21 maio Look at the ceiling!

When students start practicing English at New York Express®, when we have the first conversation and start to check the vocabulary, we focus on the body and the surroundings, which we consider to be the immediate range of view. The surroundings means the room where we are: the floor, the door(s), the window(s), the corners,  and finally the ceiling. This last one usually causes strangeness. The ceiling is what you see when you look up in a room. It is what separates the interior from the roof, which is outside. The ceiling is where the ceiling lamp(s) or chandelier will hang from. The term ceiling is also used to indicate (in architectural ways), the distance from the floor and up. So, you say ‘a house with high ceilings’, a dance-club ‘with a very low ceiling’. In Economic news, when the prices are ‘on the ceiling’, they are the highest possible. And ceilings can be wonderfully decorated with applications of plaster or paintings, very common in churches and castles. In the picture above, the  ceiling oculus (round area), painted between 1465 and 1474 in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, Italy. The painter, Andrea Mantegna, is a representative of the Renaissance movement.