

Thursday, I started meeting people, I saw the sun for the first time in a week, got a mattress, and drank far too much beer. Things are looking up - especially when I finally got around to installing a light fixture in my attic room yesterday.