Teaching Abroad at Home

by Matthew Henry Hall

In the drugstore, Mahito, a tall young guy, an exchange student, held up the box of Midol.

“Good for headache?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I wasn’t thinking and later corrected my mistake. With, I still hope, no harm done. I’d been rattled that day. I’d taken a group of fourteen Japanese college exchange students to the top of a piney mountain in Arizona. Once there, Yuuji, a student, nearly exploded. How did I find myself in this situation?

Somewhere back in the early 1990s, I began working towards an MA in English. I taught composition classes as a graduate assistant, another name for an adjunct. For this, I received a tiny sum as part of my arrangement with a university in northern Arizona. It wasn’t so bad. I got in-state tuition and enough money for food, beer and rent for the fall, winter and spring semesters. The only problem was summer. I didn’t have a job, and no normal employer would hire a grad student. Fall will come, and you’ll quit, they’d say.
No, I’d protest. I would never . . . . But the truth is, I’m a terrible liar.

Consequently, I ended up at temp agencies. For two weeks one June, as a promotional venture for Pepsi, I wore a “You Gotta Have It” shirt and hat inside a tiny metal trailer parked in front of the then-brand-new “Mega-Foods” supermarket. For a buck, “you gotta” hotdog and Pepsi. My co-worker, an out-of-work bullrider named D. L., talked mostly in monosyllables, if at all, and only listened to KAFF Country Radio. I’m not a contemporary country music fan, nor do I even like hotdogs or Pepsi, but I stuck to it—as, I suppose, an out-of-work bullrider or desperate grad student/fledgling adjunct would. You gotta have money.

When I got offered the job with the Japanese exchange students, I thought it was divine intervention. I’d be delighted to drive them around in a van and talk with them as much as they’d like. The talking part would be the “teaching” portion of my job, the director assured me. She had no idea what she was talking about. The teaching part would be pretty much every second I spent with these students. I’m still not sure who learned more, me or them.

I picked up the group of Japanese students from the airport in Phoenix. With minimal trouble, I got everyone and their luggage onto the van. The students seemed happy at first, but as we made our way out of Phoenix, America’s other Death Valley, the air conditioning in the van went. The Phoenix heat in mid-July is staggering. You can cook eggs on the sidewalk or your own skin if you’re so inclined. The windows flew open, and the students began complaining in English. “Hot,” I heard. “Can’t breathe.” “Need water.”

Not knowing Phoenix very well, I kept them at bay. “I’ll stop when we get out of the city. It’ll be a little cooler. We’ll get cold drinks.” I’ve noticed that when I cannot be understood, instead of trying other words, I simply start yelling the same thing over and over. “Cold Drinks! COLD DRINKS!” I screamed. I imagine my ravings are what stopped their complaining. After a hot and eerily quiet forty minutes, we pulled over to a place I knew, a roadside stop.

As we piled out of the van, a young girl, let’s call her Takiko, pointed up at the sign with the bucking mule. The sign proudly announced, “Welcome to Jackass Acres!” “What is jackass?” she asked while her friends snapped pictures of me and themselves in front of the sign. I hadn’t even thought of the name of this place. All I knew was that we needed to stop. I wanted to simply point to myself, but only said, “It’s a kind of mule or donkey.” The rest of the students moved quickly into the store, buying up sodas, bottles of water, candy and Arizona cactus kitsch.

I found these students to be extremely intelligent and sensitive. They often said surprisingly sweet things, in the form of uninhibited hyperbole. After sitting through the almost unwatchable, Honey, I Blew Up the Kids, a student with whom I’d seen it pulled me aside. With his hands over his chest and his eyes looking heavenward, he beamed, “This has been the best day of my entire life!” I wondered what kind of life he’d led up until then. In retrospect, however, I believe he simply felt good about going to see an American movie with me.

The trip to the movie theater was easy. Most trips were not. That summer, things went wrong over and over again. One clear, sky-blue summer afternoon, for example, our group piled into the van. We drove up a nearby mountain and took the ski-lift to the top. We decided to walk back down, following the now- grassy ski run. We’d enjoy the views, the Douglas Fir and Aspen. I felt good, happy to be outside. And then I heard some students behind me, yelling.

“Matt! Matt! Help!”

“Yuuji! Face!”

At this, I turned and saw one of the students, Yuuji, and the others running up to me. Yuuji’s face and arms, normally thin, now resembled a float from the Macy’s parade.

“Matt,” Yuuji said. “What can I do?” But it came out more like, “Maaaawwww, whaaaaaaacannneeeeedo?” because of his now-gigantic lips.

This wasn’t a Honey,-I-Blew-Up-the-Kids flashback. Yuuji must’ve been having a reaction to the elevation, some 11,000 feet, or maybe to some airborne moss spores or the smell of pine trees. Who knew? We were more than halfway down the mountain by then, so I did what any level-headed group leader would do. “Run!” I screamed. “Run to the van! Everybody!”

We got down quickly enough, loaded up, and I drove like a maniac to the nearest drugstore for an over-the-counter-remedy. The thought of going to the emergency room never entered my mind. Maybe some part of me knew I couldn’t afford to lose this job. You gotta have money.

By the time we arrived at the Rite-Aid, Yuuji had deflated. He looked good as new. I felt both relieved and utterly exhausted. And that’s when Mahito approached me with the box of Midol.

Finally, the time came to take the students back down to the Phoenix airport. There, we said our final goodbyes. As I waited with them to board their plane, one student asked if she could touch my hair. I bent my head, and as she touched my hair, I felt a number of other hands joining hers. It was the strangest thing, oddly wonderful. When I stood up again, the little circle of students giggled. The whole incident probably lasted less than thirty seconds. Sure, I felt a bit goofy, and, beyond that, wondered what other university code or rule I’d just broken. But I also felt connected, even glowy. As I stood there watching the students line up with their boarding passes, I wanted to shout, This has been the best job of my entire life!