Finals are done, hello grading!

So I had this brilliant plan that eventually I would blog about all of the crazy names that my students have.  I was going to write that post last night as I was grading their finals, and I even began making a list of the names.

But then I realized -- maybe that post would still be funny, but it wasn't as funny to me as it was at the beginning of the semester. 

After long enough in China, it becomes very difficult to remember what is and is not a normal English name, and it just doesn't seem terribly relevant.  So my students named Panda and Vampire and Savis and Wisdom and Vinki and Rainky and Fairy and Gang Woo and Yellow and Coca and Sosy and Simy and Talent and Sky and Leaf and Ice and Seven --well, those are just their names, and now I have a semester-worth of memories associated with them by those names, and it seems weird to think of changing them.

I think a lot of life in China is like that.  At the beginning, it's really strange to do dishes by filling up a plastic tub in the shower (because that's where the hot water is), and it's strange to take taxis all the time (because they are not that expensive in China), and it's strange to not be able to drink water from the tap (because that's habit), and it's strange to be on a bus so full that you and three other people are standing down in the stairwell and nearly getting smashed by the doors every time they open, and it's strange to be practically illiterate.

But then -- gradually -- those things stop seeming so weird and you realize that you're doing all of those things by habit.  It makes readjusting to living in America challenging, because your brain has to compartmentalize what is okay in China and what's okay in America -- or decide which things you want to hold onto in both places.  

I love living in China, but sometimes it's confusing because there are so many things that are so different from what my life would be like in America... but they are just totally normal here, so I don't think about them much.  It's hard to know what to talk about with people who aren't in China, because so much of it doesn't make sense until you live here.

And maybe it doesn't make sense even then... but it works.  :)