ID Hullabaloo

Imagine that you are a Chinese foreign exchange student in America. Imagine going to an American airline counter to buy airline tickets for the five people in your family who all have names that are only written in Chinese characters. The ticketing agents speak no Chinese AND you speak little to no English. Now you have some idea what I've been dealing with these last few days.

Four days ago, we went to the airline ticket office and were able to order Doug's ticket for a short trip we have to make to another city in our region next weekend. But after ordering his, we realized we didn't have enough money with us to get all 5 tickets for our family, so we just reserved his and planned to come back in a few days for mine and the kids'. Additionally, we knew that my student ID would be printed out by today, so we'd be eligible for a student discount on my ticket.

So we went back to the ticket office today to buy the other four tickets, for me and the kiddos. Well, upon looking at my student ID, they noticed that the waiban (foreign exchange student officer) had written a Chinese name for me- only, I don't have a Chinese name! And he'd only written my first name, Jessica, in English. They couldn't understand why my passport didn't have my Chinese name (which he'd apparently just made up to be able to write it on the student ID) and why my student ID didn't have the name Connell Jessica Grace on it (because, in their minds, that's what my name is from the way it's written on the passport). It was pretty frustrating- you've gotta wonder-- is there ANY other Jessica in this small town? And would I have really gone to all the trouble to make a fake student ID only to leave off my own name and make up a Chinese name for myself, all for a $10 savings? Again, no. But they don't deal with foreigners often here, and they have to follow their company protocol.SO, in the end, I ended up paying $10 more because they couldn't use the student ID to give me the discount. Oh well, just another day in the life of an American studying in Central Asia!