Brown Stephen - Improve your English English in everyday life

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In this chapter, interviewees talk about various aspects of life in the United States and how life in the United States may differ from life in their countries of origin.

MAN: I have driven throughout most of the country. Um, so, theres, you know, the speed limits, well, its fifty-five, uh, therere Do you know how the ro, the roadsby the way, this is fascinatingdo you know how the road systems are laid out in the, in the U.S.? Do you know that? Theyre laid out, uh, if you, if you know locally where we are here, um, 95 is the main route. Ninety-five goes from the northern tip of Maine down to the southern tip of Florida, which is the entire Eastern Seaboard. If-if the, if the country were a rectangle, which it pretty much is, the, all interstates ending in odd numbers95, 85, 75, 65, 55, going all the way up to I-5I-5 runs the northern tip of Washington to the southern tip of

WOMAN:

MAN: All-all the way down the West Coast, so you have the, you know, 95 n 5 to 95 and going West Coast, you have, uh, 10, which runs through Texas and all the way across there to the northern tip, which is 100, I think, and that runs through North Dakota, so, uh, a college friend of mine, on our first venture out, decided we were, we live on, sorta in the middle, which happens to be 70, its not quite 50 but a little bit farther north and 70 runs all the way across from, you know, Maryland all the way to California, um, and, uh, we decided we were going to do 70 on 70miles per hour, that is80 on 80, 90 on 90, and 100 on 100! And we did it. So we-we were cruisin across country in that manner and Ive been th, I c, I would say Ive been through at least half of the states. And if you drive through Kansas, the first five miles is pretty much exactly the same as the next five hundred-plus miles that you have got to travel to get across it. Its a very long state.

WOMAN: It was the most interesting thing to me, the change of the seasons. I think that is just absolutely cause I guess as I grew up with just one season. In fact, I shouldnt say onetwo seasons: we have the wet season and the rainy season. But its summer all year-round. And I just love especially fall. Im a fall person. I just love, I love to see the colors, the trees when they, oh, turn those beautiful colorsthats really, thats what I like about And what I like, too, television, ooh, Im a television nut. I look at television all the time. And in Guyana, we dont see the kind of programs that you have here, so

INTERVIEWER: So what do you watch?

WOMAN: I like crime stories and, like Law and Order and, in fact, I watch all Criminal Intent, all of those Law and Orders.

INTERVIEWER: And what else?

WOMAN: I like game shows, too. I love Jeopardy; I love Jeopardy. Uh, yeah, game shows and Law and Order, those are my, crime stories, I like things like that.

Well, as I mentioned, the seasons. We dont have spring, summer, autumn, winter. We have summer all year-round.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

WOMAN: Um, another thing, the traffic here. You just have to contend here with cars and maybe couple bicycles. But in Guyana, youve got to contend with not only the cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, wemost people ride a bicycle in Guyana, they-they dont drive, they ride a bicycle. And theres also something we call a donkey cart, which is something like a flat-bed truck, but instead of bein pulled by a-a car like in front, its pulled by a donkey. And theyre also, they also have the right of way, too, on the streets, too. So thats-thats something; every time I go home, I keep wondering, How did I ever drive in Guyana before? because I know for sure I cant drive there now, so

WOMAN: Taiwanese, both parents are from Taiwan, came to the States for graduate school, uh, and then decided to stay both for political reasons and for career reasons. Um, uh, my parents came through, their Ellis Island was

WOMAN: Middle of, middle of the country, that was, I guess they were pulling a lot of Taiwanese students at that time so they came through there for their graduate school and then a job opportunity opened in Maine so thats-thats how the family ended up being the only Taiwanese family within a hundred-mile radius in Maine.

INTERVIEWER: When did your parents come to the U.S.?

WOMAN: Um, in the 60s, the early 60s.

INTERVIEWER: So how was lifehave they talked about how life was different there versus life here in the U.S.have they told you much about that or commented on that or ?

WOMAN: I think it wasnt so much how life, there-there were some aspects of life that were different in the U.S. versus in Taiwan, but I think a lot of the quality of life that we had or a lot of the specifics of, uh, our lifestyle had to do with living on an island in Maine as opposed to so much being in the U.S. I dont, I wouldnt, Im old enough now that I think I didnt have a typical upbringing, I didnt live in a typical American town. It was just so much smaller but at the same time it was inundated every summer by millions of tourists from all over the world, so we-we lived in a sort of interesting balance between being a super-super isolated small town, middle of nowhere, no traffic lights on the entire island existence, and then having this center of, uh, the spotlight world destination for vacationers, um, which is an interesting mix. It was, the island is sort of split into two. I lived on what they called the quiet side of the island, the western side, so that wasnt developed as a tourist destination until the last decade. Um, the eastern side is where Bar Harbor is, all these sort of big tourist areas so that was, thats always been a big tourist destination since, you know, from the last century in the 1800s. Um, so we could always in some sense retreat back to our quiet side of the island, and it-it wasnt crazy the whole summer, thanks to that. But y-you could still feel a palpable difference between the way that life was in the summer and the way that it was in the rest of the year.

INTERVIEWER: Did you enjoy living on the quieter side?

WOMAN: I did. Im glad I lived on the quiet side. Its a little bit crazy with all the tourists.

[Note: in this segment, you hear the voice of the interviewer asking a question and then the voice of the sign language interpreter, seated on the right, who is interpreting for the deaf woman, on the left, who is using American Sign Language (ASL).]

INTERVIEWER: So, youve livedI mean, youve really lived in the Westin California and in Oregon. So how is living in the East different from living in the West?

WOMAN: Right, yes, thats a good question. The Westone thing about the West thats-thats really nice is the-the outdoors. Its, uh, its nice to be with people who enjoy going out and doing things in nature like I do. But in the East, uh, theres so much cultural diversity, Im able to meet so many different kinds of people. Theres a lot of history here, museums, things of that nature that are really nice. And if I miss the West, I can always just fly over there and spend some time there again.