For those who don't know, Erin and I met in the middle kingdom and it has had quite an effect on our relationship and friendships.
One of these friendships we hold dear to us is with Joy (Zhang Jun) our Chinese language teacher in Cardiff. Our lessons would usually turn from getting the correct stroke order of the characters to discussions about life (mainly in English), and since we left we've kept in touch as much as we can.
When we called Joy to tell her that we're pregnant she said she would think of a Chinese name for the child.
She must have been excited about our news as when she got off the phone she put all her attention into the task. When we visited her the other weekend she gave us a piece of paper with a few ideas on it. She put our Chinese names together and came up with... Ai Jie.
It means love and understanding. Erin's part is the love and mine the understanding. I actually didn't know my name meant understanding, which doesn't bode well does it? That said, we love it. It's also gender neutral. Pity we can't find a western name.
Erin throws a few out every now and again. But we still haven't found a solid favourite. So we might be using the Chinese one for the first few months. Thank you, Chinese Godmother, Joy.
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