Lily

Thursday I got a new student.  Like new to the academy, not just new to me.  The fun part of new students is that if they don’t have their English name chosen yet I get to name them.

Each student gets to pick their English name when they start with our academy and they can choose anything they want.  There are several named Amy, Sunny, David, and Jon.  Those are the most popular from what I can see. There is the occasional Batman, Superman, and I have a Simpson in one of my classes.  Yes, named after The Simpsons.  They are hugely popular here. I also have a Harry P but I think that may be an unintentional reference.

Back to my new girl.  She’s in 8th grade and very pretty.  (It’s Korea, they are all very pretty.) It also turned out that the other two students from class were absent so we got to spend some time on this name thing.  After all, choosing your new name is an awfully big deal.  The first few names I thought of she didn’t care for so I made a list. I came up with about 25 names (primarily first and middle names of most the girls in my life) and we slowly marked out names until we found a winner.

Lily.

She chose Lily.  I can’t even say that without smiling.  I love my little niece so much and I love that she chose that name.  (In case you were wondering, Tina is the only family name that made it to the top 4.)

My classes so far have been a blast.  The few elementary classes I have though are definitely my most challenging and I am trying very hard to learn to speak slower for them. Mostly the students aren’t allowed to bring food to class but today one of my students brought the funniest little snack I could imagine.  I had to take a picture.

Sushi.  Well, it’s called something different because it has eggs, ham, carrot, cucumber and a few unidentified items but it’s still sushi to me.  And it was good! I couldn’t help but laugh, she kept it wrapped in foil the whole time and just bit it off like a sandwich from Subway.   All the kids share their food with me so I get to try all the fun foods.  Yesterday I had corn bread with a cooked egg in the middle.  Familiar flavors, both very good, but they just don’t work together.  Not to my American tastes anyway.

I just finished my first full week here and it’s awesome.  I absolutely love it.  Definitely different, and brand new challenges everywhere I look, but totally awesome. I enjoy all (ok, most) of my classes, but my middle-schoolers are still my favorite.  I knew they would be.

I will leave you with a picture of some of my 4th grade girls. We had a great time today!

Behind them on the board they had written “I like Andrea & Amy”.  :)