For the past two years, Laura and I have been studying Chinese in the
same exact classroom. This classroom is bittersweet for us. Some days, we feel like we can
speak and understand so well, and other days we feel like we're all the
way back at day one! In general, we spend 8 hrs/week learning how to speak/listen,
and another 1.5 hrs/wk learning how to read/write. As you can imagine,
our reading/writing comprehension has moved at a snail's pace, but we've
seen a lot of improvements during this semester. As our
reading comprehension grows, we've discovered a whole new world of advertisements and
signs. It's actually been really fun discovering the advertising
techniques of Chinese companies as well as other signs and markers
explaining what things are. For example, our classroom where we've been studying for the last two years has one sign on the
door and one above the door. See picture below.
The dark blue sign on the door says, "Foreign language department classroom." This is appropriate, all the classrooms in this hallway have this same sign on the door because it's the foreign language dept wing. But the light blue sign above the door is only above our classroom. Well, it says this, "Mental consultation room." Haha! This is even more appropriate then the dark blue sign! I feel like after every class I need to seek mental consultation. When asked why this sign is above our classroom, our teacher said that our room was originally intended for this use, but later changed as the foreign language dept moved in. We told her that it was still an appropriate place for the sign as we often leave the classroom with mental headaches!
