more on names

we have to use all chinese all the time here. no exceptions. (besides talking to our beloved ones in the states) but aside from that, there are no exceptions. at least once a week we get a reminder in our mailbox restating why exactly ACC is the program that it is and that when we choose to go to ACC we knew what we were getting into. yesterday we received a letter from two anonymous students who had transgressed their english vows and they reiterated the party lines and encouraged us to continue upholding our part despite their transgressions. ;-)

it's intense to say the least. some words are permittable if the situation is dire enough: "youtube" (facebook is now 脸书), "USB port", "Morgan Stanley 公司," my friend back home named "Alice".

beyond these deaf-eared transgressions, it's all chinese. including our names. this present a bit of a problem for many of us. unlike the liberal arts education of my past, we don't play icebreaker name games at the beginning of each class, in fact our classes change every week. what is more, chinese names are much harder to remember than "Tim" or even "Anastasia". I know maybe 8 people's names (the easy ones plus my roommate's) The rest we've taken to using more mneumonic-friendly nomenclature. the guy down the hall from paris is called "french person" (法国人), my roomate's orginal name was too hard for him to remember how to write so after considering naming himself 1,2,3 (一二三) he changed it to "kelin" which about equals "colin". my name always causes problematics because it really has nothing to do with my english name like most people's, thus i've been renamed "Wang" (王) or "Mr. Wang" (王先生).

it's the little things that make this an experience i suppose.



useful phrase for Americans in china talking about politics, or anything really:
自己打自己的脸 - one hits one's own face - i.e. hypocritical