Zippy

This is one of my grade threes, Zippy. Yes, Zippy. What an unfortunate choice for a name. Most students take an English name in kindergarten, usually chosen by their parents. I'm still not completely sure why they're so pressured to take an English name, I'm assuming it's to make it easier on the English teacher and for an easier transition if they move to a Western country. Anyway, because of lack of knowledge of English names, you get a lot of titles like Zippy, or Simba (like the lion, one of the kindergarten students) or Diamond (in the same class as Simba) or S-White or Iron.

Of course my name, translated phonetically into Chinese means "clean pure cloth." So it's kind of like being called "Sterilized Towel" or something. I remember Darryl told me his name in Chinese is "da roh." Da means big and roh means meat, so then his name was "Big Meat." Goodness.