Official

Alright, I drive a Subaru the other is a Vet now lets get in the water and lets get wet. I am now officially "Teacher Jon". I walked into my first class on Wednesday afternoon and greeted the class with a "good afternoon class" and they all said at the same time "good afternoon Teacher Jon", I almost shat. I mean first of all the fact that they all knew my name already was unreal and I had no idea I was going to be dubbed Teacher Jon on my first day of teaching. After a brief introduction of myself and the students to me the class was underway. I already mentioned that the first class was going to be on food, so immediately I dove into the flash cards and started the lesson with some simple vocabulary. To my surprise the kids already had a pretty good grasp on most types of food. Here are a few items that posed a bit of a problem for some students like big Willy, and little Lulu.

Pizza - PIZZA

Chicken- CHICKEN

Fish - FISH

Ice Cream - ICE CREAM

Noodles - NOODLES

Pie - PIE

I think by the end of class everyone had a solid grip on all the different kinds of food. The names of the kids have been baffling me since day one. I have run into kids named Stanley, Berny, Jimmy, Candy, Kiki, Lulu, Charlie, Willy, Kenny, Norton, Terry, Jerry, Sally, and Archy. With the exception of Kiki and Lulu all of these names seem fit for a 40 year old white man or women and not a 7 to 10 year old Asian boy or girl. I couldn't help but wonder how the parents of these kids could come up with such strange names for their babies, I mean imagine a Chinese baby named Jerry or Terry or Kenny, its funny right?
Anyway, I finally got to the bottom of the name fiasco on Friday afternoon. I was sitting at my desk minding my own business when this girl I work with Eva walk by and I said "Hi Eva" and she turned around and said "thats not my name" and I said "Oh, I'm sorry I thought it was Eva", and she said "Well it was, except I had to change it because there is another Eva that works at another one of our branches", so I inquired further and it turns out that they pick their own English names. The kids pick names for themselves when they first come to our school, same with Chinese teachers. Luckily I already have an English name. Back to Eva, she needed to come up with a new name and she pick Nadia. I told her Nadia is a terrible name and that she should change it to Fanny. She loved it and now her new name is Fanny.

This is my teaching uniform, we have to wear this on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It is made of a nice polyester, very breathable.