Free to a Good Home

Towards the end of Spring Semester, my department advertised a teaching opportunity with a company based in Portland that does English language camps and exchange programs all across the northwest. I thought this sounded like a great way to 1) get some more teaching experience and 2) not work harvest again, so I applied, interviewed, and was hired. It was a pretty straightforward contract: I'd get paid for teaching kids from China for a couple of weeks as long as I also helped the company to meet its quota of host families.

I was not terribly excited about this stipulation at the time. I'm not the sort of person who enjoys convincing people to do things they would probably otherwise not do. But the interviewer was so reassuring about the whole thing that I thought I could probably swing it. (Insert ominous foreshadowing music here.)

As it turns out, hosting exchange students is not something that people generally line up for. I started early, back in May, wanting to get the unpleasantness over with as soon as possible. Our training manual recommended using your network as your first resource so, as little as I liked it, I called around to various friends to see if they might know of anyone. Being young and single, I'm not really connected with all that many families, but I got a few numbers and then forced myself to call them. I was doomed before I picked up the phone. Talking to strangers gives me anxiety in the best of circumstances. This was not the best of circumstances. And no matter how I tried to phrase it, I couldn't seem to find a graceful way to enter into the subject. "Oh hey, you know the so-and-sos? Me too. By the way, would you be interested in housing a couple of foreign kids for a few weeks?" It didn't help that I was more than ready to take no for an answer. "Oh your cat isn't feeling well? I totally understand, bye!" I always hung up the phone thinking that at least I could say I tried.

As our first camp approached it became apparent that more desperate measures were called for, so I made up some fliers and reluctantly included my contact information, hoping that I wouldn't have to spread them around too much (ha!) I made a point of visiting a handful of area churches and asked politely if I could leave my fliers with them, but I even then I was getting the sinking feeling that this was not going to work.

Indeed, it was a total waste of time. I ended up posting fliers at every church I could find within at least a five mile radius and got no response. I also tried at several private schools and similarly got nothing. I posted to facebook hoping social media would work its magic, but as I've mentioned, my network is not exactly heavy on families with stable adult lifestyles. For the first of our two camps I only managed to recruit two host families, one of which was my sister and her husband and the other a friend of a friend. That was okay as I technically wasn't even working for the first camp. Our other recruiters did their stuff and got the placements we needed. But that left the second camp, which has been an absolute nightmare.

Our first camp ran from July 2nd to 11th. Then we got a short break before the second camp which is longer, from the 17th to the August 5th. It was apparent early on that not many of our first set of host families would be willing to host for both camps. Frankly I can't fault them for that, but it did mean that by the end of the first camp all of us working to find families had already exhausted our networks. We met and pooled our resources, which included a cold calling list that we requested. I had thought that calling distant acquaintances was bad. Calling complete strangers was worse. It was, again, such a random awkward topic that I had no idea how to approach it. Plus the thought of disturbing someone's evening in that way was not one that I relished. But they don't pay you for having fun, so I buckled down to the task and actually got quite good at it after my first ten calls or so. I wrote myself a script which made it much easier to start talking and boy, did I get used to rejection. Unfortunately it was all for naught. I spent hours upon hours calling people and couldn't generate even the slightest bit of interest.

This is also about the time that my car decided to have issues. It had been making disconcerting clunking noises for a little while and I finally mentioned it to my dad and he told me it sounded like a Really Important Part could be breaking and that I should take it to a mechanic immediately. There's a Les Schwab near where I live, so I dropped it off there hoping that I'd be able to pick it up the same day. No dice. I ended up walking home and was carless on the last weekday when I could have visited some more churches to try and get announcements in their bulletins the coming Sunday (not that it would have done any good). Instead, I spent the next day accosting strangers in the park, because I was that desperate.

You see, our supervisor told us we'd have to start asking total strangers, but I had refused until this point. I mean, asking strangers on the phone is one thing, but in real life!? It also concerned me that this was the best backup strategy our higher-ups had to offer. "Talk to everyone! Have you tried your neighbors?" I didn't feel like explaining that, seeing as I live in a dormitory I technically don't have neighbors. "Talk to the people at your grocery store!" The last time I went to the grocery store, the homeless man in line next to me ate the food he had bought and put a dollar on the conveyor belt before running off. This is not exactly prime recruiting territory.

And that was one of the awkward things about the whole business. I had to start profiling people's socioeconomic status. We were desperate for families and I had no other options. I had to report what I'd done to try and find families every day and at this point we had less than a week to go. We were dangerously under quota. And so I had to scope out the park and basically judge who I thought might make a suitable host family based on appearances. I felt like a horrible person. In the end I only ended up approaching a few people and shoving some fliers at them before running away. One woman was engrossed in a textbook and explained that she couldn't host because she was studying for medical school. Why didn't I go to medical school? I thought desperately. A profession with some dignity! (Not to mention actual money.)

I gave up on the park after a few of these horribly shaming encounters and decided to try the church down the street, which I hadn't bothered yet on account of it not being in a very good neighborhood. It was Friday though and I discovered that it was among the many churches whose offices are closed on Friday. I stood in front of the locked double doors, feeling like a persecuted wretch seeking asylum. It was a Lutheran church, but I entertained myself with the thought of compassionate nuns who might take in some homeless Chinese children. This was the beginning of my imagined recruiting scenarios. I went past a group of people selling cherries on the sidewalk and wondered if a similar strategy might be employed for my situation. "Free Chinese kids with every purchase!" I thought about simply leaving them on people's doorsteps with a return address label on their shirts. "Please return to this address at 9:00 a.m. on Monday for English school."

The last Sunday before they arrived our entire team staked out a church potluck in the hope that our desperation combined with some old-fashioned Christian hospitality might get some results. I was somewhat reassured that everybody else was just as nervous and discouraged as I was.

"I feel like a Mormon missionary," our coordinator bemoaned after we'd approached the last family and gotten nothing but polite smiles. The church pastor, who had done the recruiting last year, assured us that it had been this difficult for him too. It was sort of comforting, but didn't leave me much hope. I was starting to have images of us camping out in the park and dumpster diving for food. "Come experience homelessness in America!"

That night I wrote the most desperate facebook status update of my life. All dignity and restraint was gone. I had no shame. The funny thing, though, was that it kinda worked. My friends, wanting to be supportive and help, started sharing it and the thing kind of went viral. I got over 30 shares on that one status update, some of which were from people I've never met. I was able to track its progress and it was sort of fascinating to watch it spread through the facebook world. It was also interesting to see how information quickly and easily got distorted. I had listed my Mukogawa email because it's short and easy to remember, but people started assuming that the program was through Mukogawa and were linking to the website and all kinds of crazy stuff. But I got publicity and two host families out of the deal.

Even so, we ended up being right down to the wire. The morning of the kids' arrival found us frantically calling past host families and trying to find makeshift arrangements. I got four hours of sleep and was preparing to move to a friends' house to act as host. I spent the morning sitting on the floor with my laptop open to yet another call list and frantically texting our other team members. My room was a disaster area, all of my clothes books, applications and the like were strewn around me in a disorganized mess. And in the midst of this chaos, someone kept knocking on my door. After realizing they weren't going to go away, I opened the door and was greeted by two older women. "Excuse us, we're here to measure your windows." You. Have got. To be kidding me. "My room's kind of a mess..." I apologized, glancing at a pair of underwear in the middle of the floor. I let them come in and measure my windows regardless. I was too tired and stressed to care.

So yes, it was nuts, but we did, somehow, manage to pull it off. One of our veteran host families really came through and found us some last-minute placements. And since then, the camp's been going relatively well. Teaching has been a challenge, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still I have sworn never to do host family recruiting ever again.