Basic Reading — 第四冊

🔊I haven’t seen my friend Kelly in a long time. She moved away to Pingdong three years ago because her father got a new job there. Since then, the only contact we’ve had is by mail. I really miss her.

🔊This week I wrote her a very long letter to catch up on everything that has been going on. As always, I took the letter down to the post office to be mailed. There are two mailboxes outside the main building to use. The red drop-off box has two slots, one for express mail and the other for airmail. I don’t use either because they cost more for postage than regular mail. The green mailbox is for regular mail and it also has two slots. The slot on the right is for local mail. The one on the left is for anything outside this township.

🔊Every time I drop a letter into the mailbox, I wonder how long it will be until my friend replies. Usually she writes back quickly, but if she is busy like I sometimes am, it can take a while. I hope it isn’t so long this time because I miss her so much.

🔊I recently needed to withdraw some money from my account at the post office. I went there with my passbook and chop. On my way in, I grabbed a withdrawal slip and found an empty spot at the counter.

🔊I filled in the required information on the slip, such as the account number, my name and the amount that I wished to take out. I wrote neatly and carefully so that the teller would have no trouble reading it. Instead of using my signature, I used a chop. I lightly dabbed the stamp on the red inkpad and then pressed it onto the form.

🔊I must have stood in line for about five minutes, waiting to see the teller at the service counter. When it was finally my turn, I handed her my passbook and the withdrawal slip.

🔊She smiled as she opened the passbook and asked me to key in my password. She then typed a few numbers into her computer and placed my passbook into the printer to be updated. Next, she counted out my money and returned my updated passbook to me.

🔊I thanked the teller for her help. Then I placed the money in my wallet. With the transaction completed, I happily walked out of the post office and went home.

🔊Cara spent the morning walking around Tienwei for exercise. At the time, a lot of farmers were burning the stubble left over in the rice fields after the harvest. Thick black smoke hung in the morning air and made it a little difficult to breathe and after spending an extended period of time strolling around in the lingering haze, Cara’s eyes became dry, irritated, and bloodshot, so she returned home. Her eyes have been bothering her ever since.

🔊Cara used some eye drops to soothe her sore eyes. First, she twisted the top off the small bottle and double-checked the directions to make sure she was using it properly—she didn’t want to take any chances with her eyesight. She then tilted her head back and carefully pulled her bottom eyelid open. She tried to keep from blinking by staring away from the bottle towards the roof.

🔊Gently, she squeezed the bottle and a drop of the liquid fell onto her bloodshot eye. It began to feel cool and immediately felt better, so she repeated the process with the other eye.

🔊Although her eyes remained bloodshot and puffy for a couple of hours afterwards, by the next day they had completely recovered. The eye drops definitely helped to speed up the healing process. Without them, she might have had sore eyes for a few days.

🔊Picture 1 A scooter has just pulled into the gas station to fuel up. The attendant asks the customer what she wants. The customer asks her to fill it up with 95 octane fuel. The attendant then grabs the nozzle and turns the pump on.

🔊Picture 2 The customer opens the lid that covers the fuel cap. Then she twists off the cap. She twists very hard because the cap is on tight.

🔊Picture 3 The attendant inserts the nozzle and pulls the trigger. Gas begins to fill the tank and the smelly, flammable fumes rise into the air. She is careful not to pump it out too fast or it might splash out onto the ground.

🔊Picture 4 So that it is easier to make change, the attendant tries to round off the price to a multiple of ten. After finishing, she hangs the nozzle back on the pump and the patron hands her some money. She leaves to put the money in the till and returns with some change and a receipt. The satisfied customer then takes off with a full tank of gas.

🔊With so much traffic on the streets of Taiwan, safety becomes an issue whenever children are going home after school. Because of this, schools have appointed some students to be crossing guards. This is to make it a lot safer for everyone.

🔊The idea is to have the crossing guards stop the oncoming traffic to let cyclists and walkers cross the streets safely. You can tell who the crossing guards are because they usually wear reflective orange vests and may carry a red flag. For added protection, some of them wear helmets in addition to the safety vests.

🔊The red flag tells students that it is not safe to proceed. All the students then line up behind it and wait. When it is safe, the crossing guard will raise the flag and blow a whistle. Students are then permitted to go.

🔊A long pole with brightly colored flags attached to it is used to stop cars. It is very long and can be held across an entire lane of traffic. When the pole is held horizontally across the lane, motorists must stop and wait until the crossing guards let all the students pass. Once it is clear, they will raise the pole vertically again.

🔊The flashing light and pylons, or traffic cones, indicate where the cyclists can ride and they also make the crossing area more visible to motorists. It is another way to make the area safer.

🔊If you are driving in an area such as this, make sure you slow down and watch out for students crossing the road. Stop if the crossing guard indicates that you should do so. This will make it safer for everyone, especially the children.

🔊The Lion Dance has been around for a long time. To keep the tradition alive, it is important to expose children to it. This group of dancers does just that. They travel around Taiwan performing the dance at elementary schools.

🔊The big lion is the main character in the dance. A single man wears the colorful head and another man acts as the hind legs. The two halves of the great animal are connected with red silk cloth that flows nicely as the dancers move around. Most of the children love to watch the long lion frolicking about, but some of the smaller children are frightened of it.

🔊Traditionally the dance is a one-lion dance, but over the years changes have been made in some regions. Sometimes smaller one-man lions accompany the larger one. Perhaps it adds to the excitement of the show to help entertain the children.

🔊Wondering what to buy when you visit your friends? Maybe a box of fruit is just the thing you need. Popular fruits for gift giving include apples, pears, peaches and many others. Whatever is in season is probably the best, but that’s up to you. However, I personally wouldn’t recommend durian, as the smell isn’t so festive and they are just so darned prickly.

🔊In Taiwan, a box of fruit is a very common gift for almost every occasion. Most fruit vendors can make fruit gift boxes. Just tell them what you want and how much you want to spend. They’ll do the rest.

🔊A molded tray is placed on the bottom of the box. This prevents the fruit from moving around and being damaged before it gets to its intended location (no one wants a box of bruised or squashed fruit). The lid is then secured in place by applying some tape, so that nothing falls out. You are now ready to go!

🔊The next time you have to give someone a present, why not make it a box of fruit? Fruit is healthy and relatively inexpensive. It may not be the perfect gift for everyone, but most people will appreciate it because everybody loves fruit.

🔊Somewhere in Yuanlin on the side of the street, you may see this lady making puffed rice squares. To make such squares, rice, wheat or other grains are put into a pressure cooker (the old black thing with a wheel on the left side). The contents are then heated, causing the air pressure inside the cooker to increase dramatically. When the air pressure reaches a certain point, the contents pop—much the same way as popcorn does. Once the grain is popped, it is mixed with other ingredients to make it sweet and sticky. Then it is pressed into a wooden mold and cut into squares.

🔊The lady, shown here, is cutting the squares with a sharp knife. She uses a flat piece of wood as a guide to make her cuts nice and straight. To her left you can see the finished squares, bagged and ready for sale. They look scrumptious!

🔊Quentin is a very angry 14 year old boy. He is constantly in the principal’s office at school for starting fights in the hallway and for disobeying his teacher. He has so much trouble controlling his temper in fact, that his parents have even taken him to a psychologist. But to no avail.

🔊There is one thing, however, that helps Quentin to release his anger in a less violent way. It is a game called Whack-a-Mole.

🔊Whack-a-Mole is an arcade type game. The object is to hit the mole as it comes out of its hole. The more moles you hit, or “whack”, the more points you get and the longer you can play, but it isn’t as easy as you think.

🔊The moles pop up and down very quickly. There are six different holes, too and you never know which hole a mole is going to come out of. Plus, the longer the game goes on, the faster the moles go up and down. You definitely need good hand-eye coordination to play.

🔊When Quentin plays the game, he releases a lot of pent-up energy. After he is finished, he is always very calm. Perhaps his school should consider putting a Whack-a-Mole machine in his classroom. If nothing else, it would prevent him from playing Whack-a-Classmate or, worse yet, Whack-a-Teacher.

🔊Jenny needs to print off a few pictures for a social studies project. She is almost ready to start printing when she notices that the printer is out of paper. Luckily, she had just bought a package of paper the day before at an office supply store.

🔊She digs the package of paper out from under the clutter in her backpack and removes the wrapping. Not wanting the paper to get wrinkled or torn, she slowly removes a half a dozen sheets from the pack.

🔊Next Jenny lifts the flap on the front of the printer and carefully feeds the paper into the tray until it won’t go any further. Then she closes the lid again and returns to her seat at the workstation.

🔊The pictures she wants to print are already on the desktop and ready to go. She hits the print button in the picture viewer window and the printer menu pops up. Here she selects the number of copies she wants and clicks on the okay button.

🔊The printer begins to hum and the ink cartridges dance back and forth inside the printer as it prepares to print. A single sheet of paper begins to disappear inside the machine. Once again, the ink cartridges are moving, this time printing a picture.

🔊In no time at all, the paper can be seen re-entering the outside world, but now it is full of color. Picture after picture are printed off and drop onto the table. As the last of the pictures is finished, the printer returns to standby mode. Jenny shuffles through the papers to make sure they are all there and then dashes off to class.