Names and "About You"

Greetings my loyal reader(s?). Things have been going well for me in Beijing. Life has returned to its normal predictable patterns. My students are doing well, most of the time listening and paying attention. They are still highly entertaining at times, with hidden gems of insight into the world (in a second language) that make me laugh out loud from time to time.

Student names continue to be highly entertaining. Some of my favorites this year are... Lake, Fly, Nike, Bean, Spy and of course Sit. In addition I have a Lindy (pronounced Linda), 2 Yuki’s in the class and a class that features Dran and Duan. These lead to such situations as yelling sit Sit. It has become a favorite activity to go over the English names every year to find my favorites. One name disappointment this year is that my friend Coffee has changed his name. He did pick a good one though, Matthew, but still. Matthew is no Coffee. My Chinese name translates to Tall Sky. Last year, every time that I walked into his class he would say hello tall sky, which I would reply with hello tasty drink. I miss that ritual this year, replacing it with hello me. Not as good, but an able substitute.

In addition to their English names, this past week brought additional entertainment. I had my students fill out a sheet with information about them. This led to a wealth of funny answers. One of the questions asked them to list three things they would like to bring to a desert island. In addition to the normal answers, iPod, computers, cell phones I also got the more creative answers like a camel, a ship and captain, airplane and pilot and finally, my favorite, sexy girls. This sheet also gave me such nuggets as (favorite food section and where) KFC being from France, a wide variety of spellings and general confusion at the failure to follow directions. All in all though, this exercise gave me a bit more insight into what makes my students unique, rather than a mass of faces and bodies that all wear the same uniform, have the same color hair, same eye color and in general, a similar upbringing. Over 100 cities within China are represented within the 7th and 8th graders home towns. This is an impressive list, though the majority come from Eastern provinces. While the majority of the students do hail from China, there are an additional 15 countries represented among the students, including Sweden, Italy and Bahrain. In addition to coming from a wide variety of cities and provinces, they have also made great strides in visiting the world, having visited over 55 countries.