What's in the middle?

Hoo-kay, over at Erudite Redneck's blog, he's got a meme-thing going on with middle names (ER by way of Geoffrey, that is. Here's the rules:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.

2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don’t have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother’s maiden name).

3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person (or blogger of another species) for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.)

Y'know, for many years I've been going back and forth on changing my name. My moms, when she immigrated to the U.S. back in the melting-pot '70s, was -- there's no other word for it, really -- bullied by all sorts of people to "raise" us kids as "Amurikin" as possible. So we didn't learn her language, we didn't get Japanese names and we learned next to nothing of our heritage. Although we did eat a lot of Japanese food, thank God, they couldn't take that away from us!

But I've gotten rather used to my first name, I'm rather attached to my family names, so I've considered changing my middle name to a Japanese name, with the same first letter so my monogram doesn't change (all those towels, you know). But man, it costs to change your name, like $280. So I'll go with the name I've decided on; it's also the name I bowl under. I seem to hit higher scores when she bowls. The 194 I scored (new career high! five strikes!) last week was under this name.

So I guess I'm (h)apa Ayame Thealogy.

A: Asian. How's this a fact? Well, because being multiracial means that you tend to look like whatever people are around you, or whatever people that other people are familiar with whose skin color is similar to yours. So around here generally I get asked a lot, "What tribe are you?" One of my best buddies at school is multiracial Chickasaw, and whenever we're hanging out people ask us if we're sisters. My sisters, who live on both coasts, get mistaken for Latinas or Arab constantly. I have to name it and claim it: Loud, proud Asian.

Y: Years away from being finished with my education. To think, I went back to school in 2002 just to have something to do in my spare time. Five years later, I finished two bachelor's degrees (well, I cheated a bit, I left school the first time with a measly three hours to spare on my first degree, and when I showed up 14 years later to finish it they said, "Take anything, we don't care!). Now I've got a target graduation date of 2010 for the master's (which FINALLY got changed over to the Master of Divinity!), and then there's doctoral work that I'm shooting for, which is another five years, minimum. I'm going to a conference in New Yawk next month, partially to check the school out as potential grad school material.

A: Apatheistic. That is, I don't know if there's a gawd and I really don't care. As I've said before, I highly suspect that there is some sort of whatzis in the universe making the right moments fall into place, but suspecting or even believing is not the same as knowing. I'm a fan of the push to translate the Greek pisteuo as "trust," and not knowing makes the trust part much more profound for me. I trust that the universe is running like some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption, and that the boot will fly over to the oven door on cue.

M: Multi-literate. I would say that I'm literate, at least functionally so, in at least four languages, two of them dead -- English, Spanish, Latin and kione Greek. I'm planning to add biblical Hebrew, French and Portuguese in there, too. Ah the rigors of academia, huh? Not that Latin really gets you very far, except once you know Latin you realize how funny the "Romani ite domum" scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian really is, and the Harry Potter books get a little more fun. Keep in mind that being literate is not the same as being fluent. I'm good with English, my native language, enough to have spent the last 14 years employed by working with it, but I'd say that I speak it just as atrociously as most Americans. I can speak and understand Spanish, but not terribly well, just enough to watch los partidos de futbol y las telenovelas and listen to my favorite rock en espanol bands (Mana, Jaguares, Juanes, Julietta Venegas, Aterciopeladso y otros). And Greek, well -- I found a coffee mug at Tarjet that had "hello" printed on it in several languages and after phonetically sounding out the Greek word -- kalimera -- I realized that it was made up of kala -- good -- and hemera -- day/morning. So it must be coming along. I know I've got ho huios tou theou (the son of God) down pat. Ugh.

A: Aficionada de futbol. Am I cheating by going into another language? But it's a fact -- you can't really talk about being a fan of futbol -- what we ignorant folks in the U.S. call soccer -- in the United States without speaking a little Spanish. Hell, a good portion of the Major Leage Soccer players are from Mexico, Argentina or another Latin American country, and most of our US Men's and Women's National Teams speak Spanish because our conference is a Spanish-speaking one. Most US games are broadcast on the Spanish channels, with better commentary because the Univision announcers actually know something about futbol. I could have cried during the last World Cup when the doofus they got from ESPN started talking about the opposing country's major exports like he was reading a social studies textbook. The US Men's Team is currently in competition for an Olympic berth, and they're struggling. But heck, Mexico, our conference's powerhouse, is struggling too! MLS's 2008 season begins in two weeks! Anyway, yeah, I'm a yuge futbol fan.

OK, I guess I've got to tag Geoffrey, ER, Kirsten, Dr Lobojo and MFranks to take part, except ER and Geoff already did! Oh well.