english names and goodbyes

i got asked about english names a couple days ago (hey shayla). 98% of students at english academies usually take on an english name as well. this is to get more involved in the learning process, and because a lot of foreigners have difficulties pronouncing korean names properly. it took me a few months to get a good hang of it and even now i get some that are curveballs sometimes. yeong eon for example.

so when a student comes along without an english name, sometimes you get to give them one! depending on the teacher this can be a great, or terrible thing. some stranger names of students at the moment: lysol, milk, spongebob, jet, santa. i promised a number of my old students that i'd try to name some korean students after them. so this is an update on that.

i think it's a bit rude to just give names, so i usually write about 5 choices on the board and let them choose. usually i do 4 MO names and one crazy name that i don't really let them choose (like "mr. dangerous" or "sparky") anyways, so far i've had the following names chosen: jacob, brittany, dylan, gabriel and abby. there were also two special cases: su-bin and ye-rim. on the first day of class, they refused to tell me either their korean names OR english names. so they became shayla and shannon. next class they relented and told me their real names, but it was too late.

i'm just glad when a student isn't named 'david' or 'sally.' for some reason a very large percentage of my students have those names. they're not bad names, but i need more variety! i had 5 davids out of 50 students one semester. there's a lot of other really good names too, students!

and on the goodbyes note:
my good friend alex left last evening. other teachers have left since i've arrived, but i've known him almost the longest and i lost my video game buddy. quite sad. he should be back in florida in a few hours, i'm a little bit jealous. i've finally hit my six month mark (that's crazy), so there's more goodbyes coming in not too long. but it also means a lot of my friends are pushing to do more things. i think we're organizing a trip to japan in may. hooray.