The waiting seemed endless.

The sun got so hot I would bend over and suck water piped from the Colorado River from the sprinklers in the lawn. But, then, their car would pull up at last. How cheering it was to see their faces! When it was time for them to go the kids whose home had been visited would hide in the back seat of the other kids’ car because we didn’t want to part. The parents went along with it and hauled us out and we all waved goodbye with happy, smiling faces knowing we would see each other again.

I have remembered long hot afternoons on the school grounds of Eagle Rock High School, tucked in between Hollywood and Pasadena, practicing to be a cheerleader. I was probably the world’s dumbest ever. My favorite cheer was “First in ten, do it again…We like it. We like it” and I wanted to perform it all the time, not realizing it was related to making a first down. (Sounds like I know something now, but I don’t. That’s why I like watching rugby at times; at least you can see where the ball is.) And, if the game was a home game being a cheerleader involved being hospitable and kind to the other team, walking across the field (that almost sacred earth dug up by players we admired so much) at half-time to give the enemy on our turf a cheery welcome.

"Hospitality” (meaning the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers) comes also from the Middle English via the Old French hospitalite...from the Latin hospitalitatis which, interestingly, is related to the word “hospital.” And “hospice.” As well as the word “host.” All this word analysis got me thinking about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales (when Middle English was spoken) and the Father of English literature and Washington Irving, the Father of American literature. They were alike in many ways and their times were like ours.

By the mid 1300s, Chaucer’s England, like America now, had become established as a power and there was national pride. Business and trade were being done on a vast scale. The ideals of Christianity were clouded by corruption and greed. There was animosity and war between Muslims and Christians. People were looking for ideals and standards in love. Sickness and death abounded through the Black Death (half the population of England died). Privacy was important. People wanted to go on journeys; they wanted to escape from their own homes to safer places and see what else was out there in the world.

More than 400 years later, after the Revolutionary War when things weren’t too pleasant between England and the newly established United States of America, sweet-spirited Washington Irving made a trip back across the Atlantic Ocean. In his Sketchbook, now writing in Modern English, Irving traveled the countryside of England describing houses, lanes, shops, churches, fields and skies of the land the new Americans had so recently left. He brought healing between the two countries that were exhausted from warfare and longing for peaceful relations.

Both Chaucer and Irving were businessmen, diplomats, politicians and writers. Both wanted to cheer people up. Washington Irving named his Hudson River home “Sunnyside.” In the midst of pestilence, famine and war, both men wanted the world to be a cheerier place. Through their efforts they created some of the most deeply human and humorous characters ever presented in literature (Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Irving’s Rip van Winkle, for instance) and used everyday people and scenes to do it.

Soon these winter days in Christchurch will draw to their shortest. Almost a year ago, my husband, Tom’s, days were drawing to an end. We had just moved into this house six months before and Tom would give me an “I don’t know about that” look whenever I would say, “This house might make a good B & B.” Neither of us knew that I would soon be living here by myself. 

Living with sickness makes one less hospitable I have realized. It is easy to get out of opening up the home to others. It seems to take a special strength and energy. Perhaps it has taken loneliness to realize how much we all need fellowship or “felaweshipe” as Chaucer would say.

This month, my usual solo routine was “interrupted” by visitors from America. Now, I have had a chance to try out my B & B idea. Two couples from America have come and gone: Natalie and Fred from Colorado for several nights, then Colin and Jessie from Texas, for just one. They are readers of Escape from America magazine and we began corresponding after my first article appeared in the January issue. 

As we exchanged emails, I got to know them as very nice people and was cheered up to think that the world I was facing by myself now might just be a kind place to venture out into.

Natalie, an elementary school teacher, even featured as the question writer in the February issue--and both couples told me of their plans to visit New Zealand in June. I invited them to stay with me as my guests - something that seemed astounding to them (and others) in this day and age of suspicion and worry. In my mind, they were a lovely experiment to see if I would enjoy having my home used by visitors to New Zealand.

What was the outcome? One night - in a house that usually just has me under the roof - there were five of us, sharing wine brought from the Marlborough region by Colin (originally from England) and Jessie in a cozy room with a crackling fire, lots of laughter, tales of journeys past and future, childhoods, fears, worries, hopes and dreams and lots of cuddles for my fat cats.  We talked as if we might have known each other for years…or wished we had.

Natalie and Fred settled right in. Natalie even wanted to help out with household chores. Fred, a business teacher at the secondary level, got rid of the porn invites that had invaded my computer and put up a mirror in the bathroom. I decided I might use their endorsements for my future B & B. You know…”When we visited Christchurch, we stayed at Blah-Blah B & B and got to mop the floors, run the vacuum and do general repairs…” They had a wonderful time, but I think I got the better part of the deal.

Since then I have learned there are opportunities in New Zealand to open your home to guests without the hassle of advertising as a B & B. Tour companies offer travelers a night and a dinner in a Kiwi home as part of the package. I talked with a couple who, with typical Kiwi prudence, prepare a leg of lamb for four overnight guests which feeds the six of them. There is enough left-over for a curry for the couple the next night. They are able to claim the kilometers involved in picking the guests up in late afternoon and returning them to the hotel in the morning. They do these three nights a week when it suits and chip away huge chucks of the mortgage on their beautiful home within walking distance of a beach.

Natalie, a most cheerful person as every third grade teacher has to be, and Fred stayed for three nights then went on a 10-day tour of the South Island before returning for one night. Like a pilgrim in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, here is an experience she had along the way and emailed to friends and family:

Good morning all…we’re in Picton NZ right now enjoying a cute port town in the South Island. Picton is where the ferries come from the North Island back and forth.  I just had the oddest experience and thought you all might get a kick out of it.

Down the street is a public restroom, not your ordinary one though, it looked like one out of Futurama.  It is a free standing small blue metal building with directions on the front.  The front "door" is a metal sliding door that can only be operated electronically.  You simply push "open," like on an elevator door and it slides open.  Once you're inside, it closes on its own and then the lovely music comes on: "What the World Needs Now."  Lovely music to pee by.

Anyway everything in the room is electric and controlled by pushing a flat button. (Even on the toilet paper roll—which, by the way, is very stingy and has to be pushed three to four times to get enough and you need to wait a few seconds between each push or wave your hands near a sensor.).

Well, you would think with all these electronic amenities, along with all the music, you might have a nice experience. But, what was printed in very small letters—I noticed on the way out—is that after ten minutes the doors will open and the toilet will flush.

So, there I am, on my second song (“Evergreen,” the elevator version), humming along with my pants around my ankles and what happens? You probably guessed it—the door opens and the toilet flushes and there I am for all the world to see!

Now if that wasn't enough, after closing the electric door opens twice more while I’m trying to do up my pants.  Apparently the door opens as you wash your hands, if you've been in there too long or the sensor doesn’t see any movement. I guess I wasn't flailing about enough.

Well, I was able to get my self situated without too many people knowing what colour my underwear was. But I am sure many passers by heard me arguing with a metal door. I think this is an example of technology gone a bit too far.

That's the fun with travel.  Natalie

I must say that I have not seen one of these Futurama toilets, but often products and ideas are initially tried and tested in New Zealand because of its population size and geographic smallness.

Natalie and Fred came to school with me one day to meet other teachers and visit classrooms. The school where I teach is in the poorest area of the city. I took them to the worst street. Like us, when we first came to New Zealand, they were astonished at the high standard of housing in the poorest area. But, we agreed that, sadly, the problems that often accompany poverty are universal. Even so, my school is innovative and always striving to do a better job for the students. And in the winter, with most homes lacking central heating, it is a warm and inviting, most hospitable place to be—students will be in trouble if they don’t accept the invitation!

Because tourism is such a part of the life-blood of the New Zealand economy and learning English is seen as vital to people in Asia and other parts of the world, language schools have popped up in every city. It is big business. The rise in the value of the Kiwi dollar, especially in the last couple of years, has adversely affected enrolment in these schools. Another factor is the trouble kids from other countries can get into in such a free society as New Zealand.

It becomes an embarrassment to both countries.

For instance, Chinese students have told me they are not allowed to date until they are 18 years old. In New Zealand, it is legal to drink at 18. Recent statistics show that abortion provision for Asians is the highest in the country. There was a lot of hoopla last month when a ranking Minister of Parliament wanted to introduce legislation lowering the consenting age for sex to 12 (other partner could not be more than 14). He has back pedalled after an outcry from the public, but his reasoning was that if young people are doing it anyway, police were put in the difficult decision of having to decide whether to arrest or not.

However, the international department I work in at my school is a pleasant smooth-running place with students from Germany, Brazil, Argentina, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Viet Nam. We just had a visit from 70 Thai school teachers who wanted to see how New Zealand schools function. Our Thai students were enlisted to act as hosts and translators. I sent Sarasin, from Bangkok, with a new word to add to his vocabulary: diplomat.

Often I feel like I work in a little United Nations. Every day I see students from Korea and Japan (two nations which have long-held grievances) laughing, playing and learning each other’s first languages while learning English as a second. Another thrill for me as a teacher is teaching writing skills to students from China and Viet Nam. These students have never been encouraged to think their own thoughts. 

It is a wonderful and precious thing to be able to lead a person into the writing process, to explain that the only difference between a piece of academic writing being plagiarism or scholarship is giving proper credit where it is due. This long line of freedom of expression has come all the way to the ends of the earth from long before the Middle Ages, but certainly via England. I am thankful I live in a place where these students can be welcomed as guests and I don’t have to think of myself as culturally superior and “lord it over them” in some imperialistic way as has happened in the past.

Occasionally a student realizes the school is in a poor area of the city, gets bothered and leaves. Most are very satisfied. One of our challenges as staff is to help students not become isolated from the rest of the school. The best way to learn a language is to mingle with the natives.

This year the school’s whole badminton team is comprised of international Asian students. They are winning every game. School gets out early on Wednesdays so that various teams can be whisked away in vans to compete with other schools. Wednesday is also the day I have duty at the gate the vans drive through. There are no cheerleaders in New Zealand high schools.

On my last duty day, I watched as the van, filled with international students moved slowly toward the gate. From inside the van, faces I knew smiled out at me. We weren’t strangers. They were a part of a school going out into the world to represent that school. 

They are guests in New Zealand, I thought. They live with what are called “host families.” They are away from their homeland and everything they know. Every year more than one of them has to make a long pilgrimage home because a parent or grandparent has died. Their parents work hard for the money it takes to provide this English education. Most of them are trying very hard to comprehend this language everyone in the world seems to want to learn. I admire them.

As the van glided by, I raised both my hands to send them forth with a proper wave. The fog of the morning had burned off and light was shining down from the sky. I had the smile of a cheerleader on my face. Go, Team, Go, I shouted. 

And they understood.

* * * * *

If you are interested in becoming part of world-wide opportunities to teach English, see http://www.ihes.com. 

The following are the previous articles that Candy has written about New Zealand for the magazine:

• Life, Liberty, The Pursuit Of Happiness And Dying - Reflections On Immigration To New Zealand
• Is There Trouble In Paradise? - In New Zealand
• Answers & Anecdotes, Part 2  - More On Living In New Zealand
• Walking On Mountains: What’s Love Got To Do With It? - From New Zealand To Norfolk Island

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