As the first semester came to an end, I looked forward to starting my second semester with the program, and true to form, it was not boring!
The first day of my first class, I had the students state their name, where they are from and what (if any) English name they have chosen. My first student, a rather dower looking individual lights up and says "My name is valetudinarian". I stopped dead in my tracks looked at him and said "I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?" He did. Six times. He told me he loved this word, it was his favorite GRE word and he wanted it to be his name.
I spent the next two days trying to convince him to change his name. After I found out that his favorite word valedudinarian meant a person of a weak or sickly constitution ( I had no clue what it meant) I really kicked into overdrive to get him to change his name. I used every excuse in the book, including the one that Americans will have no idea what it means, let alone actually be able to pronounce it! Finally, with sadness, after two days of cajoling, he changed his name. He was now Miles Dyson. I had to ask where he got that name, he told me off of a website that sells cleaners.
yup, we're off to a beautiful, predictable start.
No comments:
Post a Comment