When my family moved to a village where nobody spoke our language, I was eleven. For the first month I said almost nothing. I knew the words for water and bread, but not the words for how I felt. (11) My teacher gave me a small notebook and told me to write one new word in it every day. It did not help at once, (12) after half a year the notebook had two hundred words in it. I still could not say everything I wanted. (13), I could at last make a joke, and the class laughed at the right moment. Learning a language is not only about being understood, (14) about becoming a person other people can enjoy.
A person today reads more words in a day than a farmer a hundred years ago read in a month. Most of them are short: a message, a line on a board, a name on a door. (15) A novel asks something different. It asks you to keep your body still, to care about somebody who does not exist, and to wait. (16) that waiting is exactly what fast reading takes away. Some schools now give students twenty quiet minutes a day with any book they choose. Teachers say the weight of the book does not matter. (17), it is learning that attention can be held. The brain does not mind reading, (18) it does mind never staying anywhere.
Ping: Here is the plan for our camp trip. Tell me if anything is wrong.
| GREEN VILLAGE CAMP · Thursday to Sunday |
|---|
| Bus leaves school 7:30 Thursday |
| Three nights, six students a room |
| Cost 2,400 (food and bus included) |
| Bring: vest, hat, own water bottle |
| Day 2: a tour of the fish farm |
Ken: Two thousand four hundred for three nights? That is eight hundred a night for everything.
Ping: Right. My brother went last year and said the food alone was worth it.
Ken: I will come. But I cannot leave at 7:30; my train from the south arrives at 8:00.
Ping: Then take the second bus at 9:15. Just tell the office by Tuesday.
Every Thursday · 8:10 to 8:30 · In your own classroom
You do not have to finish anything, and nobody will ask you what the book was about. If you find after ten minutes that you do not like the book, you may change it once. A box of books sits near the door for students who forget.
This is not a test. We do not count pages, and the reading hour will never be used to punish a class. If you cannot read that morning because you feel ill, just sit quietly and rest.
Dear Sir,
My family of four would like to stay at your hotel from July 3 to July 6. I have two questions before I book.
First, your page says a room holds two people. Can a room take two adults and two children of nine and eleven, or must we take two rooms? Second, my son had an injury to his leg last month and cannot walk far. Is there a room on the ground floor, or a lift?
We are coming from the Philippines and will arrive at eleven at night, so we may also need somebody at the desk that late. Please write back this week if you can.
Thank you, Maria Cruz
Before a vacation, most people look for the best places to see, and they read about which ones are worth the time. They read an article, save a list, and arrive with a plan. This is useful, and it also means they often see exactly what everyone else sees.
People who remember a place best are usually the ones who got a little lost. They asked a question in a language they did not speak well, ate the wrong dish by mistake, one that did not fit their diet at all, and were helped by somebody whose name they never learned.
A plan protects you from trouble, but it also protects you from surprise. The strongest memory of a trip is seldom the famous building. It is the ten minutes you did not plan, standing in a street you could not find again if you tried.