Starting Out....my first semester in my new program!

Ah, culture and language! Can't separate the two, and to be honest, would you really want to try? The richness of my experiences and the stories that I go home with on a daily basis prove to me over and over again that various humans from around the world, herded into a classroom and forced to speak a lingua franca can make for some very amusing stories!

My first class was a listening/speaking class. I had twelve students, all from China. Being the responsible teacher, I asked the students to introduce themselves. It is a well known practice that many Chinese students take English names, so being in the know, I procedued to ask for introductions. I should have known this was going to be interesting when the first student introduced himself as "Peter Pan". As I moved around the room, I got more interesting names, like Magic. The best, however came from Robin, who asked me to call him....and I quote "Robin Hood, King of English forest."

Then there was a girl who wanted to be called banana. I asked her to clarify why she wanted to be named banana and she simply stated, " I like the way it sounds". I came home quite amused with this bit of information and told my companion about it. A few days went by and my companion returned with some horrifying news. "I have some colleagues at work who are Asian American and they informed me that banana is a slur." "What?" I exclaimed in horror! I had no clue about this bit of rancid news. In any case, I was determined to go into class the next day and get banana to drop her name. "But I like that name" she said innocently. " I know you do, but banana is the name of a fruit and frankly, Americans will react surprised when you introduce yourself as banana! "But I know people who name is Apple". Thanks to Gwenyth Paltrow I was having a much harder time making my case. "I understand", I said gingerly, but to be honest there are much prettier names you can take in English."

Truthfully, the slur was terrible in its own right, but all I could think of was the obvious connection of the very phallic fruit and my feminism. I just couldn't let this beautiful young girl walk around calling out banana, banana! I cringed at the thought. Luckily in the end, she decided to change her name. This was the start of a very long and interesting first semester