One semester in the USA

Born in November 1941, the fall of 2012 saw me in my 70th year. I felt highly privileged to be offered a teaching position in a top-rate American university. Optimistic, for I was sure I could do a good job teaching a course on Buddhism. Thrilled, for the first time to live and work in an American environment. Happy, that Gitty, my wife shared this adventure. - I am an experienced diarist, having worked as an anthropologist in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Burma and Assam and havingfilled thousands of pages with my observations in those alien places. Whenever I left home to work abroad, I had spent the hour before going to bed writing up what I had done and seen. - But as a septuagenarian I faced the fact that most of my life is over and what my eyes have seen and what I have pondered will soon all be wiped off the slate. I have four dear daughters living in Australia and there, far away are a umbergrandchildren growing up. It was not as anthropologist, butwith the cominggenerationsin mind that I wrote. I regularly typed these chapters on my computer, freshly observed, with them as my imaginary audience. If one of them will ever think: „what was my ancestor Baas Terwiel like?“ this booklet will provide some clues. In a way, this is an attempt to delay my inevitable oblivion.