Trouble Making Team

 
One of the best parts of being on a team is getting to know the students of my teammates.
It creates for an interesting relationship as even though I am a teacher, I am not their teacher.
There is one student in particular who has won the hearts of all of Team Harbin and thankfully she is not my student [or else there is no way that we would have the relationship that we have]. I have even mentioned her before in a previous blog post; her name is Julia.
Julia is a sophomore student, a class monitor, and a very responsible one at that. She is the most outgoing student I have ever met and she talks incredibly fast. Her English is faster than mine. Her friends often tease her because speaking fast is a part of her ‘dialect’. Julia’s hometown, unlike many of the students here, is really far away.

We have had several opportunities to have dinners with students. At one of these dinners we were telling “the sophomores” that we needed to find Chinese names for ourselves. I was telling Julia the story of what happened in my classes when I asked my students for help.
“I told them ‘the time has come for me to choose a Chinese name. I have no idea what it should be', and then one of them shouted ‘di san xian! Your favorite Chinese food’ {at which point Julia erupted in laughter, barely able to contain herself} And then I quickly told them that ‘di san xian’ could not be my Chinese name but then they shouted ‘guo bao rou!’ at me!” At this point, Julia erupted into a much deeper laughter. Obviously, naming your English teacher traditional Chinese dishes is not the recommended thing to do, and although I was completely aware of the fact that my students were only messing with me, I did not expect the following to come from Julia's mouth:

“Guo bao rou. This is the perfect name for you”
“Julia, I want my Chinese name to mean something. I don’t want to be remembered as a slab of meat.”
“Guo bao rou. It is delicious, it is sweet, and it is everyone's favorite. It is you!”

You can bet there was much arguing after this point, yet any argument I find myself in with a student, I always end up losing. Nonetheless, my Chinese nickname is officially “guo bao rou”, which Julia has proclaimed to every student of mine that crosses my path. [yes, nickname, I eventually got a real one too]. It has become quite the joke amongst the freshman class that their teacher, Miss Kayla, has an alias of a sweet and sticky fried pork dish. Not going to lie, guo bao rou is absolutely delicious and a special dish that is only found in the dongbei [northeast] China. Super special.

Julia and myself are what we jokingly call a "trouble making team". We read each others minds. We get each other. We finish each others jokes. It would only be fitting that both parts of the team would have a nickname; Julia also has an alias known as "gong pao ji ding" {Kung Pao Chicken, for all you Chinese scholars out there}. It is quite the common knowledge that we are a pair, that we are a team, and that any time Guo Bao Rou and Gong Pao Ji Ding cross paths on this tiny campus, chaos and energy are released into the universe. A very special relationship, people. One that will forever continue no matter if miles or oceans separate.