【推荐2】Braving the elements

On Dec.26, Gelinne, 60, was looking out the back windows of his home at the frozen lake. Then an airplane came into his sight. Gelinne looked up just in time to see that small air plane a few hundred yards away, losing control.

As the plane disappeared behind the trees, Gelinne, a former Navy officer, realized it was going to land in the lake. He flashed on a moment from more than 20 years earlier: Gelinne was at work in a bank. When a fire alarm rang, he escaped from the chaos but has always wondered if he could have stayed inside and helped.

On this day, Gelinne didn’t hesitate. He ran down to the waterfront. The plane had skidded (侧滑) to a stop on the broad, frozen lake, far from shore. It was now sinking. The pilot was standing on the wing. Gelinne knew from his Navy training that even a few minutes in the icy water could kill the pilot.

Gelinne tested the ice with his foot and decided not to take any chances walking on it. So he pulled a boat out from under his back deck.

Then he set off, pushing his boat across the ice. It was tough work. When Gelinne reached the plane, it had broken through the ice and sunk; only its tail was visible. The pilot was standing on a tail wing, submerged up to his chest, surrounded by open water. Gelinne pushed his boat off the ice and into the water, paddling (划) toward the pilot.

Gelinne focused on keeping the pilot calm, joking, “Just hang on to the boat as if you were hugging your wife.” The pilot grabbed the boat’s bow, but Gelinne knew he had to get the pilot out of the water and up onto the shelf of unbroken ice behind him before the man lost too much body heat.

By now a police officer had arrived and radioed for help. A lifeboat appeared, breaking through ice as it arrived. It picked up the pilot and rushed him to safety. Later the boat returned to help Gelinne, now extremely tired, to shore.

“I’m 60 years old,” Gelinne says. “There was no way I could get him to shore.” Still, he was satisfied he’d gone the right way that day.

【推荐3】I have a strange and frequent dream in which I am assigned a lead role in a major musical production and eagerly agree to take it on — knowing I can’t sing or act my way out of a paper bag, and knowing I’d rather be anywhere but front and center onstage. The dream always ends before the production starts, to the benefit of my self-respect, the unlucky director’s reputation, and my potential audience—who no doubt would have fled at the first note.

I chalk it up to my one and only experience in such things, my high school’s production of South Pacific, a musical I’d so loved as a teen I could not resist auditioning (试镜) —not for a major role, but as one of the chorus of island women raising our arms in the background.

I was cast immediately, a fact I attribute (归功于) to my olive skin and then long black hair, which overcame any doubts the director might have had about my voice. I could pass as an islander. Not only that, but my mother sewed a skirt for me, a beautiful, vividly colored, and artful feat of sewing. The opening night was a triumph for all. But I haven’t set foot on a stage again.

In his elementary school years, my grandson took a shine to attending live theater with me. But he demurred when I suggested he audition for local children’s productions. “It’s not me,” he declared, even as one of his close friends went from a local stage production to a Broadway role.

But the source of these dreams, decades later, still confuses me. The dreams never give me a hint of why I’d been chosen for a starring role once in an Italian opera without having any singing or acting talent or even an audition, or why I’d decided to go for it, knowing I was completely unequipped and unprepared. I suspect (猜想) these dreams will get me as close to such a reality as I’ll ever be.

For now, I only hope I keep waking up before I have to try an opening note.

【推荐1】After a meeting shortly before the winter break, I walked through the halls of floor 3 in Met a Forum, ready to leave the building, when I heard a voice call out my name. It was a friend with whom I shared a connection that is quite rare around this campus — both of us are from Slovakia. Extremely happy to hear my native language after so long, I joined him in the room that he booked to study in.

During our conversation, he revealed to me that first-year committees exist within the study association GEWIS and that he belongs to one. Long story short, he took me to the GEWIS room where I started the process of joining one committee. Not only did GEWIS give me a social life during the pandemic but it also presented me with countless exciting activities and opportunities. Unfortunately, most of my international friends cannot relate.

During the summer break, I got a text from Fort who is now our chairman. He said that there were plans to start a committee to get more internationals involved in GEWIS. Fort is a local student. I was surprised to see him taking such an initiative (主动行动). I appreciated the sympathy (同情) for the difficulty that internationals deal with, so I joined the first meeting.

Fast forward to today we are a committee containing 8 different nationalities. You might see us on campus wearing our iconic light-green and purple T-shirts with the word “GeLOBAL” on it. With our diverse team, there is no shortage of ideas for making GEWIS more international-friendly, and for fun activities.

On the 25th of October, we kicked things off with our first official GEWIS activity — around the globe with GeLOBAL. The people who joined took part in a fun yet educational pub quiz involving trivia (冷知识) questions from all around the world. They also got the opportunity to learn useful phrase (such as pick-up lines) from a wide pool of languages. There were snacks and drinks — including foreign ones, of course. There was a welcoming, inclusive energy in the air.