We are in La Jolla now, I know it’s Spanish and has a very special pronunciation. Today David said there is another place named La America, that made me think that la must have a special meaning. I asked David and he told me la means the.

What’s more, David said if the word followed la is in plural form, then there must be an s behind La. For instance, Las Vegas. And La can also be spelled as Lo as in Los Angeles.

Walking in American avenue, we often see Road signs read NO PED, and under that that is a very familiar pinyin—XING. We are puzzled, and thought maybe because there are so many Chinese people here, they use both pinyin and English as a bilingual mark. Liu lin told us today that X in XING means cross, so XING means crossing, and the whole sentence will be NO PED AND CROSSING.

Either walking on the road or watching TV, we see abbreviation forms very often. Such as Ave. for avenue, blvd for boulevard, Mt. for mountain etc.