Language no barrier for former Spartan

Student back from Japan, Papua New Guinea

She got used to removing her shoes at the front door. She got used to eating with chopsticks. That's because when 1999 Cimarron-Memorial High School graduate Vanessa Brown finished her four-year journalism degree at the University of Nevada, Reno, she went to Japan to teach English.

She was one of many college graduates representing 40 countries in the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET).

Brown arrived there in July 2003 and was immediately impressed with the fast pace of Tokyo. After a few days of training, she was sent to the city of Arai, about a two-hour bullet train ride north of Tokyo.

There, she learned to speak Japanese while she worked as an assistant teacher in two junior high schools. A JET supervisor was her mentor and helped her acclimate to a culture that regulated everything from students' haircuts to what shoes they could wear.

The junior high students were just as curious about Brown's way of life as she was about theirs. They asked if Americans used chopsticks and if school uniforms were the norm. Some wanted to touch her long auburn hair.

Telling them she was from Las Vegas "got their attention right away," Brown said. Students asked her what it's like growing up in Nevada surrounded by gambling, something they're not exposed to in Japan. When it came to teaching, Brown's students had hurdles to jump.

"I found there was this big cultural roadblock (to using English)," she said. "They were shy, afraid of making mistakes, getting their grammar wrong. Me, I just threw it out there, I didn't worry about sounding eloquent."

As if teaching didn't keep her busy enough, Brown joined a volunteer organization and worked weekends in its theater troupe. The troupe raised about $9,000, used to buy wood and other building materials. The purpose: to build a teacher's house and school in a remote area of Papua New Guinea.

Before she was finished with her one-year commitment to JET, Brown and 10 others from the troupe traveled to the capital of that country. Then they flew north and took a four-hour boat ride "into the middle of nowhere."

It was there they spent their two-week break to help build two structures, a home for a teacher and a classroom. Available housing was a major factor in persuading teachers to come to the remote site.

There was no electricity. No running water. But there were malaria pills and mosquito nets when sleeping. .

Under the direction of local carpenters, she and a group of roughly two dozen volunteers pounded nails, sawed wood and handled paint brushes to help make the needed structures.

When not busy with those tasks, the volunteers played games with the village children and taught them to make kites.

Though only there two weeks, Brown and the others were so well liked they were inducted into the tribe.

When the volunteers left, they were laden with hand-made gifts like shell necklaces, clay cooking bowls, a lizard skin drum and headdresses with Bird of Paradise feathers.

Brown headed back to Japan to finish the school year then played tourist before heading home in August to see her parents in Summerlin and map her next move.

"The first thing she wanted to do when she got home was go have lox and bagels at the Suncoast," said her mother, Bobbi Brown.

Now that she's stateside, Brown is applying to grad schools to study political science. She plans to work in advertising and eventually become a professor.


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