By Staff

By Will Koolsburgen, Professor, Humanities
Recently, I had the remarkable honor to act as faculty adviser for a cultural exchange program linking LaGuardia with Tower Hamlets College in London. The program, in its third year, offers a cultural exchange experience, college to college and city to city. Eight students participate each year, four from each of the colleges. Tower Hamlets College’s population is predominantly Bangladeshi, and the original focus of the program was to link LaGuardia’s Bangladeshi students with those from Tower Hamlets. 

Last year we modified the program by attaching an over-riding theme to the trips. In collaboration with Tower Hamlets faculty we chose the theme of “Shakespearean Production from the Globe to the Modern Stage.” The students chosen to participate were linked to the theme of Shakespearean performance. This year the chosen theme is “Art, Architecture and Photography in the Modern City: East is West.” Over the course of the year the LaGuardia students and the Tower Hamlets students would be exploring that theme as it related to their respective cities and cultures, to the visual arts, and to the related experiences that New York and London have as big cities with large immigrant populations.

The actual trip to London was uneventful. I traveled with the four students—Nozomi Kato, Mohammed Moin, M. N. Chowdhury, and Ranya Abbas—leaving on Wednesday, November 14, via American Airlines from JFK. We arrived at Heathrow on time and caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station, where we grabbed a cab for the Hotel Russell on Russell Square. Vice President Sulema Ebrahim was there to meet us and to present us with our full schedule for the next three days.

Our schedule included visits to the British Museum and the British Library. We walked Tower Bridge and along the side of the Thames where Shakespeare’s Globe is restored. We ended our day atop the London Eye, a gigantic revolving wheel from whose apex one can see a panorama of London architecture, both ancient and modern.

On day two we visited the campus of Tower Hamlets College and saw Canary Wharf (London’s version of the WTC). While on campus, our students, the Tower Hamlets’ representatives, Vice President Ebrahim, President Gail O. Mellow, and I participated in a lively round table discussion of the event of 9/11/01 and the United States actions since that date. Our students, three of whom are Muslim, were particularly clear on their support for the actions that the United States had taken. It was a very interesting international dialogue and it gave all who participated a chance to hear other perspectives of the responses to the tragedy.

We began day three by touring beautiful Kew Gardens and the fanciful greenhouses (which are more like palaces) that are there. We then walked through a number of neighborhoods, crossed the river once again, and visited the Tate Modern Museum. The Tate Modern is hosting a surrealism show. Prior to leaving for London I held a seminar with the students on the place of surrealism in the context of 20th century art and the role of the surrealists and political objectives. We were prepared for the show itself, but no one could have prepared us for the breathtaking space that is the Tate Modern. The main space is a massive, decommissioned power plant. The main hall soars high above you as you enter and you cannot help but feel like an insignificant cog in some gigantic machine—a perfect place to see an exhibition of the major works of the surrealism movement. We ended our day at a performance of the Komodo Drums at the Barbican.We should have had an uneventful flight back to NYC on Sunday, but our day began with a fire drill at the hotel, a dash to Paddington Station to catch the Heathrow Express and the not unexpected difficulties with customs. About midway through our flight the captain politely announced that there “appeared to be a heat source problem with the landing gear and we will be dropping from 41,000 feet to 11,000 feet to investigate.” Of course the descent was slow, but those of us at windows began to notice the amazing detail of the nearing waves of the frigid Atlantic. Finally, the captain dropped the landing gear and announced to us that indeed there was a problem, but “there is nothing to worry about.” The mood of the passengers had changed by now from one of patient concern to stressful observance. Soon we could see that we were going over land, but the land didn’t look like any I had ever seen. We were descending over frozen tundra-like ground that looked particularly uninviting. The captain came on once again to tell the cabin crew to prepare for landing. But where were we? The landing was a rough one, and we almost tipped the ground with our left wing, but the captain brought the giant airliner to a halt and announced, “Welcome to Gandor, Newfoundland.”

We quickly deplaned and walked/ran through the freezing air to the far away terminal. Yes indeed we were in Gandor, Newfoundland. For over six hours we were the only people to fly in or out of that bustling metropolis. The terminal had a restaurant, one bank of telephones, one tiny duty-free shop, and two bathrooms. It was a remarkable six hours where I got to discuss all that we had seen and learned with Mohammed, Nozomi, Ranya, and Milan. Nozomi, who prefers to be called Rose and who is a fine arts major, held our attention most of the time by passionately discussing all that she saw. Our hiatus in Newfoundland did end. Eventually, American sent another Airbus to get us and take us on to JFK. We arrived home many hours later than we expected, very tired, but fast friends.

Our students will now be collaborating with their Tower Hamlets peers in setting up a web site to display visual records of what we saw and experienced. This will also be a virtual place where the future writings and projects of our students can be posted. Eventually, the Tower Hamlets students will add their work after they visit us in the spring. The trips and the web site make LaGuardia even more the international college.