CIVILIAN . PORTER, JOSIE

Josie Porter

Compassionate. Impatient. Responsible.

Her "students" call her Teacher.

Twenty-Two

January 2, 1990

Female

Heterosexual

Civilian

Barista/Intern with a missions organization in Japan

Personality

With her father gone the majority of the time, she spent a lot of time helping her mother raise her three younger brothers. Because of that, she grew up a little quicker than other girls her age and developed a strong sense of responsibility. She is very good with making sure that everything that needs to be done is done and was often made the leader of group projects or sections in band. Because of that, though, she feels the need to constantly be in charge and that everything works out better if she just does it herself. However, because she knows that she can't do everything by herself, her rather vicious streak of impatience regularly shows itself. She doesn't like explaining herself more than once, and is often rather irritated with people who can not complete things the first time they try them. And while she has a rather even temper and doesn't outwardly show her irritation towards them, she often forcefully takes over the job and does it herself. She is also very prompt, and is put in a sour mood whenever people are late.

She also has a very sarcastic tongue, something she developed at a young age to try and prove that she wasn't stupid when her grades began to drop. As she grew older, her sarcasm grew more dry and some people found it difficult to distinguish if she was joking or not. She is aware that this, as well as her impatience, are very bad traits of hers and works very hard to try and fix them. (Her friend Emily even flicks her every time she makes a sarcastic comment.) She often slips up, however, which she finds very frustrating. She feels like she's getting better about it, though.

She does have a very tender and compassionate heart, though, and tries to be helpful to those around her. When it came to school, her help often morphed into her becoming the leader of some strange project. But she liked that she was able to offer some kind of relief to her classmates, even if she wasn't fond of all of them. And if anyone ever asked for her help, she never rejected them. Even if all they wanted was a pencil.

She's very confident in herself and her abilities, except when it comes to Japanese. She struggles with languages in general, having had trouble learning a required foreign language in high school as well. When talking to her family and friends, she has no trouble showing off the little Japanese she knows. But when an actual Japanese person tries to speak to her, or one of her coworkers brings it up, she gets incredibly nervous and stumbles over everything she tries to say--even the English parts.

She's a very messy individual who keeps her room in a constant state of disarray, much to her roommate's horror. She likes having her things in disorganized little piles and often gets upset when her friend Emily tries to clean them. However, she insists that the bathroom be cleaned weekly, and she refuses to use public restrooms. (Something Emily teases her mercilessly for.)

She's horribly claustrophobic and starts to hyperventilate if she can't find a clear escape route. (Such as a window or a clear path to a door.) It doesn't come up much, but she nearly passed out at a packed basketball game once which scared all of her friends into never letting her attend another one. (Not to mention they were very nervous taking her into the gym at all.)

Lineage

Josie is American and as far back as she (and her mother) can remember, her family tree consists of Americans. (Though her grandmother on her father's side insists that they have German roots, which no one really believes due to the woman's obsession with the country.) She's from the southern part, Louisiana to be exact, and had never left the south before she graduated high school.

Besides English, she does know a little conversational French. She took four years of it in high school (as was required of her) though very little of it actually stuck in her brain and so she doesn't remember very much. She has also picked up a little Japanese, having lived there for a while as an intern. However, she's terribly slow and is on an elementary level. (Though she works with children, so it's not entirely her fault.) She studies when she has free time, though, because her coworkers in Japan make fun of her.

History

Josie had a fairly standard, cookie-cut childhood. She was born to a middle class family with a CFO for a father and a stay at home mom. When she was three, another child was born--a little boy. At nine another brother was born, and yet another came just before she turned ten. Because her father was often out of town (and sometimes out of the country!) on business, she had to help her mother take care of the troublesome boys who just couldn't understand that frogs and bugs do not belong in the house. Despite the smaller age gap between her and the eldest brother, all three of the boys felt more like her children than her brothers. It was difficult for their mother to handle three little terrors, so Josie stepped in as a part time mom for the majority of the boys' lives.

She had the best schooling her city could offer: a private prep school that was supposed to prepare her for college and ACTs, though she never felt like she learned anything at all. She fell in the lower middle area of the social chain in her high school. As a person, most of the people in her graduating class liked her well enough. She was the kid who usually sat in the back of the class who said funny things on occasion, and always had a pencil if anyone needed it. She would have been a bit more popular had she not been in the high school's band, which was tiny to say the least. Because of that, not many people chose to associate with her outside of school, though she never really liked most of the people in her class anyway and didn't care.

Around her junior year of high school, she had the sudden revelation that she wanted to do mission work. She had joked around a lot about how children in Africa were starving, and then one day she decided that she could just help them rather than use them as a way of guilt tripping her friends. No one really took her seriously, considering she had never been on an actual mission trip. Her parents insisted that she think about it a little more before making what they called a "rash decision". After hearing that for the next two years, she gave up on trying to convince them that she was serious. It wasn't as though she needed their permission with her career anyway.

She attended one year of college more out of obligation than interest in learning. While she knew that she wanted to help people, she had no idea how she was going to do that. So college seemed like a good way to give her time to think about it. Many crazy ideas drifted in and out of her head. First they were orphanages in Africa, then they shifted to women's homes in India, and at one point she was going to teach English in China. Nothing ever really stuck, though, and she was starting to become really worried because she was running out of ideas.

And then he came.

His name was Jason, and he had come to the university to talk about his organization in Japan. How they were organizing choirs for students and provided relief from their very stressful lives while teaching them about the beliefs of the composers they respect so much. Josie didn't know a word of Japanese, nor did she have any knowledge about music other than her very lazy four years of marching band. But the idea was so wonderful to her, and she spoke with him the very next day about how she could be involved.

Everything flew by after that. The older man had accepted her almost immediately. (After a couple of phone calls home, of course.) Before she knew it, she was raising money from local churches and groups at school so that she could go to Japan, and soon enough (with Jason's help) she was flying off to the island country as the newest intern.

Even though she really wanted to help children, she knew that she would probably start off running errands and getting coffee for everyone. After all, that's what an intern did. She expected to be stuck with that job until she learned her way around the very difficult Japanese language and the city of Nagoya. However, she was completely wrong in that assumption. They shoved her right into the children's choir, a groups of ten and eleven year olds who only knew how to say "teacher" in English. Jason and his wife insisted that this was the quickest way she would learn Japanese, as well as try and fix her problem with impatience.

"Never ask for patience," Jason had said with a laugh, and then left her to her doom.

Thankfully, before the children could devour her, she found out she had a partner. Her name was Emily, and she had been studying Japanese for four years and was fluent in the language. She became like a tutor to Josie, helping her with Japanese and getting her involved with the kids. (Who could not seem to remember her name, and just called her "Teacher".) The girls quickly became friends, and insisted on remaining partners even after they were told that Josie knew enough to have her own group.

She developed really strong bonds with the children she was in charge of teaching. Their work went beyond singing and music; Josie had personal relationships with these kids, even when they had trouble communicating with each other. Some children used what little English they knew to tell her about their home and their day at school. Some ranted to her in Japanese, and while she could only pick up about half of what they were saying, they seemed to feel better just having someone to talk to. Some brave children even give her hugs, and they have started having lunch together on holidays and holding little parties. The group of ten or so preteens had completely stolen her heart, and she was so upset with having to return to the States for a while.

Thankfully, her now dear friend Emily was going with her. They flew to LA in hopes of trying to raise enough money to go back to Japan for a couple of years. While Emily took a part time job teaching Japanese, Josie started working at a popular chain of coffee shop. Since she didn't stick around in college long enough to learn anything useful, she decided that working as a barista was the best things she could get. She and Emily live together in a little apartment near the university where Emily teaches, which is fortunately close to the coffee shop as well. They have been in the States for four months now.

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