I dub thee

By my fifth year working in a lab, I was fairly jaded about the amount of excitement one could get up to. The New Thing that happened yesterday wasn't strictly lab-related, but I doubt I would have gotten this opportunity had I not been working in a lab.

We have an exchange student from a medical school in China. We introduced ourselves to each other yesterday, and I asked her how she would prefer to be addressed, since I'd heard about three different names from three different people in reference to her. "Oh," she said. "I don't have an English name yet. We can choose one -- how about Sophie?"

I sputtered.

"Oh, you don't like it?" She asked.

"No, it's not that!" I said. "I just don't know if I should pick your name! You don't even need an English name, if you don't want. Whatever name you want to use is fine!"

"What about Amy?"

"Amy is nice!" I finally said, bemused.

Afterwards, she gave me a really awesome dragon pendant and expressed surprise that my boss/mentor communicates through text, since apparently that is too casual of an interaction to warrant a response in her experience.

This is going to be my first experience working so closely with an exchange student, and I already know I am going to learn a lot.