English Names

Korean names are extremely long and difficult for us to remember. They all sound the same to me and even though I try really hard to pronounce them correctly, I still get laughed at. Our school understands that we 'foreigners' have a really hard time so they encourage the students to come up with English names. The kids love to pick English names, but nothing stops them from changing them when they find something they like better. One of my students today was Claire for half the class and then became Alex for the second half. I also had a little boy in my class yesterday named 'Mr K.' I started laughing because I thought it was funny, but apparently no one else saw the humour. Sometimes the kids hear English names and then attempt to copy them, but parts become distorted along the way. Tonight I had a sweet little girl named 'Yulie.'
We did a few loads of laundry the past few days, but we still weren't convinced about our laundry soap. We decided that we'd be safer with powder soap so Blake went out this morning and got some.
We have a Korean friend named 'Gavin' and he's been really helpful to us as we adjust to South Korea. Gavin also works at the school, but does more of the administrative type jobs. He doesn't speak English well so we struggle to communicate, but we've noticed improvements in his language skills even in the short amount of time that we've been around him. He wants to learn English so he hangs out with us. We went out for dinner with him tonight and it was such a blessing to have someone who can mediate between us and the waitress. Though we do still love those pictures ;) We continue to improve with the chopsticks, but the waitress tonight watched us and then brought out forks. When she saw that we were jokingly offended she rushed back with wooden chopsticks because they're easier to use. We thought we were doing so good, but apparently we're still the clumsy foreigners!