Too lazy to update

But I wanted to tell you that I got a new student in one of my classes named T-Mac. Yes, T-Mac, after Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets. I had to have him write his name down on a sheet of paper, just to confirm what I actually heard. He wrote his name down, and told me that the hyphen was for "decoration."

Just a short post on the English names my Chinese students have picked for themselves. Some are straight-up bizarre. The ones that are the worst, are the ones that are perfectly common American English names, but that the student can barely pronounce. And as I've noticed with native Chinese speakers, those are the names with a bunch of R's and L's and TH's. I once met a student named Carl, and it took about 3 and a half minutes for me to figure out what his name was, even after he spelled it out for me.

But as for the really bizarre ones, I have a student named Winy, pronounced just like the name Winnie, but spelled Winy. Oh yes, intentionally. Here's the story. Her Chinese name is Ying, which is translated as the verb "to win." So she used that word, win, and added a Y at the end because her name Ying begins with a Y. Uhhh....Yep, makes perfect sense to me too.

Other favorites: Stone, Penn, Rainy, Maizie, Rocky, and Condy. I've been meaning to ask Condy if he knows about Condoleezza, but I keep forgetting.