和谐英语

新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第二册 unit04c_new

2012-04-21来源:和谐英语

[by:和谐英语学习网|http://www.hxen.net|和谐英语||和谐英语学习网]
[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net,就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中!My First Day Abroad
[00:03.89]It was my first day.
[00:07.45]I had come the night before,a black and cold night before
[00:13.82]-as it was expected to be in the middle of January,
[00:19.19]though I didn't know that at the time
[00:23.72]—and I could not see anything clearly on the way from the airport,
[00:29.81]even though there were lights everywhere.
[00:34.06]As we drove along,someone would single out to me a famous building,
[00:41.11]an important street,a park,a bridge that when built was thought to be a landmark.
[00:49.28]In a daydream I used to have,all these places were points of happiness to me;
[00:56.63]all these places were lifeboats to my small drowning soul.
[01:03.50]I would imagine myself entering and leaving them,
[01:09.37]and just that — entering and leaving over and over again
[01:16.72]— would see me through a bad feeling I did not have a name for.
[01:22.48]I only knew it felt a little like sadness but heavier than that.
[01:29.32]Now that I saw these places,they looked ordinary, dirty,
[01:36.37]worn down by so many people entering and leaving them in real life,
[01:43.03]and it occurred to me that I could not be the only person in the world
[01:50.88]for whom they were an item of imagination.
[01:55.85]It was not my first struggle with the disappointment of reality
[02:01.82]and it would not be my last.
[02:06.36]The under clothes that I wore were all new,bought for my journey,
[02:13.42]and as I sat in the car,moving this way and that
[02:19.68]to get a good view of the sights before me,
[02:24.14]I was reminded of how uncomfortable the new can make you feel.
[02:30.98]I got into an elevator,something I had never done before,
[02:37.82]and then I was in an apartment and seated at a table,
[02:43.30]eating food just taken from a refrigerator.
[02:48.55]In the place I had just come from,I always lived in a house,
[02:54.82]and my house did not have a refrigerator in it.
[03:00.07]Everything I was experiencing— the ride in the elevator,
[03:05.72]being in an apartment,eating day-old food that had been stored in a refrigerator
[03:13.79]— was such a good idea that I could imagine
[03:18.76]I would grow used to it and like it very much.
[03:24.01]But at first,it was all so new
[03:28.66]that I had to smile with my mouth turned down at the corners.
[03:34.81]I slept deeply that night,
[03:38.56]but it wasn't because I was happy and comfortable—quite the opposite;
[03:45.43]it was because I didn't want to take in anything else.
[03:51.88]That morning,the morning of my first day,
[03:56.92]the morning that followed my first night,was a sunny morning.
[04:02.78]It was not the sort of bright yellow sun making everything lift up at the edges,
[04:09.73]almost in fear,that I was used to,but a pale yellow sun,
[04:16.79]as if the sun had grown weak from trying too hard to shine;
[04:23.34]but still it was sunny.
[04:28.09]That was nice and made me miss my home less.
[04:33.74]And so, seeing the sun,
[04:37.70]I got up and put on a dress,a gay dress made out of bright-colored cloth
[04:45.05]the same sort of dress that I would wear
[04:49.51]if I were at home and starting out for a day in the country.
[04:55.38]It was all wrong.The sun was shining but the air was cold.
[05:04.13]It was the middle of January,after all.
[05:08.77]But I did not know that the sun could shine and the air remain cold;
[05:16.66]no one had ever told me.
[05:20.72]What a feeling that was! How can I explain?
[05:27.78]Something I had always known
[05:32.53]the way I knew my skin was the brown color of a nut
[05:37.97]rubbed repeatedly with a soft cloth,
[05:42.32]or the way I knew my own name
[05:46.79]— something I took completely for granted,
[05:51.94]"the sun is shining, the air is warm"— was not so.
[05:58.67]I was no longer in a tropical area.
[06:03.31]This realization now entered my life
[06:09.00]like a flow of water dividing previously dry and solid ground,
[06:15.95]creating two banks, one of which was my past
[06:22.68]—so familiar and predictable that even my unhappiness then