Wow! I had a breakthrough moment today . . . and I tell you, I feel like Helen Keller or something. I can't really show you what I mean, since I can't type Chinese characters or draw them here, but I learned to recognize my first characters today.

On the console of the teaching station we use, there's a button to lower the screen and then also a button to raise it. The button to lower the screen is marked by a character that looks almost like a table with a shelf underneath - there are two vertical lines on each side, and two horizontal lines, one of which connects the top of the vertical lines, and the other of which also connects the vertical lines, at about a quarter of the distance from the top to the bottom of the character. This character doesn't mean "lower" - it means "open." So, you open the screen when you want to use it.

And, well, wouldn't you know it? the button that raises the screen has a character that looks almost exactly like the one for "open," except that the two vertical lines are squished together in the middle - and that character means "closed." Hallelujia! I was so proud of myself I had to run around telling everyone I saw.

Yes, of course, it's a small thing - but it feels like the old, crusty neural pathways that shut down when I was fourteen are creaking to life again. This immersion experience (mediated though it is by many, many people who speak both English (sort of) and Chinese) is the closest I'll ever come to learning language the way infants do, and I've been amazed to see that yes, it really CAN happen that way later in life. Maybe, like Helen, I'll start adding characters in rapid succession . . .

Almost makes me not want to go home quite yet. Six more days isn't much time to learn! (Not all us are so enthusiastic; I had lunch with some other teachers who have "hit the wall" and are getting tired and grumpy. I think my year in Australia really helped me with the acculturation process. True, there wasn't this kind of language barrier, but I don't think I'm suffering nearly as much cultural fatigue as my compatriots. I have the advantage of knowing what to expect when the honeymoon wears off . . . and I'm quite convinced that if I stayed here a year, I would feel very much at home by the end of that time.)

At any rate, that Aha! moment about the characters was followed by a student's presentation on visual symbols and selective perception. We've also been discovering that aspect as well. In the past few days, several people (myself included) have begun to notice things around the dorm lobby or the classrooms or the store that we hadn't seen before. We'll say, "Is that new?" only to be told by someone else that it's been there all along. It's just fascinating how the brain adapts.

I signed up for Mandarin classes at LCC, as I'm pretty confident we'll be invited back next year. I can't wait to get started!