Internationals are helping put Iola on the map.
Two stories in Friday’s Register highlight those from abroad.
One features Yuki Ikezaki, a Japanese soccer player at Allen Community College, The other was the recent visit by Ivan Speck and his daughter, Iola.
Ikezaki is one of dozens of foreign students studying at ACC. In fact, the men’s soccer team has recruited players from an estimated 45 countries over the years, according to Doug Desmarteau, ACC athletic director and head coach for the men’s soccer team.
In Friday’s story, Ikezaki commented on what he finds unique about his experience here, including the sheer size of the United States. The U.S. is about 26 times the land mass of Japan, and three times its population: 329 million to 125.5 million.
Ivan Speck had similar comments. The U.S. is about 40 times the size of the United Kingdom, which includes Scotland and Wales, and has about 66 million people.
“So though we don’t have far to travel to get anywhere in the UK, we can’t get anywhere quickly,” because the roads are always choked with traffic. “There’s no such thing as an ‘open road.’”
And at $9.50 a gallon, that idling in traffic adds up.
Though they were in town for only a couple of days, the Specks made good use of their time, visiting not only local landmarks recognizing the coincidence of the 14-year-old’s name but also Humboldt.
At dinner Thursday evening, Ivan indulged us with his perspective on British current events.
He did not vote in 2016 for Brexit, the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union in 2020. Ivan viewed the debate as more of a nationalist reaction to immigrants than of economic proprietary. As with the United States, those coming from much poorer countries are “willing to take on jobs that we deem below us in order to have a better life,” said Ivan. “The Brits are basically lazy people,” he joked.
The result, he said, is soaring inflation because of a backlog in production and transport of goods.
“Or that also could be because of the war in Ukraine or COVID,” he said. “We’re all being hit by a combination of calamities.”
He lauded the United Kingdom’s response to COVID-19, but only after the initial hiccup of health and government officials’ strategy of pushing for herd immunity and eschewing guidelines such as social distancing. That tack proposed the virus be allowed to spread throughout so that a high level of immunity could be achieved by natural infection.
The cost in human life “was devastating,” Ivan said, resulting in one of the highest death rates per capita.
