Biblical

Well I hate to brag but Yom Kippur is already over here in China and I finally had some dinner. My classes actually didn't go that badly considering that by the end of the day I was a little light headed whenever I stood up. The Chinese people I meet didn't really seem particularly interested that it was some holiday they had never heard of. I was actually pretty surprised by this given there fascination with all things western. Maybe they are just taught that it is uniportant or something or maybe unlike pretty much everything else American they just don't think its cool. I had an odd day also because in my Thursday morning class, which is probably the strongest of all my short classes, a bunch of the girls came up to me during the break asking for English names. I knew before I came here that a number of Chinese took English names when dealing with westerners, Jackie Chan is known as Chéng Lóng here, but I was never sure how I felt about the whole thing. There's just something sort of insulting about insisting that people should take on new names for your convenience. Renaming was used as a tactic of missionaries to demean the cultures of those they were preaching too including in America where Native American children were forced to go to special schools and renounce there old names. So I was always pretty touchy about what some teachers do which is essentially assign English names to the students. On the other hand quite frankly all Chinese names sort of sound alike to me. I know how that sounds but for a person like me who already has a problem with names to be bombarded by a hundred names which seem only to use slightly separate combination of like four or five sounds I become totally lost. So basically what I have done is just to call people by there English names if they give on to me and not exactly tell anyone to have one. I have something like 160 students in my classes and I see them about once a week, I wasn't going to remember their names anyways.

But today a couple of the girls just decided they wanted me to give them names. Naming I've always thought is a pretty important thing. Since it's Yom Kippur, or at least it was, I've been thinking a little about the bible. It's a pretty big deal when God gives Adam the power to name everything. For me even when I have to name a character in a video game it seems to take me 15 minutes, so trying to name the girls in about 20 seconds was a little rough. The first one who asked I named Lizzy because I have been watching the Showtime show The Tudors, about Henry VIII, and the name Elizabeth, his daughter, was on my mind. After that was Emily since I had been talking about the Brontes with someone. Then Jessica since it seems to be such a popular name now. And finally Mary another biblical name, I also seem to like -y names. It's just so odd to casually hand down something that seems as important as names or to be unable to even give a good explanation as to how I came up with it. Though next time I'm naming people after flowers.