Feeling Homesick

Phil had a post recently on his blog about missing his friends from Calvin. I often feel the same way. I'm sure we all do.

Although I was supposed to have graduated in the Spring of 2000, I took an extra semester at Calvin, and then stayed in the area substitute teaching until the following August. In many ways this extra year was wasted time, but I think it did help to give me closure on the college experience. I was talking to someone in Japan who said, "Sometimes the worst thing you can do is leave the area as soon as you graduate, because then you have the idea that everything is stuck just the way you left it in college, and that you are the only one who left. It is better to wait around a year, see that everyone else is going to be moving on and going other places anyway, and then you don't feel so bad about leaving."

Certainly a lot of good friends have left the area. But then a lot of them are still around, and I often have the feeling that I'm the odd one out because I left the area.

Of course homesickness comes and goes in waves. Some weeks you feel it, some weeks you don't. I guess I've been feeling it more than usual the past couple weeks. Probably because it is summer, and I have a lot of free time, so my thoughts wander a bit more and I think of home.

And also I've been telling Shoko a lot of stories from home. Ordinary stories just seem to amaze her. Like stories about dormitory life. There is really no equivalent to American style dormitories in Japan. People either live with their famalies or get a single apartment usually. Very rarely do you have a roommate or live in a dorm. Also the stories about the religious side of Calvin fascinate Shoko because Japan is not a religious country.

Shoko keeps saying, "Those must have been amazing experiences," everytime I tell a story, and I have to explain that they are just common college experiences.

Anyway, the whole process of retelling these stories makes me nostolgic for home and the old gang. Which is why this video on Brett's weblog really came just at the right time. He attempts to take me along on a night out in Grand Rapids by bringing his video camera along and taping the old gang. And they're all there: Gort, Bear, Butterball, Bosch.. Great to see the old gang again. The only Camelot boys missing are Cecil, Bakes, and Rob, and hats off to them as well. (Sidenote: the Bear really reminds me more and more of my younger brother.)

I don't imagine this video will be of much interest to anyone else, but just in case someone else does watch it I should put in a quick word about nicknames just by way of explanation: my nickname in college was Chewy.

People often ask me, "Why do they call you Chewy?"
to which I would reply, "Damned if I know. Ask the guys who gave me the nickname."

It happened something like this: My sophmore year I went on a weekend camping trip with the "Enviromental Stewardship Coalition." When I returned, everyone in the dorm had been given a code nickname. "We need to think of one for you," someone said.

"Chewy," Cecil said. "His name is Chewy." And as Cecil spoke, thus it came into being.

For a long time, a few years, I myself never fully understood whether it was a reference to the Star Wars character, or to the fact that I was noisely chewing a piece of gum at the time.

Then, one day near the end of college, Cecil explained that he thought I resembled the Star Wars character because I was tall, quiet, and always seemed to be hanging around.

It wasn't a particularly flattering nickname, but I preferred it to my other nickname "Benedict" which was given to me after I betrayed the "2nd Boer Secret" to another dorm floor. Ah...College memories

Link of the Day
I don't know this guy, but his blog: http://www.canuckinasia.blogspot.com/ comes highly recommended by our mutual friend Harrison. And I really enjoyed it. I realize the blog explosion is now such that it's hard enough keeping up with the blogs of just the people you know, but give the link a click and check it out briefly, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.