Part 5: Quarantine and Connections
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
— Alan Watts
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
I put the key into the door and confusedly turned it three more times over than I thought could ever be necessary until I finally heard the “CLICK.”
“Must be a European lock thing,” I thought.
I pushed my new front door open and was greeted by, of all things, the spicy smell of Indian food. I didn’t know this then, but this would become a very familiar and welcome thing for me in the Netherlands. So much so that I think I might be the only person in the world who associates the smell of Indian food with the Netherlands, but more on that later.
Next thing I knew, I see a head and a smile pop around the corner from inside the kitchen.
My flatmate, or so I guessed.
He smiled broadly and reached out his hand.
“I’m Raghavendra - but you can call me Raghu.”
We exchanged some warm introductory words. He had arrived from India about four months before me and was studying economics at Radboud.
He generously offered to make me some Indian filter coffee while I settled into my new room. A simple gesture of kindness and welcome — the start of a friendship.
I gladly accepted his offer, as I had a very long day ahead of me combatting my jet-lagged urge to sleep during the day when, in fact, I should wait until evening so as to more effectively reset my body clock.
“One person,” I thought.
“I now know at least one person.”
It was a start.
And, thankfully, it was not the end.
Despite it being the winter semester (a non-traditional academic start date) in the middle of a global pandemic, I was relieved to discover that I was not, after all, the only incoming graduate student. As a result, Radboud still went to great lengths to provide us incoming students with an Orientation Week, even if it was held exclusively over Zoom. All of us who had traveled from outside the EU had a mandatory 10-day quarantine anyway, so it gave us something to do instead of staring blankly at the walls of our new rooms.
Maybe it was because we were all in the same situation—moving to a foreign country in the middle of a pandemic—or perhaps there really was just a particular kind of chemistry between us all—either way, our orientation group connected immediately.
Every night for the first week in our new country, we met.
We played internet-based games, did an at-home scavenger hunt (#COVIDthings), and for those of us stuck in quarantine, our orientation leaders even left bottles of wine on our doorsteps so that we could participate in our first Friday night Dutch “Borrel” all together over Zoom.
Against all odds, I forged connections and made friends.
Besides Raghu, with whom I started having dinner from time to time, I befriended Sanjana, Dauri, Nadia, and others from my orientation group.
Sanjana and I especially connected, forming the kind of friendship that has a certain kind of ineffable quality to it—the same quality that can somehow transform a stranger into a companion, a friend into family, and a house into a home.
As soon as my quarantine was over, I began settling in more seriously for the long haul.
I got a secondhand bike, a Dutch rite of passage.
I explored and familiarized myself with my new city.
I discovered Nijmegen’s best cafe for specialty coffee, the best grocery stores to shop at for certain items, and Sanjana and I conducted routine research on the best place in town for “Friets met Mayo.”
I figured out the best running routes, my favorite being through Goffert Park (a place that would become a beloved safe haven for me in due time).
I connected with a fellow theology graduate student, Nivi, and she offered to show me around the campus and get me acquainted with the facilities.
And, of course, I started classes.
I was nervous.
The imposter syndrome was real.
I had no idea what to expect from graduate-level courses.
Let alone any idea of what to expect from a completely different academic system than I knew back in America.
I had heard how Dutch and European Academia were known for being characteristically challenging. In the Dutch system, for example, they grade on a 10-point scale. To pass, you must score at least a 6. We were told in orientation that we should aim to score 6s in our studies, not 10s, as many of us naturally assumed. This was what was generally expected by Dutch students and seen as the “social norm,” scoring anything above an 8 was quite rare and truly reserved only for exceptional work.
As a historically “A” and “B” student in America, this was ominous to me.
I didn’t have any reference point for my own academic capabilities within this new system, so this made me feel deeply unsure of myself and my academic capacity.
Would I succeed here or struggle?
Would I flounder or flourish?
What if I failed?
Intuitively sensing the enormity of the path I was about to undertake, I also proactively decided I should find a therapist, too.
I didn’t know for sure what would transpire during my studies or what I would face, but I intuitively knew that it would be wise to have some kind of professional assistance ready to help me navigate the inevitable issues that would surface as I began to unpack the contentious relationship I had both to my religion and to myself.
Slowly but surely, I began to feel settled, and I gradually developed more and more of a weekly routine.
Besides classes and therapy and running a few times a week, one of my favorite weekly routines quickly became going to the Saturday farmer’s market with Sanjana every weekend.
One week, I remember Raghu offered to make me his favorite South Indian breakfast: Masala Dosa and Idili. The plan was to do it that following Saturday morning, and then meet up with Sanjana afterwards in the city center for the farmers' market.
I quickly learned never to turn down an offer of homemade Indian food, and so I gleefully got up early that Saturday morning and headed to the kitchen to assist Raghu with the breakfast-making efforts.
He announced to me, in a kind of veiled way, that he had invited “a friend” to come and join us for breakfast.
“The more the merrier” I thought as I pulled out an extra plate for the mystery visitor and continued taking directions from the head chef.
Soon, the doorbell rang — Raghu’s friend had arrived.
He instructed me to watch the Dosa that was cooking on the stove as he ran to fetch his friend downstairs – an act of trust I did not take lightly.
All of a sudden, I turned from the stove to find Raghu and Sanjana standing behind me, both beaming with smiles. They watched as I tried to make sense of my confusion and delight, bursting into laughter as they witnessed their plan to surprise me succeed right before their eyes.
It just so happened that they were both from the same city back in India, and masala dosa happened to be one of Sanjana’s favorites, too. Raghu took advantage of the opportunity to both invite Sanjana and to surprise me that morning—a win for everyone.
The next thing I knew, I stood in the kitchen sipping my coffee as I watched my two new friends, whom I didn't know existed a few weeks prior, cook me their favorite Indian breakfast for all of us to share.
I smiled deeply, the way you do when you feel like everything might just work out — like you might just actually be okay.
It seemed I had what I would need for the road before me:
Friends to belong to.
A bike.
A therapist.
A favorite running route.
Access to lots of homemade Indian food.
Maybe I was going to be okay after all.
Now, it was time to get to work.
This Post's Song: Seeds by Carl Borg
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Tim Jurgensen
