Xavier de Leidekerke had no idea what to expect when he traveled from Namur, Belgium to Ketchikan, Alaska for a Rotary 2000 student exchange program for the 2017-18 year at Ketchikan High School. What he found, besides “a lot of rain,” was a small island community that “I was welcome to take part in, in the culture and the city.”
When it came time to head back home, de Leidekerke knew he’d return to Ketchikan “in the distant future,” but it would have to be for a good reason.
“It's very expensive to go over [to Ketchikan] and it takes a lot of time,” de Leidekerke said during an Aug. 5 phone interview. “I knew that if I wanted to come back at some point I wanted it to be worth it, because it's a big sacrifice in time. I knew that if I wanted to go back at some point, it had to be for a certain amount of time so that it doesn't feel like I’m a tourist, but it still feels like I'm part of it.”
De Leidekerke said he’d originally thought he’d make another trip to Ketchikan after his college studies, given he made enough money to afford it. He said he wasn’t expecting to come back so soon, but his plans changed when he discovered an internship opportunity that would allow him to return to Ketchikan in May of this year.
During his interview with Rotary before his initial exchange in 2017-18, de Leidekerke listed Alaska as one of his most desired destinations. A friend of his had done an Alaska exchange and likened the state to Switzerland, which de Leidekerke found attractive due to his fondness for the outdoors.
After arriving in Ketchikan, de Leidekerke was first struck by its small-town culture and how “everybody knows each other.”
He described his exchange as an “interesting” experience and said he had fun adapting to a different culture. Having attended boarding schools in his younger years and three older siblings who’d all participated in exchange programs, de Leidekerke welcomed the notion of spending a year in a foreign country.
“I think it's very interesting to get into a new culture,” de Leidekerke said. “You get kind of lucky with your host families too. I was really fortunate with mine because it came together really easily. I could feel that I was welcome … and that's a big thing. I think that's also one of the biggest traits that I discovered from American culture, is that you guys are generally really welcoming.”
He referred to his lives in Alaska and Belgium as “two different worlds.”
After his exchange concluded in 2018, de Leidekerke returned to Belgium to pursue a degree in civil engineering at Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. His opportunity to return to Ketchikan came four years later, when he found out another European exchange student in Ketchikan who he became friends with had returned to satisfy a mandatory internship credit for his college’s program. He thought of R&M Engineering owner Trevor Sande, whom he’d gotten to know during his exchange in 2017-18.
“As soon as I heard that I was super excited, I was like, ‘OK, this is it,’” de Leidekerke said. “This is my opportunity to go back over there. I mean, it would be freaking perfect. And so I immediately sent an email to Trevor because I knew he was a civil engineer and he had a civil engineering firm and he right away said, ‘Yeah, sure let's do it.’
My university was really surprised. They weren't expecting it, so it was kind of funny to go through some of the paperwork because they're like, ‘We don't really know how to do this, but sure,’” he continued.
Sande described de Leidekerke as “super smart and really quick to catch on” and said he was excited when learning that de Leidekerke wanted to return to Ketchikan.
“I was pretty excited because, well, I didn't know anything about his aptitude, but he was just such a nice kid,” Sande said. “I was happy to have him come and train him a little bit. So just from the time that we spent together [in 2017-18,] he was always eager to help around the house splitting firewood or chopping up old junkie floats. He worked hard, so I was excited to put him to work for real.”
In addition to being the site of his exchange, Ketchikan also offered a unique educational avenue for de Leidekerke in regards to the specific kind of engineering he’s pursuing.
“I've always been really into wooden construction,” said de Leidekerke. “It's way less of a thing here in Europe than back in the U.S. But since I was a kid, I was woodworking a lot and I was working carpentry with my dad, which is really not common out here because we build most of our houses and buildings out of either masonry or cylinder blocks or straight concrete. So it's kind of more of a niche career here to work with wooden constructions. And so throughout my studies, I took as many wooden construction classes as I could. And in that sense, it was really interesting to go to the U.S. because you guys build almost all of your houses and a big part of your middle class buildings out of wood.”
According to de Leidekerke, his internship duties involved “getting in everybody’s boots.” He shadowed R&M surveyors as they traveled to Prince of Wales Island, engaged in materials testing, and worked on drawing up plans for civil engineering projects such as sewer lines.
“I went back and forth to Trevor and he would tell me if he liked [my work] or not, or how he would modify it,” de Leidekerke said. “And then I would modify it until he was saying it was a good enough job that he would've done the same. And then I had some contacts with the clients, so I went through quite a lot of different projects. I had a new project every two days, three days. So that was a really fun thing, I got to see a lot of different projects.”
De Leidekerke left Ketchikan for Belgium for the second time in late July. He said he plans on visiting again after he’s finished school, but that it’s unlikely he’ll make a permanent home in the U.S. He sees his most recent time spent in Ketchikan as valuable to his pursuit of a career as a civil structural engineer.
“This internship is going to help me towards being a civil structural engineer, but more with wooden structures,” de Leidekerke said. “As far as geographics, I don't really see myself building a career in the U.S. I really like it there and I'm probably going to come back at some point, but I don't think it would be long-term. Mostly for the ease of being close to family. It's kind of stupid, but the 10-hour time difference makes it really hard to even contact family. I'd say 80% of your day, your family's sleeping, and it's the opposite for them, so that makes staying in touch kind of hard.”
*This article was originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News*
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