Day #27/31: Your Name

DAY #27: YOUR NAME

I know this is kind of dumb, and some may remember it from when I did a post specifically on it back during training last summer. It really is more of a “you had to be there” inside joke between my cluster. Most of our language classes were focusing primarily on grammar with some vocabulary thrown in (basically we were supposed to learn the new words on our own and practice using them in class). For us that had never had any Cyrillic training, learning the upper and lower case letters was a huge hurdle. But, the training department realizes that once we get out into the “real world” we will encounter cursive writing on a daily basis. And, if you think about it, the differences between the Latin alphabet are pretty remarkable- and that is what most people reading this have grown up with. Imagine learning 3 new alphabets- because even though they are pronounced the same, they look so different. Anyway, they took one day in training to introduce us to cursive writing, just to point out how that we would see it and not to be concerned if we started to run into these letters on the street as they were just new versions of the same letters as opposed to a new language that we might run into once we got to our sites. The only practical application we had to perform in our class was to write our name in cursive. We practiced on our notebooks and then, one by one we got up in front of the class to write our names on the board. First Sara, then me, then Noelia. As we sat down to await further instruction Sara and Noelia began to giggle. When we finally asked why they were laughing, they pointed out that my name was “Cum”. I hadn’t noticed it. Patrick hadn’t noticed it. Just the ladies. Then, of course, our language teacher wanted to understand why it was so funny, so she got clued in on the joke.
Before and during training we told to keep a humorous outlook even in embarrassing moments. It would be the only way to get through without losing your sanity. I’d like to think I have developed the ability to laugh at myself, now more than ever.