Across Africa

For six hours we shot through the Karoo desert in South Africa. Just rocks and sand and baking sun. Knowing our journey was ending, Daniel and I just wanted to remember all we had seen and done. He used a camera     1     I used words. I had finished three notebooks and considered     2     (start) the fourth, a beautiful leather notebook I’d bought in a market in Mozambique.

As we drove towards the setting sun, a quietness fell over us. The road was empty — we hadn’t seen another car for hours. And as I drove, something     3    (catch) my eye, something moving next to me. I glanced in the mirror of the car; I glanced sideways to the right, and that was     4     I saw them. Next to us, by the side of the road, thirty, forty wild horses were racing the car, a cloud of dust rising behind them—brown, muscular horses almost close enough to touch them, to smell their hot breath. I didn’t know how long they       5    (be) there next to us.

I shouted to Dan: “Look!” but he was in such a deep sleep that it was impossible to wake him up before they disappeared far behind us, a memory of heroic forms in the red landscape. When Daniel woke up an hour later I told him what had happened.

“Wild horses?” he said. “Why didn’t you wake     6     up?”

“I tried. But they were gone after a few seconds.”

“Typical,” he said. “The     7     (good) photos are the ones we never take.”

The Amber Room, the gift from Frederick William I to Peter the Great with    1    amazing history, was given this name because several tons of amber were used to make it. It was also a treasure    2    (decorate) with gold and jewels,     3    took the country’s best artists about ten years to make.    4    return, the Czar sent him a troop of his best soldiers. Later, Catherine II had the Amber Room     5    (move) to a palace outside St. Petersburg where she spent her summers. She told her artists to add more details to    6    . Sadly,     7    the Amber Room was considered one of the wonders of the world, it is now missing. In September 1941, Germany and Russia were at war. There was not enough time for     8    (Russia) to remove the Amber Room. However, some of the Nazis secretly stole the room itself. In less than two days 100,000 pieces were put inside twenty-seven     9    (wood) boxes. There is    10    doubt that the boxes were then put on a train for a German city.

Many cities have     1    (interest) nicknames. Nicknames can help tell the identity of     2    city. With more than twenty nicknames, New Orleans     3    (probable) has more nicknames than any other American city. Among all these names, the most famous one is The Big Easy. It is used to describe the gentle, slow and easy-going way of life in New Orleans.

So     4    did the city get this nickname? In the early 1990s, there was a dance hall in New Orleans     5    (call) The Big Easy, but the nickname did not become famous     6    the ealy 1970s when a Louisiana newspaper writer began calling New Orleans by this name. She compared the easy-going way of life there     7    the hurried pace of life in New York City. In 1970, James Conaway wrote a crime novel called The Big Easy. The story was set in New Orleans. In 1987, that book was made into a film,     8    made the nickname even more popular.

The city has     9    nicknames. One of them is Mardi Gras City. It got this name for the wild     10    (celebrate) and parades that take place there every year.

An about 2-meter-wide alley, or “Liu Chi Xiang” in Chinese, now attracts floods of     1    (visit) in east China’s Anhui Province. It has a household’s ancient story hidden behind it, which vividly explains the essence of     2    (tolerate) and non-contention widely accepted in China.

During the Period of Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, one of his ministers, Zhang Ying, received a letter from his hometown of Tongcheng City in Anhui one day. From the letter, Zhang learned that his family quarreled with their neighbor, Wu’s family, over the two sides’ house boundary. The local court     3    (struggle) to reach a final judgement since both families enjoyed high reputation in Tongcheng. Zhang’s family wrote the letter     4    (hope) that Zhang, a high-ranking official in the imperial palace, could force the Wu family to give     5    . However, Zhang wrote a poem back saying, “Writing a letter from home, miles away, just for a wall. All that argument over one meter or two. Looking at the ten-thousand-mile long Great Wall, long gone is     6    (it) builder Emperor Qinshihuang.” His reply enlightened the family members as the wall was merely a temporary (暂时的) structure. It was the close relationship with their neighbors     7     mattered. They decided to move their wall about one meter back for their neighbor. In turn, the Wu family was     8    (deep) touched by their generosity and retreated another meter backward in building their wall. It created an about two-meter-wide narrow “alley” between the houses.

Among all the valuable     9    (history) sites in the city, the narrow alley is one of the popular attractions. It serves as enlightenment, inspiring people     10    (observe) public morals and cherish harmony, especially in disagreements and conflicts.

It definitely     1    (feel) good to be back in San Francisco again. And the city was able to rebuild itself after the earthquake     2     occurred in 1906. There are so many beautiful old buildings—many sitting on top of big hills,     3     (offer) great views of the city, the ocean, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

There is the Mission District near downtown,     4     of the oldest parts of the city. Many of the people living here are from Mexico or Central America. This district used     5     (be) a poor area of town, but is now a centre for art, music, and food. In fact, an art movement     6     (call) the “Mission School” started here. It’s influenced by graffiti art and comic art. A real mix of cultures here!

In the afternoon, I headed     7     a local museum that showed the     8     (history) changes in California. The museum did a     9    (reat) good job of showing how America was built by     10    (immigrant) from different countries and cultures.

Tomorrow evening, I’m going to a jazz bar in the Richmond District. Can’t wait!