a short meditation on names, and why you should never translate them phonetically.

today i was marking notebooks and asked one of my students to tell me the meaning of her chinese name in english. after a long time of trying to explain it, i finally understood that it means "soft feathers." its a really nice name, i like the meaning, the characters are pretty. but i realised that, as i was complimenting her name, she was giggling. "whats so funny?" i asked. "your chinese name teacher, hahaha, is very funny." my name was just translated phonetically to get my chinese name. toms (which goes first in chinese) was translated into "tang" 湯 which means "soup." while this sounds funny in english, it is a pretty common surname in taiwan, so it isn't the funny part. my given name though, katie: "kai di" 凱蒂 means "trimphant brainstem." since this was just translated by finding characters with the closest sounds, my chinese name literally means "soup, triumphant brainstem." excellent. the student went on to explain to me that even though i have a strange name, its ok, because i am "america people" and everyone will know i'm a foreigner. as if i needed my name to prove to the people on this island that i'm foreign, haha.

today...ah, just another monday. it's rainy today and randomly cold again. hope spring comes back soon...

here are some photos from what i've been up to lately: saturday night's lantern festival near taipei 101, right in the heart of the city! people had made many traditional lanterns in honor of the new year. courtesy of my friend kristen and her snazzy new camera, because i am always forgetting mine...