I spent the first week of school teaching my students the "first conversation"
me: My name is Ms. Johnson. What is your name?
student: My name is Alexandru.
me: Nice to meet you.
student: Nice to meet you.
I added other pleasantries for more advanced classes, such as
How old are you?
Where are you from?
student: Where are you from, Ms. Johnson?
me: I am from Chicago.
That's right, out of laziness I have claimed Chicago as my home in America. Having lived there for almost 3 whole months, I surely know everything there is to know about the city, right?
In the past, my answers have always been twisted by that question. Sometimes I say everywhere, sometimes I say Wisconsin. At times, when I don't care if the questioner thinks I would marry my cousin, I'll say Arkansas. If I want to seem moderately exotic, I respond with Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. If the questioner wants to get down to the bottom of it, they always ask, "where were you born?" Well, Arizona, then. Because my home address is now in Missouri, I sometimes throw that one into the mix.
Since the average Romanian middle schooler has no clue where or what Missouri, Wisconsin and Arkansas are, and I want them to think I'm from America, not the Philippines, I tell them I'm from Chicago. People know what Chicago is and I don't have to stumble through wrongly conjugated Romanian trying to explain my transient history.
Although now, when I return to the English-speaking world, I'll have another addition to my answer.
2 comments:
I have nowhere near as complicated a where am I from story. But I do have to consistently say Seattle because if I say Washington they always think it's DC and not state. I even got pulled over once for a simple mistake here and they looked at my license and then at me and then let me off. I think they thought I was a diplomat or politician from DC instead of the state by the looks of my ID. Ha.
That I will now have to add Washington DC to my list of places I've lived makes me sad. Not because I don't like DC, but just because it adds another layer of complication.
Post a Comment