John's Bio
Prologue
Before you get started, some things you should know: First, to navigate through this story, click on the links at the bottom of the page.
Second, this bio was written for an audience of visitors who don't know me but, outside of my immediate family, i'm sure even long-time friends can find something new here. So read on.
Third, i make no claims to have some special dispensation of world knowledge, i do not think i am a genius (i'd settle for "talented writer" or "good designer"), and i hope that this bio does not come across as some ego trip. I simply want to share my story. If you can relate to parts of it, great; that is part of our shared human experience, and i'd love to hear from you. If you don't relate, well, have a nice life anyway.
My Background:
I have made an attempt to be brief with my story (trust me, this doesn't come easily to me...).
I am an American of Dutch descent, and was born and raised in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area which, not surprisingly, has a huge Dutch-heritage enclave, a.k.a. the West Michigan Dutch ghetto.
My paternal grandparents both immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands when they were young children; i can't really recall how many generations back my maternal side of the family has been here. Naturally, like any good third-generation American, i cannot speak more than a handful of words of my ancestral tongue (and no, they're not swear words, either). This didn't used to bother me at all, but now i find my inability to speak Dutch a little embarassing, much more so since living abroad for a number of years. It is, to me, in a very real sense an abandonment of one's heritage, and almost like abandoning your ancestors. I find it very odd – as do most people outside of the U.S. – that many Americans so willfully dump their native languages and traditions, or at least sublimate them to a large extent. But that's a topic that i won't digress into further. I'll save it for the 'blog.
The Dutch-American community where i grew up in southwest Michigan tends to be, like a lot of other ethnocentric communities, fairly insular, though not overly exclusionary. They are also VERY far removed in philosophy and behavior from their kinfolk back in the Netherlands. As liberal as folks in Amsterdam are, the pendulum has swung that far in the conservative direction in SW Michigan. Religiously conservative, especially, although that has changed a lot in the past 20 years. As staunchly conservative as in the Southern Bible Belt? Well, for a long time while i was growing up in the 70s, the McDonald's restaurant in Holland, Michigan, was the only one in the entire U.S. that was closed on Sundays. The conservative (read narrow-minded) attitudes that prevailed among the general populace there used to drive me nuts while i was growing up. Still do, to some extent.
Dutch-Americans don't seem to be a terribly adventurous bunch, either: i am one of the very few people in my graduating class (of 200) who does not still live within a 25-mile radius of my hometown. Maybe that's common anywhere in the U.S. but it makes me wonder how the heck our ancestors ever had the wherewithal to travel overseas to get here. But i guess the mentality is, if you like where you live, why get up and move? –Anyway, i am also one of the few who has had – or taken – the opportunity to travel and live abroad. While i was growing up, my father used to do a 3-4 month stint overseas every three years, doing medical work at mission-related hospitals, so i've had the chance to live in Mexico, Nigeria and Ethiopia, and travel all through Europe and other parts of Africa. My experiences traveling overseas (and even domestically) have had a huge impact on my life, enough so that i am a firm believer that there is no better teacher in life than travel, and nothing will rid you of your prejudices faster than living overseas for an extended period in a country where you are a stand-out-like-a-blinking-neon-light minority. –Lord knows our current President, Bush II, and his horde of hegemonic good-ol' boys could use a healthy dose of that reality. But that's a topic for the 'blog, too, isn't it?...
Glorious Tales of A Misspent Youth
I can't say that i was a real go-getter as a youth – unless it involved sports. I had sufficient ambition and did well in school, but i didn't really apply myself 100% in high school. Oh, i got good grades, but that's mostly because they came easily to me (except in science), not because i worked especially hard to get them. That's probably one of the biggest regrets i have: not working at being a straight-A student (not saying that i would have been, but i should have tried a lot harder), because it affected my life for years in terms of where i went to college, my overall work ethic and study habits, etc. I also didn't put a lot of thought into planning ahead or looking toward the future back then – i pretty much lived day-to-day, in a happy-go-lucky (read feckless) kind of way. I basically blew off the SAT and only took the ACT once (having barely even studied for it) because i knew i had the grades and score i needed to get into the local college where many of the other good little Dutch-American boys and girls went, Calvin. I got a few offers from other colleges, but no scholarships, and i really didn't even look around at other colleges except the University of Michigan, which i discovered i didn't have the grades to get into. Makes me wonder what the hell i was thinking back then... Oh, that's right! I wasn't...
So, after graduating from high school, i headed off to Calvin. Like some people, i spent the first few years in college playing "Declare A Major Roulette" – and definitely not winning at it – and generally drifting along without any clear focus or career goals. Not that i didn't have ideas or dreams; i just didn't know which one to choose or which direction to go. During my sophomore year, though, i started feeling a bit stir-crazy. –Don't get me wrong, Calvin is a wonderful college, and the professors there are some of the best teachers you'll find anywhere (two of them are, in fact, my brother and sister-in-law). And i also managed to learn good study habits at Calvin – enough to get me on the Dean's List. But i was getting a little claustrophobic being among mainly an extension of the same group of kids with whom i went to high school. There was so much conformity that it almost seemed like i was going to college with a bunch of pod people. That was not what i really wanted from my collegiate experience.
So, at the end of my sophomore year, i decided to try a new experience and take a semester internship in Chicago to pursue one of my dreams, which was to be a radio sports broadcaster.
I spent the second half of 1984 working at WLS radio in Chicago. I mention this because, well, it was unbelievably cool to be working at WLS at that time, when it was still one of the great original rock 'n' roll radio stations in the U.S., and my experience there changed my career path completely – in the opposite direction. Their flagship AM station (and AM radio in general) was in complete turmoil then, to put it mildly. That fall there was unbelievable upheaval at the station, and I witnessed a dizzying number of changes. I was also a 20-year-old kid who knew next to nothing about how the world really worked, and living in Chicago and working at the radio station was a real eye opener. If you would like to read a nice, fairly-sanitized version of life at WLS at that time, check out WLShistory.com. If you'd like a little more dirt, click here to read my version.
So, what happened? Well, as interesting as the experience at WLS was, the competition, backbiting, office politics and the rampant discontent at the station left me really jaded about going into a career in radio. I was still pretty much an idealist back then, and after that experience, i just wasn't willing to go pay my dues and put up with that kind of crap for years while toiling in obscurity in order to get (eventually) where the people at WLS were – and still be unhappy to boot.
I also think that was one of the stupidest decisions i have ever made in my life, and believe me, that's saying a lot. Another one would follow after i finished college two years later. (More on that shortly.)
The Shortest Career Ever:
After my intern stint in Chicago, i decided i just couldn't go back to the cloistered environment of Calvin College, and transferred to the University of Michigan. –OK, so that was a smart move.
There, my "Declare A Major Roulette" wheel finally stopped at "English", and then i added "Education" when i decided to become a high school English teacher, figuring that would be a great career suitable for my lofty ideals (he says, tongue planted firmly in cheek). I had an incredible student-teaching experience with a group of world-class English teachers at Salem High School in Plymouth, MI (a suburb of GM), and was all set to become a full-time teacher there after i graduated from U of M in 1987 when I learned there would not be a position there for me after all.
Apparently, i had angered some powerful people in the district on both the conservative and liberal ends of the spectrum by having the audacity to introduce the Bible as literature into my 9th-grade English course curriculum. My philosophy was, the Bible is one of the cornerstones of all Western literature and contains many stories that are referenced in countless novels and plays, and students cannot gain a thorough understanding of English literature without having some familiarity with the Biblical stories that are its foundation. Well, this idea went over like a lead balloon with some parents. Conservative Moral Majority-types didn't like it because i was teaching Holy Scripture out of context, as if the Bible were just another book; liberal ACLU types didn't like it because i was teaching religious literature in a secular classroom. The long and short of it is that i was basically blackballed from getting a teaching job at the school, despite the fact that the school administration had originally supported my curriculum and had told me just weeks earlier that they would, and i quote, "love to hire" me.
The pretext the school gave me for closing my position was, somewhat believably, budget cuts. In my naïveté, i actually believed that story, too, until one of my mentors at the school told me (some years later) the real reason i was not asked back. Was i foolish for having invited such controversy on myself over my teaching methods? In hindsight, yes, i probably should have waited and put some feelers out with my students' parents (and the administration) before introducing the Bible as literature in my English course. Do i regret having done it? Not for a minute. I'd have the same curriculum now if i were still teaching; I still think the Bible can (and should) be taught for its literary value, all religious aspects aside. I wonder if there are any schools out there that have the cojones to agree...
Dumb and Dumber:
So, i was back to square one with my career. I worked as a meter reader that summer while looking for some other teaching jobs. Then, just as the interview process was starting with a couple of schools, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. So, i decided to move back to the Grand Rapids area to be closer to my parents and abandoned my teaching aspirations for the time being.
Problem was, i didn't want to live at home again, but i couldn't afford to live on my own as i was not gainfully employed. So, i decided to look for a job as a copy writer – in a depressed job market, no less – so i could live on my own. Dumb move #1.
After looking unsuccessfully for several months for a job in copy writing, and turning down one good job offer from John Hancock Insurance, i became a bit desperate and decided to try sales. Specifically, car sales. Dumb move #2.
Please don't ever ask me to explain what possessed me to take this job (have i mentioned that i had absolutely NO sense of direction in my life back then?) – i guess it was because i thought it would be a good challenge, but in actuality i was desperate and needed to pay the rent, and this was my only job option at the time. I also didn't know any better.
Unfortunately, instead of coming to my senses in a few weeks and realizing that i just couldn't do this job because (a) i didn't know how to be a good deal closer, and (b) there was no way to be honest and make a good living at selling cars, i stubbornly stuck with the job for six more months. Dumb move #3. Finally, i'd had enough, and one day in March during my lunch hour i drove off in my car and never came back.
Being a car salesman is still the only job i am embarassed to have had – and that includes cleaning horse stables – because of the stigma associated with it, for one, and because i was so miserably mediocre at it. I was only any good at all because i loved the product – Honda. (I still drive one.) But in a way i'm glad i had that job, as it rid me of whatever naïvete i still had and taught me how to negotiate with people.
Bureaucrats and Desert Flats:
While i was still a salesman at Honda, though, i started to get the itch to live/travel overseas again. (If you need to know where this itch comes from, check out our travelog.) Anxious to atone for my time as a car salesman, and to satisfy my desires to do something "meaningful" with my life and to travel overseas, i decided to join the Peace Corps. So, shortly before i quit my sales job, when my mother had finished her cancer treatment and was declared in remission, i applied for the Peace Corps, went through their interview screening process, filled out a bunch of paperwork, and then waited for the phone to ring telling me of my assignment.
In the meantime, i had no job, and couldn't really devote myself to finding a "permanent" job because i knew that in about 6 months, i'd be getting my Peace Corps assignment. So, i did some carpentry work building houses for the summer for some friends from my high school and generally bided my time while i waited for my "real" life to begin. I also decided to go back to U of M that fall to complete some Education classwork i hadn't finished before graduation before I was to head overseas.
So, back to college i went and waited for the Peace Corps to call. And waited... And waited some more... By October, i still had not gotten a phone call from them. Finally, i called them to get a status on my assignment, only to discover that my entire application file had been lost. Not just misplaced – LOST. It was as if i had never even applied, and in essence it meant that the past half year of my life had been a complete and utter waste. I had to re-apply and go back through the entire process – again, and wait another 3-6 months for my assignment.
Thoroughly disillusioned with government bureaucracy, i decided to try and seek some other avenue for living and working abroad, just as a backup, and – on advice from my parents – applied to become an English teacher in either Taiwan or Japan through the mission board of my church. In effect, i would be going over to Asia on a missionary visa (albeit as a "missionary associate"), although my job would be primarily to teach ESL.
Now, i am no missionary. I have a very strong belief in God, but i am not one to go out and proselytize or wear my Christianity out on my sleeve to try and convert people. The whole idea of being called a "missionary", in fact, was a little bit intimidating to me; there is also a stigma attached to the moniker of "missionary" as much as to "car salesman", though in quite the opposite way. But i saw this as a good opportunity – or at least a good backup plan – to get overseas, so i rode it out.
Heads, I Win; Tails, I Win:
After the holidays had passed and i still hadn't heard from the Peace Corps or the mission board, i made a promise to God (disguised as a New Year's resolution) that i would take whichever opportunity presented itself first. This was also a good way for me not to have to agonize over choosing one over the other, which i tended to do back then. Apparently, the Divine Being thought this choice was a toss-up, too, though, because one morning in mid-January i went down to the mail room in the house where i was living to check my mail when the house phone rang. I picked it up, and it was for me – from Japan: my official job offer to teach English at a Christian community center in northern Honshu. As i was on the phone discussing the particulars of the job in Japan, how to get a visa, etc., the postal worker delivered the mail, setting a package down in front of me: my official job offer from the Peace Corps to teach English in a coastal town in (what was then) North Yemen.
I was flabbergasted. "Now what do i do?" I thought. So, like any practical person would do, i decided to pursue them both – at least until i could discern one job as being better than the other. It didn't take long for that truth to reveal itself. About three weeks into my initiation with the Peace Corps, i had found out all i needed to about Yemen: it was still in the midst of a civil war, and the U.S. was supporting the non-Communist North, although from everything i gathered, the Yemeni citizens disliked having any American presence there at all and, as a predominantly Muslim country, were pretty hostile toward non-Muslims. I was also to be stationed in quite literally the middle of nowhere. Now, i do not consider myself a coward and i will not back down from a challenge, but i'm not reckless, either, and going to Yemen seemed a pretty foolhardy adventure, especially considering that i had specifially requested the Peace Corps NOT to send me to a North African or Middle Eastern country. I had told them that i was willing to go to ANY OTHER region on Earth EXCEPT that one – so to which region do they assign me?... (d'Oh!)
That was enough for me. Japan it was. So, i used the remaining 6 weeks or so i had left before i was due to leave to bone up on my Japanese, as i could not speak a single word of it at the time. I think my time would have been better spent learning how to lobotomize myself with a butter knife, that's how much progress i made, and how much difference my language "self-training" made once i arrived there for my two-year stint. It probably wouldn't have hurt me either to have actually done some research into my new field of work to find out just exactly what teaching ESL entailed, or find out a little more about the history and culture of Japan, but I was far more inclined to live my life flying by the seat of my pants back then. And then i landed in Tokyo.
It Looks Like A Fish, Smells Like A Fish, But It's Not A Fish?
If you have ever lived in or visited Japan, you know what a truly disconcerting place it can be. Here is a country that, by all appearances, is completely "Westernized": its cities have all the urban trappings of the West; people wear Western fashion; English is their adopted second language; and there's an American fast-food place on every stinkin' corner. And yet, in mentality, it couldn't be any more different from the U.S. than if it were from a parallel universe.
To say i went through culture shock is like saying that Microsoft has had some influence on the technology industry. I had a virtual monopoly on culture shock. You can read much more about it eventually, but my biggest adjustment was dealing with a people who never spoke their minds (in public) – unless they were completely stone-drunk – when speaking my mind is all i had ever done. I had thought that the Dutch Americans i grew up with were a reticent bunch; man, the Japanese made them look positively melodramatic.
Eventually i adapted to the Japanese way of life, however, and had a marvelous time teaching English for two years to literally all ages and skill levels at this community center, called the Zenrinkan, which was in the Japanese equivalent of the middle of nowhere – by which they meant a town of only a quarter-million people in an area that was surrounded by actual trees (which most people in Tokyo have never seen).
One of the biggest perks of my job was also one of its main drawbacks: a really, really short commute. I lived literally down the hall from my office, in the Center itself. Of course, that meant there were people in the building almost all the time, so my privacy was limited to late nights – and that's only when there weren't guests sleeping in the other rooms on my floor. Unfortunately, i couldn't exactly retire to my room in comfort, as i was living in a closet. Actually, by upper-middle-class standards, not even that big. Seriously – my living space measured about 10 by 4 1/2 feet, which included a bed, a wardrobe closet, a small table/desk and a sink. I didn't so much walk through my room as crawl through an obstacle course to get in and out. Still, as cramped as my quarters were, i nearly broke down when i moved out. I did a whole lot of growing up in that room.
My biggest accomplishment while i was working at the Good Neighbor Center was organizing an international friendship festival at the Center involving gaijin (foreigners) from 15 different countries and 5 continents. Considering there were only about 40-50 gaijin in the entire city at that time, i think my participation rate was pretty darn good. We had food, dances, music, cultural artifacts, etc. It turned out to be more wildly successful than we had ever dreamed it would be. Unfortunately, i don't think they've had another one since.
Do As We Say, Not As We Do
I also met Michelle while I was in Morioka (a story you can find in the About Us main page), so when my two years were almost up, i decided to try and extend my stay a little longer so we could finish up at the same time and leave Japan together to go travel through SE Asia for a few months.
My mission board was able to find me a temporary fill-in position at a private high school in Sapporo (host of the 1972 Winter Olympics), on the northern island of Hokkaido. I stayed there for a semester, and got a whole new glimpse into Japanese culture via their school system. I didn't so much teach there as just go through the answers to the students' daily grammar exercises. My job was simply to help them get accustomed to hearing a native speaker, but ultimately all their English training came from the grammar classes they had with the Japanese staffers. I felt basically like a prop. No, make that a flesh-and-blood casette player.
Unfortunately, this is by far the most common teaching experience other foreigners have had in Japan. (My previous job at the Zenrinkan, though, had been quite the oppoiste!) But i was at least able to be more involved with my students in the various extracurricular clubs they were required to join. My colleagues also took me all over Hokkaido – if you've never experienced Japanese hospitality, you have no idea what you're missing. But you owe it to yourself to try it some day.
There was also very little prep work i had to do, so i had a LOT of free time, on the job and off. So, i hung out with a couple of the teachers who spoke good English (and tolerated my poor Japanese) and asked them a lot of questions about the education system, especially the rules and regulations. In particular, i remember coming to school one morning and the staff had set up an impromptu "checkpoint" in front of the main entrance (students could only ever go in through the main entrance when they came to school). As i parked my bike and started walking in, i heard a loud THWACK next to me, like the sound of the back of someone's hand smacking a cheek full force. I turned toward the source of the sound in time to see just what it was: the back of a teacher's hand smacking a student's cheek full force. The crime? Carrying a comic book in her backpack. Compare this to our beloved United States, where we not only have no corporal punishment in school, but give teachers almost no classroom authority and litigate over the slightest offense, even if we hurt ourselves.
Another time, i witnessed a teacher berating three female students in the teachers' office for around 15 minutes, loudly and harshly, as he smoked a cigarette. After he finished lecturing them, he put out his smoke and gave them all a nice final *whap* upside the head to drill his point home. After they left, I asked my friend, Kazu, what the girls' offense had been. "Oh, they were caught smoking off school grounds." –Huh?
This is what my experience in Japan was, mostly: a series of dichotomies, where seemingly diametrically opposed conditions co-exist and no one thinks the least bit about it. Not that we don't have our own lovely contradictions and hypocrisies here in the U.S., but hey, i'm used to those.
After finishing out my contract in Sapporo in early August, i went back down to Morioka until Michelle could leave at the end of August. We said a pretty sad farewell to Japan, but knew we'd probably be back soon.
Hippy Trails
For the next four months, Michelle and i backpacked through a large chunk of SE Asia. We started by taking the proverbial slow boat to China – a dinky passenger liner that was run supposedly as a joint venture but was mainly Chinese – from Yokohama to Shang-hai. Three and a half seasick days later, we arrived in the harbor and were immediately hit with a massive dose of culture shock which embodied itself in the sickening stench of the Huangpu River, which seemed to serve as a raw sewage storage site. We learned very quickly how different Japan and China are in almost every way. Read more about it in the travelog.
From there we travelled to Beijing, Xian (where the 2,200-year-old terracotta warrior statues were unearthed), Guilin/Yangshuo (home of the picturesque limestone karsts) – one of my three favorite places on the entire planet – and finally Guangzhou before heading to Hong Kong, where we stayed with Michelle's sister and brother-in-law (who is a Hong Kong native) for a week just to recuperate from China. It was there that we discovered that we were continuing down a well-travelled backpackers' route through SE Asia. By "well-travelled", however, i do not mean "by Americans". Most of the Westerners we saw along our route were from Europe and Australia/New Zealand; we ran into only a handful of Americans the entire time we were in SE Asia. Most Americans still prefer to travel in Europe, i guess. It's a pity, too, because SE Asia is a spectacularly beautiful area of the world with an incredible amount of cultural diversity. And compared to travel in Europe, Asia is dirt cheap. (We managed on $30 a day, all meals, lodging and travel expenses included.)
Anyway, the Backpackers Trail was teeming with people traveling on extended tours like ours; it seemed like almost all the Aussies we met were travelling for 6 months or longer – some even indefinitely (i.e., until their money ran out). For us, being American and having just come from Japan – where they take even LESS vacation than WE do – the whole idea that these folks had just up and left their homes, jobs, and sometimes even families, to go on a walkabout was hard to comprehend. The Europeans and Aussies/Kiwis just seem to pursue their leisure life with far more gusto than we do. The sense we got from them, too, was that Americans are just a little bit wacked in their life priorities. In other words, we Americans are all idiots to be slaving away for a measly 2 weeks of vacation per year (or maybe 3 if we're lucky). I completely agree.
There were also a fair number of people on the Backpackers Trail who would qualify as "hippy" in the U.S., were that term still used. Not "hippy" in the sense that they all smoked dope – not when possession of illicit drugs anywhere in SE Asia landed you in jail for years or earned you an appointment with a noose – (although there were magic mushrooms in Bali) but in the long-haired, liberal-leaning, live-for-the-moment, f**k-the-system kind of way. It was kind of cool hanging out with people like that. If i could make a living just writing about travel through SE Asia, i'd do it in a heartbeat; then again, if i did try to do that, i'd be going against the very mentality of almost everyone on the Backpackers Trail, which is what made it such a fun route to travel. Oh, the irony!...
From Hong Kong, we then flew to Thailand and spent a wonderful month there – it is still my favorite country in Asia – then went through Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia (Java and Bali). We finally touched down on American soil again in Hawaii just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1991. We hung out in a Denny's all day and just eavesdropped on the stories of all the vets at the surrounding tables. It was the best history lesson i've ever had.
Our last stop was a week in the Marshall Islands visiting one of Michelle's best friends from high school who was stationed there with – ironically – the Peace Corps. Our "Gilligan's Island" weekend getaway there (which you can eventually see and read about in the travelog) is still one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
Upon our return home shortly before Christmas, 1991, Michelle and i went back to live with our respective parents for the 7 months leading up to our wedding (actually, i lived with my grandparents), which is where my biography ends and ours (Michelle and mine) begins. Read on at the About Us main page.