Teacher Bob, My 1306 六安一中高一国际（4）班 宣继豪 A father is a treasure, a brother is a comfort, but a friend is both.
Because of my love for the English language, and good expectations for the future, I enrolled in the IEP class. At that time, I was a little afraid to ta lk with our teachers, mainly because they are ‘foreigners’. We students are usually afraid of making mistakes, and especially when we speak with foreigners for the first time.. But when teacher Bob arrived at our school, my opinions and fears were soon changed.
The first time I met teacher Bob was in the second class. As soon as we all sat down, we found a huge stranger stood near the door. And then, we asked teacher Jean who he was. Suddenly, the man smiled and said: ‘I’m another one of your teachers, you can call me Bob.’ At that time, I was talking with my classmates and I notice that there are four numbers on the blackboard 1, 3, 0 and 6. I said: ‘Who is 1306?’ … Once the words had left my mouth, everyone was laughing at me.
I then realized that the word on the board was not ‘1306’, but was Bob, my teacher’s name. I was so embarrassed that I just wanted to find a hole to hide my face! But luckily ‘1306’ didn’t know what happened.After a while, teacher Jean asked us to settle down and be quiet and gave us work to do. While I was doing my work, teacher Bob walked towards me and looked at me. I felt extremely uncomfortable, I’ve never been watched in this way. It lasted more than a minute, and finally, he came to me and patted me on my shoulder, and asked me: ‘Could you please stand up?’ ‘Sure.’ I replied and stood next to him. To his surprise, he said to teacher Jean: ‘I don’t believe it,it’s amazing, this boy is taller than me! I haven’t found anyone taller than me in all four IEP classes except you. Wow…’ then he faced me ‘How old are you? And, what’s your name?’ ‘My name is Berry, I’m fifteen years old.’ I said. ‘OK. Well done.’ He patted me again, and motioned me to sit down. When I sat down, I realized that I have just had a conversation with a ‘foreigner’, It happened so quickly, that I still can’t believe talking with foreigners can be such a easy thing. But I did it, and this encouraged me to continue.
At first I thought ‘1306’ is not easy to get along with, but a few days later, I found he is funny, he always finds something interesting in normal life. One time, he was teaching us about the comparative and the superlative, he looked at the paper in front of him, and then he burst into a high-pitched laugh. We didn’t know what was happening, even the other teacher didn’t know what it was, until Bob showed the paper to us. There is a mistake in the paper: the superlative of ‘rich’ was stated as ‘ugliest’. It seemed like that the richest men are the ugliest.
It was funny, wasn’t it? (He did explain that it was a printing error) There are many other things about him, and also about me.
Just like I mentioned earlier, my English name is ‘Berry’, as my first English teacher called me by this name. But, every time, Bob always called me ‘Barry’. This was because of the pronunciation, but I didn’t realize it at that time. However, I found my name in the form is ‘Barry’, not ‘Berry’. I told Bob my true name, but the next time he called me ‘Barry’ again. I could do nothing. Gradually, I had gotten used to hearing that.
One day, as I was doing my homework, I found the word ‘barry’ in one of the sentences. This made me curious, so I looked up the word in the dictionary. It has a meaning—rampart. Suddenly, I know why Bob called me ‘Barry’. I’m 190cm tall and weigh 200 pounds.. This may or may not surprise you, but I’m sure I am a ‘Barry’ now!
