Getting Home for Christmas

Just like last year, I knew I had to get home for Christmas. It's not a matter of someone else telling me or pressuring me to come home. I just knew that I'd go nuts if I chose not to be at home with family on Christmas. So I booked my trip: Tsushima->Fukuoka->Tokyo Narita->Dallas-Ft. Worth->Springfield.

I was perfectly content reading on the flight from Narita to Dallas. (I think I was alternating between Of Mice and Men, Congo, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization at the time.) Having gotten completely used to my Sony reader, I'd done more reading in the past four months than I'd done in two years.

The lady next to me asked about my reader, and said that she was thinking about getting one for her son. I told her all about it, pointing out what it does well (display readable text) and what it does poorly (color, anything not related to reading). This led to where I was coming from, which got us talking about Japan and teaching English. She was returning from Vietnam, having visited a former student of hers.

I soon learned that I was sitting next to Dr. Susan Day of the University of Houston's department of epidemiology. She had been in Vietnam attending a conference, and her Vietnamese student had invited her to his hometown. He had left Vietnam to study in the States, and his immigration status prevented him from being able to visit home until he finished his Ph.D.

We talked more about teaching, and I told her how disheartened I get when I don't reach all the students with a lesson. She said that failing to reach all the students all the time doesn't make me a failure, and that I should think of all the students I do reach. She told me I should use the ones I don't as an incentive to try harder, to change tactics, to look at the problem differently. That was exactly what I needed to hear. Hearing that made me so happy that I wanted to hug her.

When we started talking about teaching back home, she told me a rather disturbing story about her experience in public schools. The lesson I learned from the story was never to teach in Lubbock, Texas. I'd been thinking about how exactly to try my hand at teaching in America without committing to a two-year M.Ed, and had heard about Teach for America, a non-profit that recruits and places teachers in high-need areas around the country. Having heard some bad things about the program, I asked her if she knew anything about it. She highly recommended it, as she had a few friends who had done it.

Man, this sure beat watching in-flight movies and trying to sleep. We easily killed three hours just talking. Dr. Day gave me her card when we landed, wished me luck with whatever I ended up doing, and suggested I consider graduate work in epidemiology.

Upon arriving in Dallas, I tried discreetly snapping photos of customs and immigration. I wasn't conducting espionage, I promise. Iwase-sensei had asked me to try to get pictures to accompany an international travel lesson for the Toyotama 2s. Thankfully, either nobody saw me or nobody cared.

I got to my gate via the nifty little light rail system they have, which is so much better than the buses you used to have to take between terminals. Satisfied that my flight was on time, and with an hour or so to kill, I made a beeline for a Pizza Hut and pigged out.

The Springfield flight was uneventful. I got there right on time, snuck up on Mom (who was looking at the wrong door), gave Mom and Dad big hugs, and got my luggage with no problem. No delays, no cancellations, no bad weather, no luggage problems. Not bad for peak Christmas season.