Well what a day!

It is now the 18th of June 2010. We are 18 days from take off. That is a funny coincidence. 18 and 18. I am certain that there is a culture somewhere which uses this as some sign of significance. Some group of people who make up the wondrous tapestry of humanity.

Today I got to revel in one of my favorite rituals. The Parting. It is one of my favorite rituals not because I am leaving or because I am happy to be out of this place. That is not it at all. It is a favorite because you get a moment to look back at what you have done in a particular part of your life and recognize its importance. Its impact on your life.

'Een dag van wardering,' as the Dutch would put it. 'A day of showing someone's worth.' This is one of those many moments in Dutch where a single word can only be translated with many other words. Dutch has many beautiful sayings and simple little words which are extremely full of meaning. I will go into some more of them in later entries.

So today was the day when I was given a parting party. Leaving party. My good friends and colleague Ton Meulemans (from Anton) went to great lengths and pains to set up and throw a party for me. I was extremely touched.

I have worked, for the past six years, at the local technical college (Bachelor's degree level) teaching technical drawing and three dimensional drawing to engineering students. I have enjoyed this work very much and had a very good working environment. I got to interact and influence young Dutch students between the ages of 18 and 25 or so. I put great a bit of effort and time into this. I took it very seriously as well. My work there as only part time because I am also a stay-at-home-dad. I could teach between the hours of 8.30 am and 2.30 pm. I had to be at the school at 3.00 pm to pick the kids up and be with them for the rest of the day.

This did put rather strict limits on the times I could teach. Yet this did not stop my boss from asking me if I would like to take the job on permanently. This was about four years ago. I had to turn them down because I was also doing other work. Work which was also important. I had just graduated as a Mechanical Engineer and wanted to try to work in the branch of this field which interested me most, sustainable technology. I did stay on in a part-time capacity. This suited my boss and me so well that I would probably still be doing it if we were going to stay in the Netherlands.

About a year and a half ago my boss, Jan Meijer (John Mower), hired a new guy to work with me. This was Ton Meulemans. Ton had worked as an instrument designer/builder at the local academic hospital. He had worked there for 30 years but his department had be dissolved. Some manager had decided that it would be better for the hospital (cheaper) if the work done by Ton's group was outsourced. They fired 30 of the 34 members of the team. Glassblowers, designers, technicians, instrument builders, etc. Ton tells the story of the dismantling of his department with a great deal of distaste in his mouth. After 30 years they had developed into a group which was at the top of their level. Designing new medical instruments in association with the doctors/professors at the hospital. Ton was involved in projects which have changed modern medicine...but that all changed.

Jan Meijer was visiting Ton's department, looking for used milling machines, lathes, etc. for the school. Jan is the manager of the technical training department at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. While Jan was there he got to talking with Ton and soon had convinced Ton to come down to the school and take a look around. In no time Ton had agreed to come and teach technical drawing as well as to teach milling, lathing and other metal and plastic working skills.

Now Ton is what my wife Anita calls a Real Amsterdamer. This is someone who is born and raised in Amsterdam. But not just in Amsterdam but in one of the working class neighborhoods of the inner and older part of Amsterdam. In this case it is the Jordaan. The Jordaan is one of the oldest working class neighborhoods in Amsterdam. It was built in the early 1600's in response to the need for housing for the working class. Amsterdam had just built three large canals around the original medieval center of the city but it was built by the rich and powerful of the city. The poor were living a wretched existence in the streets and old rotten core of the city. They were forced to live wherever they could including the fields around the city walls. So the city, put under considerable pressure by the religious leaders of some of the humanitarian congregations built the Jordaan to house them.

Until the 1990's it was still very much a working class neighborhood. Ton grew up there in the 1950's and 60's when it was a rough and tumble place. He had it rough as a kid and has the tales to tell about it too. Although it is mostly lost on my Dutch, everyone I know who knows Ton tell of how wonderful his Dutch is. Real Amsterdams. Like Johan Cruiff, the legendary Dutch soccar guru. They both grew up in the same time and in the same sort of neighborhood.

The Dutch educational system is set up in such a way that you are streamed into different levels of education based on test scores at quite an early age. At 11 you get tested and this decides whether you go to a Lower Technical School, to learn to be a hair dresser or something like that; or a Middle Technical School where you learned or automobile mechanic or a plumber, etc.; or a Higher Technical School where you could get a Bachelor's in engineering or airplane piloting or journalism, and finally the highest where you go to a university and end up with a Masters degree. There are different types of high schools, each is designed to get you prepared for one of these post-high school educational institutions. This was done, in part, because the Netherlands as a country only needed so many scientists and needed others people to be the plumbers and street sweepers and hair dressers and pilots, etc. It is a system which has changed many times in the past 50 or so years, but has this type of streaming as one of its basic tenets. One of the problems that this system has is that people from the lower classes often end up being streamed into the lower technical schools. They become the street sweepers and the hair dressers, etc.

Ton had other ideas about this. He was a smart kid who worked very hard and also had the good fortune of being noticed by someone who could help him to get further than his background would normally allow. He ended up getting through the lower technical school and then through the middle technical school and then was accepted at a special school for medical instrument designers/builders. This became then Ton's career. He even won the National Prize for Insturmenten Makers (Instrument Makers) and went to Portugal to represent the Netherlands in the European finals. He didn't win but did come out in the top of his group. So this guy has been through a lot and has come very far from where he started and his origins are very evident in how he is as a person.

Ton is a very genuine person. He shoots straight from the hip. You always get 100% un-adulterated Ton. You never have to wonder what he thinks about something because he will tell you and often tells you before you need to ask. He is also a very loyal friend. He happens to live just around the corner from me. I only regret that we got to know each other so late in my Dutch Experience. I would have loved to have been able to spend more time with him, doing stuff together.

For me Ton is also one of a kind. The party he had organized for me was just another sign of his specialness.

After I met Ton we started spending time together at work. He was to attend my classes to get a feeling for how I taught and to get to learn about the types of things we needed to teach the students to get them up to the proper level for their course of study. He was very quick to give me compliments on how I teach. He was impressed by my use of theatrics to keep the students attentive in the class. Humor is sometimes the best way to see who is awake in your class. Tell a joke or make a funny comment to yourself and the people who are laughing (or moaning) are with you. The others are asleep with there eyes open.

As the time went on Ton and I became closer friends. As I said he lives around the corner from our house in Amsterdam. We both love to play tennis. When the weather was right and the sky was light late enough we would play together. He teaching me how to better my game because he was and remains so much better at tennis than I am. It never did bother me that he was better. He is also a good teacher. I learned quite a bit about tennis from him. About the body mechanics. He always beat me, but I always learned something.

So. After two years working together and becoming friends it gets round time for me to move back to the US. Ton has turned into my best friend here in Amsterdam. We see one another almost every day at work and still do things some evenings too. When his wife is out of town he comes to our house at least a few evenings to eat dinner with us. The kids love him and it is clear that he loves the kids too. Anita always says that he doesn't get us as a family. We are messy and loud and many other things that just don't fit into his idea of how it should be. But what is wonderful about Ton is that he sees it, recognizes it, mentions it and then against all odds he appreciates it. Yeah the kids are loud and run around and make a mess, but they are great people who are interesting and funny and just a joy to be around. He gets that.

It is thus time for the Parting Party or the Farewell Party at work. Now this is something that Ton has organized. It is not something that we commonly do at our work. This is new. My boss and the other guys at work would be fine if I just came around and shook everyone's hand one last time. Ton would have nothing with that. He insisted that we do a whole party with music and chips and sausage (worst) and beer and wine and soda and that sort of thing. It included, and needed to include a speech about me by him and a present.

It is the 18th of June now. Anita and I go to my work, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam at Amstel Station. We arrive a bit early and I take her around to meet some of the people. People who I would like to say goodbye to but I am rather certain that they wouldn't be at the party later. Then we go downstairs to the -1 (as we call it). Our department is in the basement of the school. It is large, almost the entire basement and has, just to mention it, the worst cell phone reception you could imagine.

We get down there and I see some colleagues. Say hi, introduce Anita to them and then we run into Ton. "Oh," says Ton. "You guys are a bit early, don't go in there just yet go and take a walk and come back in a few." This we did I showed Anita the whole department and introduced her to all of my colleagues. Then it was getting round the time when the whole bash should begin. We are shuttled into a room where we sit and drink and eat and talk for a bit. I show the whole group the photos of the new house and also the location using google maps. It is great fun. Then we talk more amongst ourselves. Eat more food (I distinctly remember the salami wrapped pickles). Then Ton says it is time to make the speeches. Firstly my boss, Jan Meijer stands up and says three words which in effect are to say that Ton is going to give the speech for the whole department.

Ton turns the music down and then gives his speech. I am still stunned. The way he described our friendship and our working relationship got me all choked up. He said that he came from an entirely different career to learn about teaching and that I had shown him that you didn't have to become some authoritarian teacher, didn't have to mimic that image of the teacher that he had in his mind. I had shown him a different path to teaching where it was fun and engaging for the students. I was so proud that I had gotten to work with someone who got me, really got me and appreciated me for the things that I think I give in my lessons and in life in general. It was really moving for me.

He went on to say that he thought it was a shame that I was going. No, he said, it is not a shame it just sucks!

Here was this wonderful man, baring himself before this group of stoic working class guys. He was getting choked up. I started to tear up. It was quite the moment. I saw just how much Ton cared for me. Wow it was quite something.

Then, Ton turned and said it was time for the present. Firstly he gave some flowers to Anita. Then he talked about the journey of getting me this gift. I thought that they had probably made something for me with some of the computer aided manufacturing machines we have there in the shop. A pencil holder or paper weight with my name or something like that. But Ton was having none of that. He was told a story of how I was when I shared with them all my experience taking a blacksmithing course the previous spring. How I showed them all the stuff I was making and how enthused I related my experience there. I was trying to relate his story to the pencil holder or paperweight. Then he called me up and from under a desk he produced...now get this... an ANVIL!!! No joke. They had all pooled together and bought me a 100 kg anvil! No way. I was speechless. Literally. Which for me is quite an accomplishment. I could not believe that Ton had actually gone and gotten me an anvil.

Ton had been joking for the past six months that he was going to give me this old beat up anvil that we have in the shop there. I always laughed and asked how I would get it to America. Now here he had actually gone and found an anvil as a present for me! I was bowled over. Couldn't believe it. Still can't. This is like someone giving you a present and you say no way. A better present couldn't exist. This is too beautiful to be true. I was so deeply touched. So unbelievably moved that Ton not only got me, completely, but went to great expense and trouble to arrange for this gift. And on the front of the anvil is a plaque which is a plaque of appreciation from the department for my years of hard work.

Oh man. I couldn't have asked for a better gift or a better friend. Ton, you are one of the best things I have experienced here in the Netherlands and I will sorely miss you.

I will be back to visit and you will come to visit us and help build something there in America, but I will always look back on these days with great joy and thanks that we had the opportunity to become friends.

I wish this kind of friendship on all of you!