My Classmates: Part 3

Some of my Chinese classmates do not have English names. Good for them. It is really hard for native English speakers to get a handle on their names because, as we learned in our linguistic class, some languages do not contain the same sound patterns as others.

Here is the very first conversation I had with a Chinese classmate on the first day of class. Enjoy.

"Hello, it is nice to meet you. What are your names."

"Hi, I am Katherine, What's yours?"

"Hello Kass-in. I am Shszzz." Okay I understand the Chinese pronunciation of my name is always 'Kass-in', but 'Shs-zzz'? She was greeted with several confused American and English faces. "SSSS," pause and seperate hand gesture, "zzzzzzzz". We all smile politely as if we understand this name that lacks vowels.

"My name is Jon," smarmy 50 something English guy responds.

"Oh like an American toilet," Shs-zzz proves herself hilarious.

"And I am Robin," my American friend smiles broadly and waits for a follow up question, and it was a dozy of a question.

"Ro bin?" Shs-zzz slowly and very unsure of herself repeats the name just given to her as if it were an American playing a dirty joke on the foreign kid; however, outside of the speed, the name was far more correctly pronounced than mine.

"Yup."

"Roo? Binn?"

"Yeah, just like Robin Hood"

"Roo bine?"

"Like the bird."

"Rah bahn?"

"As in Batman and..."

*silence*

"R-O-B-I-N"

"Oh!" Shs-zzz suddenly has her moment of clarity. She then says Robin's name to state that she clearly gets in now, "Ro-bin!" Her pronunciation did not change from her original attempt in the slightest.

Then we had many confusing moments with almost all of the Chinese students who learned Robin's name. I don't know what they thought we were saying, but I am pretty sure it is a curse word in Mandarin. If it is, please tell me, and then teach it to me.

My Classmates: Part 2

Yesterday I informed you all about my major that is TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages). My classmates, as I told you yesterday, are mostly Chinese. I am learning all about their culture. Did you know that they randomly choose an English name? It's true. Their English name has nothing to do with their real name or culture. They just think it sounds cool.

Here are the English names of my classmates:

Crystal

Agatha

Betty

Wendy

Vivian

and my personal fav Iris

Is it me, or do these Chinese girls sound like a bunch of old Jewish women?

My Classmates: Part 1

My major is learning how to teach English to non-native English speakers. With this degree I can do almost anything. I can go to America and teach in high schools or adult classes to immigrants. I can do the same in England, Australia, Canada, etc. I can also travel to almost any non-English speaking country and teach school children, business men, college intellectuals, aspiring world travelers, etc. I have no idea what I want to do yet, but I have options if I pass.

My classmates consist of about 30 students that are about my age or a little younger. Well there is one 50 something year old, and he is annoying; there is always one. The weird thing about my class is that out of 30 of us, about 4 of us are native English speakers. Since I am such a good student, I took meticulous notes.

American: 2

British: 2

German: 2

Indian: 1

Taiwan: 3

Oman: 1

Chinese: the rest

We are deconstructing the English language and analyzing the linguistics with people who are still learning the language. Their English is actually pretty good, but it tends to get confusing. One really bizarre part is when we talked about what letters make what sounds. There was no agree-ance in anyway shape or form. The professor said "dai as in day". We said "deh as in day". The Chinese said "What the hell is going on?"

Above is one of the many Chinese grad students (I do not know her specifically) who was picked up by an American mens' lacrosse player (who reminds me of Party Boy with out the irony) in the middle of a rave. The rave was at the student center. This place is weird.

TA

Sometimes English people say "TA". I figured this colloquialism just is. I thought it was cute, but my friend Robin was immediately obsessed when our professor said it to us in passing as he handed out some papers. I told Robin that it is just something they say instead of "thanks". I thought it was like "cheers"; they say "cheers" for any reason: hello, thank you, I agree, let's drink, etc. It is similar to the Jewish "Shalom", which means "hello", "peace", "goodbye", etc.

Robin was not satisfied with this logic. She would not focus on the lecture because her mind was racing with possible meanings of this "TA". I was uninterested in her search for answers, but since I brought my laptop to class and could get a wireless signal, I had to look up possible answers. This is the site we explored while our professor wrote a copious amount of notes. KNOWLEDGE!!!

TA is actually an acronym for Thanks Awfully. I assume that is short for "Thanks an awful lot." Robin and I both felt relief and satisfaction with this new found knowledge. Needless to say, it is my automatic response to any kind gesture. ta!

Books Are Sexy

OH EM GEE you guys. I forgot to mention my favorite description of The Really British Professor. The description is my whole reason for blogging about him. Okay think about Rupert Giles. You don't know who Giles is? Well he is the librarian and watcher on on of my fav all time shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is the patriarchal figure that the protagonist tends to lean on, and he looks like this.The problem with comparing my professor to Giles is that Giles tends to be a bad ass from time to time. Look below to see his awesomeness.

Admit it. You swooned a little. I know you did. Who wouldn't swoon over a man who can pull of a cardigan? So think about Rupert Giles, and get rid of all sexiness and badassness. Instead insert the awkwardness of one Mr. Bean.

Mr. Bean is a British character who gets into all sort of trouble. Even when he is at the beach, he is very unsexy.

Combine Giles and Mr. Bean, and you get The Really British Professor.

Jon

So unlike Rowan University, where I attended undergrad and played four years of varsity lacrosse, Durham has a strength coach and a conditioning coach. I like this because it allows the lacrosse coach to focus on lacrosse, and you feel as though your workout is meticulously planned by someone who is aware of how a work out should be arranged. It's not that my coaches didn't know how, but they did have a whole lot of planning to do; sometimes running was just- well running. Our conditioning coach makes the runs game realistic, and each session is built of the last.

This post though is about the strength coach, Jon. Jon is a tiny man, but no, that is not right. He is huge, but he is at the same time very small. Jon is short; he is as short as I. Jon is also one giant muscle. It is very obvious that he played rugby and that he was good. He is our lifting coach two times a week. Lifting- psh- I can sit on a machine and repeatedly pick up heavy objects at my leisure. Lifting with Jon is not lifting as you know it.

Do you know what a circuit is? Almost any athlete knows of it. You do one min straight of an activity (push ups, sit ups, jump rope, wall sits, etc.), and you do each station about three times. Jon makes us do circuits and only circuits, which sucks, but he also makes us do crazy ass stations. He makes us swing a sledge hammer, lift beer kegs over our heads, throw duffle bags full of sand, flit a giant tractor tire, and run shuttles while holding 30lb weights. Below is said tire.

I swear internet that Jon is secretly trying to train us for the Strongest Man in the World Competition. I will not be surprised when he leads us to a truck with a harness and tells us to move it using only our bodies.

Below are two activities that we, the women's lacrosse team, had to partake in during strength training. Note: my examples ARE from the Strongest Man in the World Competition.

WE HAVE INTERNET

Today is the day that we are allegedly getting internet. My roommates and I are so excited to be hooked up to the information super highway that we are having a We Have Internet Party. The modem is due in the mail anytime today from 7am to 6pm. When it arrives, we will hook it up, and then we will watch YouTube videos. We also plan on drinking beer. The Brits will have hard cider.

We have a list of things we would like to do once internet is available in our little home. The list is on a yellow post-it, and it is mostly comedy videos. We have so much to do today once internet is available.

Above is RAAAAAAAANDY, and it is what I plan on watching once I have internet.

My roommates want to watch the Double Rainbow.

P.s. I wrote this a week ago, and I am not so sure internet will be here. Fingers crossed everybody!

English not American

There are many small differences between English culture and American. I find myself getting lost some days in all the mess that is culture shock; however, the two places are really similar. It would almost be easier to visit some completely different country that had no American logos, no greasy foods, no cars, or no similarities at all. If I wondered into a Martian country, I would expect to be greeted by innumerable differences, but here I am constantly shocked by the tiny differences in my every day experiences. I can't even really articulate it. I suppose my roommate put it best when she said, "This country is unintentionally sneakily different", and it lulls you into a false sense of sameness when suddenly they are cursing at you in practice, drinking the night before a game, driving on the left side of the road, or judging you for drinking a beer instead of a cider. It's not bad; it's just hard to remember that it is not home.

The Really British Professor

So as I was saying the other day, I attended a meeting led by a Really British Professor. My football friend happened to draw this man. Note that he is lanky, pale, bumbling, apologetic, and all and all nerdy. Also pay attention to the students all awkwardly sitting on the floor because there was far too few seats for all MA students.We also tried to sneak in a picture of him, but it was hard because she stupidly left the flash on at first; everyone was looking for the two idiots who were trying to take a pic during a lecture. She also accidentally lost control of an apple core that she was working on so that it flew across the table and broke into several pieces. Needless to say, we were already seen as weird and rude.

We also were lectured by this guy. Can you guess what department he is in.

Did you guess? He is an IT guy. Here is a drawing depicted by my apple throwing friend.

My daily Walk

okay, I have complained to a lot of you about my dialy walk. Turns out it is only 1.5 miles. here is what is looks like for thoes of you who really do care,

Queen of Maiden Castle

The Durham sport complex is known as Maiden Castle. I have no idea why.

Because I play a sport, I know many people who also play sports. I know the whole women's lacrosse team because I am on it, and I know the men's team because most are American and wanted to meet the other Americans. I know the whole women's basketball team because my roomate plays for them, and I know most of the men basketball players because my roomate is friends with them. I know most of the women's football team because one of my teammates sometimes plays for them. I know a couple of women vollyballers because they live with some basketball girls. All in all, I know a lot of people that frequent Maiden Castle.

When I walk past any pitch (field), through the gym, in the locker rooms, into the weightroom, or near the coaches' offices, I see many people I know. I am constantly saying, "Hey." What I am telling you all is that I am really popular and pretty much th Queen of Maiden Castle.

PGT- WTF?

Today was the day that I was to figure out some stuff about my actual classes. I am here to get an MA in TESOL after all. I have had no idea is teaching English as a second language would be a language, education, or humanity major, nor did anyone I spoke to. An American on the football team (I’ll say it again soccer) is studying TESOL as well, so we are lost together. Right back to today, we had a meeting at 9am in a hall in a building that houses goring language students, translation studies, anthropology, and English. We figured, hell it must be the right place if the email we go said so.

We sit down in the moderately sized lecture hall, and we get out our notebooks so we appear to be intelligent ready to learn students. Then in walks in a large group of Asian students. We thought it was weird that so many students were not native English speakers, and we thought it was even weirder that there were so many people in our major. We hear one girl nervously say ,”I hope I am in the right place for French language studies.” Another girl replies, “Well I am studying German, so you should be alright.” We make to gather our things and get the hell out of there when simultaneously four people sit in our row blocking us in and we see two or our friends, and American laxer and Spanish baskeballer. One is majoring in multicultural studies and the other is translational studies. We sit back down and wonder, “Maybe if everyone is a little different, that means we are in the right place.”

In walks a professor and the best was to describe this man is Really British. Really British Professor turns on a power point, and it says PGT. My friend and I start to panicky whisper to each other, “Is that acronym for us? Are we in the right place?” While we hopelessly ask each other, a girl in the front of the room asks the professor the same thing. He responds, “You should be alright” and leaves again. Unfortunately we did not hear what major she was in because we were too busy talking.

We then swallow some pride and ask a girl next to us. She seemed to think the same thing that we were all similar subjects until she heard we wanted to TEACH English as a second language. Then she had a “oh boy” look on her face. “Shit,” I say to my football friend, “what is we were supposed to be with education. They went yesterday.” We tried to plan an escape route for when the Really English Professor made an announcement that we were in the very wrong place; however, we had equipment for practice and could not easily pack it up and run without being assholes. Also the entire room was filled to the brim with students. The seats were filled, and everyone else was sitting on the floor; there was no floor space left.

The professor walks in again and begins talking. He does not define PGT, so my football friend and I give up. We figure that we’d just be trapped in the wrong meeting. Turns out, after a good solid 5 min of listening to the Really British Professor, we were in the RIGHT room. It was a meeting for all students getting MAs. Whew. We were so giddy from the relief that we drew pictures the whole time. Post to come featuring the pics.

Remember My Football Friend?

I have been talking about one friend a lot because well.... she is super awesome. She is obviously the coolest person I've met. She also is the best player on the football team. My roommates tell me to calm down about how fabulous my new friend is, but she started a blog; now I get to share her awesomeness with the world. My connection with Robin, yes she has a name and it is Robin, is that we are both Americans playing a sport at Durham University, and we both studying MA TESOL.

Check out her blog.

Search for Internet

My posts have been more infrequent than usual because of the intense lack of internet in my house. I truly have an internet addiction, and I have been dealing with the shakes for two weeks. The best way to find an internet fix is at a café. Durham is a cute little city with a lot of options, so I can get my fix easy enough; however, it is not free. I have to buy a cup of coffee each time I want internet, and if I want to avoid awkward moments of being stared at by the local girls who work in the shops, I must continually buy coffee while I use the internet for more than a half hour.

As you probably have guessed, my internet addiction has lead to a coffee addiction. What a cruel cruel world. Although, Lorelai Gilmore has a coffee adiction, and she is one of my favorite female characters of all time. (pictured above)

FOOTBALL

When I say football, I mean soccer.

Swap Day

The last day of preseason was Friday. My coach thought it would be fun to change things up. The first rule was to have all the Americans speak with English accents and the Brits with American.

(Just to be clear my internet fan-base, I am well aware that accent is the incorrect terminology. No English speaking person can have an accent in the English Language. An accent is when you bring aspects of your native language into a whole new one. The difference between American and British is a dialect. No one but me seems to care about this difference, so we will continue to call is an accent. Keep in mine dear readers, that every time the word "accent" is incorrectly used, I cringe.)

Well it was hilarious. The Brits had pretty good American accents (cringe), but they sounded like they were in great pain with each word. They informed the Americans that we tend to create an accent (cringe) that does not exist. It is not American, but it is not English. Some Americans could not even get the fake accent (cringe) down. They ended up sounding like drunken pirates. "I fell on me arse!" The coach just sounded special.

One British girl thought the pinnacle American was Regina George from the best movie ever Mean Girls. We Americans laughed at this idea, and then as she put on a perfect American accent (cringe) and had ideal colloquialisms, we realized that Regina George is America.

Go and watch this movie. Study the awfulness of the high school girls, and realize that is the most accurate representation of your culture. "On Wednesdays we wear pink."

Bin Raiding

Every go dumpster diving? It is not a proud activity to partake in. In college I furnished my apartment with couches and tables found abandoned next to dumpsters. I'm not proud, but it was cheap living. Now that I attend Uni (that simply means I'm in college in England), I have regressed to the cheap life once again. Some British football (soccer) girls invited me and my roommates out for bin raiding.

They said we were to go to the Tesco bins on a Sunday night because that was when they throw away "all the good rubbish". We were to seriously go in the trash and pick out food. We Americans dressed in all black and brought empty backpacks (rucksacks) to fill with goodies. We were highly embarrassed, but we figured that it would be a fun experience if nothing els. The Brits meet us in the market square, and they were dressed for a night of hitting on boys. They laughed at out ninja attire, but since it was raining and we were about to pick through trash, we had the last laugh.

Yes, it was raining. It always freaken rains in England, but the Brits seem to always be surprised by the weather. So ten pm on a Sunday, we sneak into a private ally that looks like a good

spot to kill a hooker, and we stumble down some sketchy steps that led to the Tesco reject food. SCORE! We find bread, pasta, baking soda, and frozen pizza. We thought that we hit the jack pot.

Here is a picture of our success.

After much giggling, we literally run up the stairs and though the rapey ally in the rain dropping boxes of butter along the way because we had more food than space in our bags. We take the food to our house and we divid up the goodies. Believe it or not internet, the food was gross. By gross I mean really expired and covered in hairy mold. We opened every single frozen pizza in search for one good pie, but as you can see they were nasty.

If it weren't for the laughs, the night was pretty much a waste, but we put on a kettle of tea and taught the Brits how to play catch phrase.

Home Sweet Tesco

In Durham City, the place to shop is Tesco. It is a super market, convenient store, and wall-mart equivalent. There is seriously three Tesco stores in Durham. We often visit the grociery store one. because A. it is the closest place to buy food and B. it is cheap as hell. Well it is cheap if you buy Tesco brand, and we do. Here are some items that we buy the Tesco brand version.

Band-Aids

Fajita mix

cereal

shampoo

paper

tampons

wine

chicken

lunch meat

cookies

pizza

As you have probably guessed by now, we buy everything Tesco.

Love Shack

It turns out that the sleepy little city of Durham is not so sleepy. The first Friday here was a going out on the town kind of night because it signified the successful completion of our first week. I thought we would go to a couple of pubs and drink beers. Nope nope nope.

Firstly, no one drinks beer. Well at least no British girl drinks beer. All the Americans were mocked for our manly love of the yellow brew. They all had hard cider or some crazy ass cocktail concoction that the bar tender made up and called that night's special. That night's special at the pub was something called a "Woo-Woo". I felt like an ass when I ordered one.

Secondly, we only went to one pub, and it played techno dance music the whole time. I'm not complaining, but I am not used to it. Once we got good and silly we went to a club. Actually we went club hopping! I am used to clubs being only in big cities that are a bitch to get to. These clubs were about two blocks from my house.

The final destination of the night was a little place called The Love Shack. The music was out of control, the locals were dressed to the nines, the workers looked like hookers, and the drinks were not cheap. This is a normal night with my lacrosse team. I had a nice time, but I spent the next night watching movies with my roommates and drinking tea.

Day 4; a hit and run

A girl on my team is a little nutty. There is always one. She is the girl that cheats. We haven't had one official game (or match if you want to be British about it), and yet I know that she will break every rule there is to win. She cheats her won teammates in practice. She is far too aggressive, and almost every girl on the team has a bruise on her arm to prove it.

Well she offered to drive me and my roommates home after practice because she is actually nice. We say "hell to the yeah" because after four hours of preseason, we were far to tired to do that long ass walk up hill to our crappy little house. Day three of our free ride took a neat turn. It was a hard left into a big black van.

(every car in England looks like this one)

She, too concerned with the bumpin jams blarring our her speakers, did not look behind her as she slammed on the gas in reverse, and we hit the car parked next to us before we even left the field (or pitch).

We get out and examine the hit car- huge ass gash stretching 2 feet long and 2 inches thick. We inspect her car; only the glass to her tail light was broken. Upon hearing this news, She hurriedly tells us to get back in the car and speeds away. We ask if she should leave her info, and she said, "Oh yeah, but it makes more sense to take you home first." All the passengers (3 of us cuz cars in Europe cannot fit much more than that) silently agree that we were just apart of a hit and run accident our first week in this country.

She swears she left her information on a note on the van, but he has not contacted her yet. If her on field morality is any example of how she lives her life, she left no such note. She also never drove us home again.