almostfearless.com

Posted: 05 Jun 2011 05:00 AM PDT

This post is part of the ongoing Sunday Travel Selection series. Every Sunday, a new travel story is featured. This month's theme is Serendipity. This week, Shweta Van Biesen is our selected contributor.

It all started with a short e-mail from the director of my masters program incommunication stating that they were introducing a new graduate fellowship in Brussels, Belgium. I remember thinking to myself, how cool would that be? First being a fellow of a big pharmaceutical company (PHARMA) has a nice ring to it, and secondly it was in Belgium! Oh yeah… where is Belgium again?

I applied and few months later, there I was, resigning from my well-paid IT job to take advantage of an amazing one-year fellowship opportunity in the capital of Europe. My dad thought I was nuts. He thought pursuing a degree in communications after being in the lucrative field of IT was a dumb move in itself. Now, I was going to go learn corporate ethics with a big PHARMA company in a country none of us knew anything about.

In flight, I remember watching the movie Along Came Polly and thinking to myself, I would love to be able to move like Jennifer Aniston's character. I come from a very traditional and conservative Indian family. Moving like that is a big no-no. Yet, here I was on a journey to a country that I barely knew anything about. Once in Belgium, I learned that I was an outsider not able to identify with its culture through either my Indian upbringing or my American socialization. After few weeks of boring work-related events and meetings, I started searching for a salsa dance school to take a few salsa lessons.
Knowing Brussels' openness to culture, I was able to find many such salsa schools. NuYorican Salsa Company was my match, salsa classes taught in English with a touch of New York. My first day in class, I vividly remember being drawn to the instructor with blue jeans and a black party shirt with gorgeous black hair, standing in the midst of girls who could dance salsa with gusto! Soon I realized that I was in the intermediate class rather than the beginner’s one.

Overconfidently, I joined the circle and after a couple of "doorschuiven" (next in Flemish) I was paired with the hot salsa instructor. With my face aimed at my feet, the instructor said, "Look into my eyes. Why, are you afraid of falling in love?" I felt like I was part of a movie. Before I could decipher what he was saying, he bluntly asked me "Where is your tum-tum-tak," (the basic beat of salsa). Even with my ego trashed, I was just love struck.

After class, though I told myself that I was just waiting to talk to someone to find out the pricing of the class, but I was really waiting to see if he would talk to me, ask me to dance again, even though I knew nothing about salsa! Over time, as I patiently waited to be asked, I focused on learning the footwork as fast as I could. Finally, he approached me and asked me what my story was. I boasted about being a fellow at a big PHARMA company (which didn't impress him much). Then he told me a little bit about himself: his name was Peter, he was 39 years old (15 years older than me), divorced with two children—13 and 11 years old, a salsa instructor, and he thought corporate ethics was an oxymoron. Every detail about him negated every characteristic of my list. Yes, that "list" of traits women are famous for drawing up. I pondered on whether there was a single attribute in him I could find to brag about other than the fact that I have the hots for a guy totally and utterly "wrong" for me.

In the next few class sessions, I learned that taking up salsa dancing was a great way to meet other expats, students and fellows like me. Belgian locals were also in the mix, making my goal to learn about them slightly easier. The atmosphere was relaxed and many attended with no other motive than to have a good time. One day, after class I sat at the bar, feeling homesick, and Peter asked me what was the matter. I told him. He asked me to give him five minutes before returning with my jacket and saying, "Lets go." We walked through the meandering lanes of the city holding each other close as it was cold and windy (the usual Belgian weather). To my surprise he guided me to an Indian restaurant, and asked me to teach him about Indian cuisine. Each bite of my Vindaloo tasted like a splash of heaven. Later we wandered through the city admiring the medieval architecture of the surrounding brick walls dating back to the Middle Ages. He showed me Brussels by night and I was holding hands with a man who had started to feel less and less "wrong" for me.

During our second meeting, he made a grand gesture of telling me that he liked me alot and wanted to know if I felt the same. I remember thinking again to myself, "Am I in a movie? Why do I not think he is nuts? Maybe I should be?" So I asked him, "Are you nuts?" He said nothing. That started the most thrilling year of my life. We went through the struggles of being a multi-cultural couple. We discussed integrity and the concept of corporate ethics for hours on end. And I choose a salsa instructor over the systems engineer Indian boyfriend who met every trait on my parents "list". All these experiences helped me realize how empty, shallow, career-minded, brainwashed and dependent I was. Please do not pity me or think I am putting myself down. I am not. I just didn't have a clue that pleasing my parents, focusing on the fatness of my paycheck while unknowingly screwing those in need was keeping me only superficially happy.

The fellowship study of corporate ethics suddenly becamea personal quest to find out socially responsible thinking in my own day-to-day activities. Peter and I ended up spending the next year traveling all across Europe, hand-in-hand. We visited France,Germany, Greece, Holland and Spain to find out whether corporate social responsibility can ever even exist in multinational corporations. And what happens when a corporation's primary responsibility negates ones personal views?

Its been seven years now and two kids later, defying my parents and breaking up with my super rich Indian boyfriend, being with Peter has been the best decision of my life.

Who knew:

A "measly" salsa instructor would open my eyes to personal depth.
Peter would end up pursuing his masters in psychology in the U.S.
We would have two little ones whose upbringing would be focused on building character based onsubstance rather than on the pursuit of materialistic objects.

Each day Peter and I learn how different we are from each other and are surprisedby how well we work. Travelling to Belgium opened my eyes to giving without expectation of return, setting an excellent precedent for our marriage. I also discovered that corporate ethics and I are a misfit; salsa instructors can be quiet a catch and embracing one another's differences with a heart full of love can be utterly rewarding!

About the author

Shweta is one-month-old in her quest of writing and designing a blog for immigrants. Since three languages are spoken in her home daily, mixture of Indianand European food cooked each day of the week and language misunderstandings are just part of her life, she fondly calls her family a "culture jungle." She and her husband moved from Belgium to the U.S. five years ago and can't seem to makeup their mind about where to settle down. Soon they embark on moving back to Belgium. You can read her endeavors at culturejungle.wordpress.com.

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Monday, June 6, 2011

almostfearless.com

almostfearless.com

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