Coming To America Part 4

AFTER TRAVELING FOR FOUR DAYS FROM LUSAKA, ZAMBIA TO HARTFORD CONNECTICUT my four-year adventure in America started in Brattleboro, Vermont at the School for International Learning as I participated in their program Experiment in International Living. This involved a week of orientation at the school to the American way of life and then living with an American family nearer to the college I was going to attend. When our bus arrived from Hartford, Connecticut that late August night I was assigned to a room with participants in a similar scholarship program from Latin America. I only remember one guy in the room, if indeed there had been more, because he noticed me reading my Bible and sought spiritual counseling from me far above anything I felt capable to handle. He appeared to be very troubled in spirit but because his English was marginal and my Spanish was non-existent we struggled to communicate.

The school administration took note of my clothes-less plight and set about working with who knows who to locate my lost suitcase. They gave me some dollars and someone took me into the city to purchase some clothing. I bought a couple of permanent press shirts finding it hard to believe that they didn't need to be ironed. I don't remember much of the week except that I was probably one of the more experienced members of the group in things American because of my boarding school experience and some connection with American missionaries. I also remember a couple of cute girls from the Seychelle Islands of Africa's east coast!

Each morning I would check with the administration office about my suitcase and each morning there would be no new information. The lady working in the office could not understand how I could be so calm about it. I couldn't either but there was not much that I could do. The day before I was to leave for Minnesota the news came through that my suitcase would be in Boston that evening. However I had to be there to open it for customs before I could take possession. That evening one of the school staff drove me to Boston's airport and I was reconnected with my worldly possessions. I remember that it was very late when we drove back to Brattleboro because there as hardly any traffic on the roads and we drove through red lights.

The next morning I boarded a chartered bus to Chicago with a bunch of other students headed west. In Chicago I and a student from Kenya were to board a regular Greyhound bus for Mankato, Minnesota where our host families would meet us. As I remember we drove all day and through the night and I remember stopping in Cleveland for a break. As the night progressed fog set in and our bus was slowed. We arrived in Chicago too late to make our connection to Mankato although it seemed that most of the rest of the group made their connections. One of the SIL staff had traveled with us and this was fortunate as she booked us into a hotel and rebooked our Greyhound ticket for the next day.

My Kenyan colleague and I were assigned to a double room but after dinner he took off for the evening and didn't show up until about 3:00 a.m. He had me quite worried and I was not sure how I was going to let the SIL lady know that he had disappeared. I discovered that he had gone out to explore and ended up in Chinatown. He was really pleased with his experience but I thought he had taken quite a risk to go out on his own in a strange city.

We boarded the Greyhound bus the next morning and traveled for several hours through Wisconsin farmland and into southern Minnesota. We stopped in Rochester where I first became aware of the Mayo Clinic and pulled into Mankato mid-afternoon where my host family from the small town of Amboy were there to meet me.

For the next three weeks and during school vacations this very generous and kind family would acquaint me with American life. I would learn about Lutherans, ice skating, wing tip shoes, winter coats, potluck dinners, blind dates, American football, cheap gas, pig farming, corn fields and so much more. Some time in September they drove me to Northfield and I moved into Burton Hall at Carleton College, assigned to a room with a missionary kid from Latin America. Despite that common descriptor we couldn't have been more different from each other. I'll pick up on college days at some later date. And so endeth my tale of Coming to America.

(c) 2008 roy kruse