A chronicle of Paul and Aubrey's adventures and experiences in Sokcho, South Korea and beyond as they teach English for a year.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Quick! Ugly's coming!

People have confused my name many many times before. Most folks think my name is spelled with a 'd' and not a 'b', so they call me 'Audrey'. I've been called April, Avery, and Aburrida. I had one gym teacher in the sixth grade who addressed me as 'Awberry'. This is nothing new for me.
So I suppose it isn't so shocking that most of my kids can't pronounce the name Aubrey. It's a difficult name in Korean. I can appreciate that. What isn't so becoming is the name that they use which (to them) sounds like Aubrey, and that's Ugly.
In Korea students address their academy teachers by their first name + "teacher" (or most often, just as "teacher"). So Paul is called Paul-teacher. Kirsty is Kirsty-teacher, and Ara is Ara-teacher.
What do they call me? Ugly-teacher. Lovely.
Oh, I've tried and I will continue to try and correct them, to tell them my name is not ugly--it's Aubrey. But I do have to laugh when I'm approaching my classroom and I hear the kids inside whisper to each other "Quick! Ugly-teacher is coming!"
Priceless.

1 Comments:

Blogger trevsmom said...

Hey Aubrey, It is Pam VanderMeer, carey and kris's sister in law. I am totally cracking up over the ugly teacher title. That is too funny. Hey, I sent a little package your way about a month ago and wondered if you ever recieved it? I thought it was a bit strange that there wasn't a zip code....maybe we will have to try again. Hope you are having a great day and thanks again for all the postings!

8:38 PM

 

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