What a long, strange trip it's been...

June 8

I really am not a very good flier. So you can imagine my reaction when, while taxiing toward the runway yesterday afternoon, the pilot hit the brakes and came on and says, “folks, we’re going to have to go back to the gate… we have a tiny little glitch that we need to take care of.” When we got back to the gate, the captain said that there was some type of malfunction that was keeping a windshield heater from operating properly, and that if the heater came on suddenly in flight, the windshield of the plane would shatter. After hearing this, I was considering either asking to be let off the plane or at least being allowed to go in the cargo bay so I could get a new pair of pants out of my suitcase. But I survived, and the trip was uneventful, and now I’m here in San Francisco, the first leg of my journey.

I had one other JFMFer on my flight, a middle school teacher named Chris from Merritt Island. Unfortunately we didn’t sit together, but it was nice to have someone to find the way through the San Fran airport with me. After checking in, I went upstairs and found that my roommate for San Fran has already checked in. I discovered this when I tried to enter my room and found it was bolted, and someone inside yelled “Hold on while I put on some pants!” He also is named Chris, and he’s from Atlanta, Georgia.

After checking in, we had a brief orientation headed up by another Chris. Chris Powers is one of the folks from the IIE, who help the JFMF put this whole experience together on this side of the world. He was joined by Dr. David Satterwhite, the director of JFMF, and three other teachers who have been on the trip in previous years. It was an excellent presentation, and I wished that I had brought my camera downstairs from the room with me. I promised myself it would be the last time I would be caught without my camera on this trip.

After the presentation, we all boarded a bus to go to the home of Yasumasa Nagamine, the Consul General of Japan for the San Francisco office. Driving through the steeply inclined and narrow streets of downtown San Fran in a full charter bus was pretty scary, but we all survived to tell the tale. By the time that we arrived at the Consul’s home, I was almost completely exhausted. The Consul’s residence was a beautiful mansion with incredible views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. After some remarks by the Consul and other JFMF and IIE dignitaries, we were treated to a buffet dinner which included wonder sushi, dumplings, tofu and other dishes. On of the more exotic dishes looked to be some type of chicken sushi, where the chicken was sear on the outside and totally raw on the inside. Jen, a teacher from Pennsylvania, put some on her plate. I told her not to eat it! She contemplated the morsel on her plate for about one minute before it went down the hatch. She chewed that nasty thing for a long time, and I got the feeling that she was regretting it already. I told her it wasn’t a shame to spit it out in a napkin but she swallowed it anyway. We’ll see what happens with that one.

After a great night of dinner and meeting teachers and dignitaries, it was finally time to come back to the hotel for my first sleep in almost 40 hours. My roommate and I set a wake-up call, an alarm clock that he brought, and both of our cell phones to wake us up on time, and we decided not to fool with the hotel alarm since we were covered in so many other areas. We settled down to a nice sleep only to be awakened but the hotel’s alarm clock going off at 3:30! It figures!

June 9

When I got up, I headed down to breakfast which was just your traditional American eggs and bacon sort of affair. Things moved really fast as far as getting us downstairs and over to the airport. I was on a 9 am bus, so I made sure that I was ready for travel by about 7:30. I’ve had a tough time getting things done/turned in/being places on time lately, and Dr. Satterwhite has made it very clear several times on this trip that we must always be on time. I am determined not to screw this up!

When we got to the airport, I checked in to find that the flight was overbooked and that I had no seat, along with about 15 other members of my group. They said that they find a way to get us onto the plane, and to see the agent at the gate. I was thinking about climbing into my suitcase, that would solve the problem. Another thing on this trip to make me nervous, and I really wished that I could get someone to rub the mounting tension out of my shoulders.

All of that excellent planning in the morning didn’t really get us anywhere as our plane to Narita Airport in Tokyo was delayed by an hour. I took the time to go with a few other teacher to this place called XpresSpa across from our gate and had a 25 minute Stress and Tension Relief treatment that was worth every penny. Let me tell you this: if you’re about to board a ten hour flight ANYWHERE, and you see an airport spa on the day you’re going to leave, go get a massage! I was totally relaxed during the entire flight, and it was the first time I haven’t felt tense in about three weeks, despite what was going on with the flight.

When I got to the gate, they finally had a seat for me—a free upgrade to economy plus! So I and the other folks we almost got bumped ended up with five inches more legroom than the other members of our group. I really appreciated that, and the fact that I was on an aisle… I really wanted to be able to get up and walk around. After we got seated, the pilot gave us an awesome shoutout, telling the passengers that there were 100 teachers from around the country on a study trip. We got a little applause. I thought that was really nice.

Before the plane took off, however, we had another “minor malfunction,” this one requiring a mechanic to come out to the plane and fix the problem for forty minutes. At this point I started to question United Airlines and their patchwork planes. Add this to the previous delay and the fact that no one was available to move the jetway away from our plane so we could taxi to the runway, and we were now nearly two hours late leaving. I probably should have been getting nervous because I knew that we were to have an event with Japanese Fulbright Program Alumni shortly after arriving to the hotel, but I was so relaxed from the spa treatment that I really didn’t care.

The plane took off and the ride over the Pacific was amazingly smooth. I had ordered vegetarian meals and I was glad that I did, because everything was very light and I felt comfortable through the entire flight. I had some graphic novels with me to read, and as I got into one of them someone rushed past me, knocking the book out of my hand and down the aisle. She turned left, into the bathroom and didn’t come out for a while. I suspected that I knew who it was. When the poor sicko finally emerged, I was that I was right: it was Jen of the raw chicken sushi episode. I offered her some Pepto Bismol tablets that I had but she declined, saying she was much better now that it was out of her system. I felt really bad for her though, not just because she got sick but because her stomach hurt so much the night before that she didn’t get much sleep.

Aside from that, there wasn’t much else that happened. I was able to relax and watch a few episodes of Firefly on my iPod. So many teachers were up walking around with drinks in their hands that the fuselage resembled more of a singles bar than a trans-Pacific flight. I really enjoyed the company of so many new friends—it made ten hours zoom by like nothing. The two things I learned from this experience: 1) get a massage before a long flight, and 2) always travel with teachers!

And on this flight we crossed the International Date Line, and for it became Tuesday, June 10. And that will be subject of another blog…

Talk to you tomorrow!

***pictures and links coming later... I need to go to breakfast***