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Let's Go Zoo!



About 30 minutes into the 2 hour drive, the kids and adults on the "Let's Go Zoo" tour stood up and looked toward the back of the bus. The sudden buzz among everyone let me know that something was wrong. My immmediate thought was that someone was sick. Ryusuke, a 27 year old team leader, grabbed a plastic bag from near my seat. Somebody was getting sick, and on a field trip..."Bummer!" I thought outloud.



A minute later later, I was introduced to Yuto. Yuto wasn't feeling well. He hadn't felt well since waking up, but I don't know many first graders that will pass on a trip to the Zoo...hell, highwater. Ryusuke explained that Yuto wanted to sit with me. "Sure." I said outloud. For the next thirty minutes, Yuto and I sat staring at the black plastic back 12 inches from his head. "It's ok." I explained. Out the left window, I saw an American military base that stretched for miles. On the right, "Welcome to America" and "Route 66" and "Harely Davidson" and "Hamburger" signs littered the storefronts. I began to think about how it would feel to live in a military base...thinking you lived in Japan, but really lived in America, and you never heard people speaking Japanese except at the airport and your children go to American schools and homesickness isn't...



Yuto leaned over and puked on my shoes.



Reminded of summer fireworks, his barf was all but linear.

Yet, about 1 in 10 chunks of breakfast found their way into the "vomit bag" he held.



For the first round of his throw up, I pushed myself up against the window of the bus, looking again to the military base, this time with envy. But things changed as I watched him, hurting, and hurling, and being 7...I finally realized that my role as an American, as a teacher, and as a living thing, was to help. I gently nodded to encourage him and patted him gently on the back for rounds 2, 3, and 4. "Do your best," I told him in broken Japanese.

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