「故事·听力」I Came To Big City For The First Time

I Came To Big City For The First Time And It Ended Up In A Tragedy

This is Charlotte, and she wants to tell you all about the worst thing that ever happened to her when she was trying to make her dream come true.

Charlotte has always lived on her family's dude ranch, which is in a small town. Just like her parents and their parents. In fact, she’s from a long line of people who have lived in that small town for more than eight generations. So it’s not just a way of life, but a family business. They grow livestock on the farm, and their local tree gardens are full of seasonal fruit. Their market gardens burst with an abundance of vegetables and salads. She knows every farmer by name and she can distinguish any of the local animals just by the sound they make. She knows virtually every inch of the landscape around her home, starting with the calm rush of the river, to the valley full of grasses and pastures, and even the foxberry bush that grows along a local fence. And guess what She’s so sick of it all.

Everything about life there proceeds along a path that’s been trodden for centuries. They stick to the traditions of their ancestors, whether it’s business practices or special occasions. There’s just no spontaneity. The greatest rebel in herfamily is her Aunt Jane, who moved to the city to study at college and never came back. To Charlotte, her life is just amazing! Adventures, meeting interesting people, dating handsome men, a modern apartment, and everything she wants. She established a career for herself at a famous newspaper, and for Charlotte she’s the most successful person in her family. But the thing is, she’s pretty alone in thinking that way. No one in the family is actually proud of Aunt Jane. They think she's wasting her life because she didn’t settle in the town, didn’t marry a farmer, and didn’t contribute to the family business.

But Charlotte really admires her aunt. And her aunt knows about Charlotte’s sincere desire to live in the city. She emails her regularly and sends her stylish clothes and cosmetics, which she actually can’t even use out on the ranch. So she just stores everything in her closet, hoping that someday she’ll have a reason to dress up. One day, she was given a summer project at school to do at home – to write about the journey of a lifetime. Since she’s never been anywhere except her small town, Charlotte asked her mom for permission to visit her Aunt Jane in the city. After a few days of begging, her mom surrendered, and a week later she was drinking coffee in her aunt’s apartment, looking at the busy city through her big window. This is how her four-week journey began.

It turned out that the city was a whole lot different from how she had imagined it in her dreams. Everyone seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere. Even mothers with babies were nowhere near as calm and peaceful as the busiest farmer back in her small town. Endless traffic, dozens of cafes and restaurants, crowds of people on the city streets – everything seemed to be one single organism that never slept. Her ordinary natural landscape had turned into a stone and glass jungle, and it was impossible to predict the turn of events that was going to happen there. Her aunt was pretty busy at work, so for Charlotte, staring out the big window or watching 300+ TV channels was a typical scenario for her time there. She wasn’t supposed to leave the apartment alone, and every evening Aunt Jane took her out to dinner at a new place, or they would go to one of her social engagements together. They would walk down the city streets at the weekends; they visited museums a couple of times, and they were actually pretty interesting places.

But at some point she realized how much she missed her town and the ranch. That’s probably what they call being homesick. She missed her mockingbird that sang every night in front of her window, and the sound of the river, which she always heard right before she fell asleep, and the noises of all the farm animals. She actually dreamt about it every night. And then something happened that made her want go straight back home before the journey was evensupposed to be over.

There was another high-rise apartment building in front of her aunt’s. One day, when Charlotte was, as usual, staring at the street through the window, she noticed that someone was waving at her. At first, it felt weird, and she moved away from the window. But the next day, the same thing happened again. This time she became curious about the person waving at her. He turned out to be a handsome guy, whom she’d apparently never met before. The other day shewas almost waiting for him in front of her window. And guess what He waved again! And she waved back at him...