Einstein and Advertising

There are a number of hilariously mistranslated signs around Nanjing, and often when I see them I don't have my camera handy to record it. For example, there's a cafe not too far from my apartment called "Space Time Coffee Trajectory." I just can't get over the name, especially since it's an average Chinese coffee place. One amusing sign I did manage to capture is below. Two androgynous (mostly because the one on the right, whom I have been assured is a famous male actor, is wearing earrings) hikers are out for a walk on the mountain one sunny day when what should appear but a pile of disproportionately sized electronics! Our ambiguously-gendered protagonists are clearly thrilled.
Another week of teaching is almost done, and yet again my middle schoolers provide the most amusing stories. During class I had the students talk in groups, and I noticed one boy just sitting by himself.

Me: Why don't you work with them? (pointing to girls behind him)
Him: They're girls!
Me: What, you can't talk to girls?
Him: Maybe when I'm older.
Me: Okay, how about them (pointing to some nearby boys)
Him: They're girls, too!
Me: Okay, who do you want to work with?
Him: Him! (pointing to a boy at the back of the class)

After this exchange, he ran off and sat on the other boy's lap for the rest of the group work. Certainly not what would happen in an American middle school. The school, view from across the main courtyard:


I did an activity with the middle schoolers where I wrote some questions on the board and had them decide whether it was appropriate to ask each one to someone they had just met in China and in the U.S. I was surprised when I got to the last question "How much money do you make?" and the students unanimously responded that it was not okay to ask this question to a stranger in China. I asked them, "Then why do so many Chinese people ask me how much money I make right when I meet them?" They seemed shocked to hear that this happened to me and offered several explanations: "Maybe they are thieves." "Maybe you are a foreigner" (yes, I am...) "Some people are very impolite" "Maybe they want to show that you are friends" (interesting...).

I continue to enjoy my middle school teaching the most, but I've started to get to know the second graders in my private Cambridge textbook class, and they're incredibly cute. I'll get some pictures soon. And for the record, the kid I named Matt decided he wanted to change his name to Sky. "I even know how to write it," he told me in Chinese. I couldn't argue with that...