mister deer

I haven't updated on my health in a little while. Well, no news is good news in my situation. I saw my doctor on Thursday, and I looked good enough to not have to go back for 3 weeks. I can barely remember what it's like to go 3 weeks without a hospital visit.

I've been working at my school for about 9 months now I think, and some students still don't know my name. Korean students don't call their teachers Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So, or use any part of their teachers name. They simply call their teacher the Korean word for teacher, which is sun-saeng-nim. So it's kinda strange for them to call a teacher by name, and so quite often I'm simply Teacher. But, at an English academy, the western way of doing things prevails.

It worked the same way at my school last year, but it was easier last year because from the get-go I was introduced to the kids simply by my first name. However, this year, this school has sought to make the school seem even more westernized, and I was introduced as Mr. Diehl. This seems easy enough to you and me, but of course it's foreign to a Korean kid. They don't understand that Diehl is my family name, not a given name, nor do they understand what "Mr." means. As a result, they drop the "Mr." and to a lot of them I simply become "Diehl". This bugs me, as for some reason I've never like being called simply by my last name. Even more so from a 9 year old.

Another wrinkle in this whole name issue is these kids will associate your name with any word that pops into their head which starts with the same letter, and it becomes a joke to call you that. In my case, and this has stuck for like 7 months, I, at times, am Mr. Dinner.

Some of the older kids understand that I am Mr. Diehl. They also understand the similarity my name has to the word "deer". My name and "deer" are even more similar sounding to a Korean, because they use the same letter for R and L sounds in their language, and so often confuse the two in English. As a result, I can frequently be referred to as Deer, or the Korean word for deer, which is Sa-seum.

I got fed up with all these a couple of months ago, and figured to hell with how western this school wants to seem. These kids don't understand it, and I'm tired of being called any one of a half dozen things. So I just told all my students to call me Sim. It's taken some time and getting used to for them, but they are starting to come around to it. Though, and this will probably never change, I'm still predominantly referred to as Deer.