雅思口语素材大搜集：童年之Hometown
- 2015年05月25日16:11 来源：小站整理作者：victor
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摘要：有人极尽煽情地说“South or east, home is the best”，又有人故作豁达地说“Home is where the heart lies”，总之，浓浓溢出的是那逃不脱的乡愁。今天的口语素材话题为童年。让我们一起回到那个熟悉的回不去的地方。
According to webster dictionary, here's the definition: the city or town where one was born or grew up; also : the place of one's principal residence 所以，故乡可以指生你养你的地方（during formative years）也可以指你主要的居住地。
The Brooklyn of my youth was a very different place than it is today. Back then (twenty to thirty years ago) Brooklyn was hardly considered a "hip" place to be. There were pockets of gentrification but they were limited and very concentrated in geographical area.
Gentrification had begun in neighborhoods like Park Slope, but those neighborhoods did not look remotely like they do today. The area around Prospect Park was still considered a dangerous place to be. My parents took us there for weekly trips to feed the swans and we were always told to keep the doors locked and our eyes straight ahead. There were gun shots heard outside of my junior high school.
If you wanted to have fun, go to a restaurant, see a movie, you got on on the subway and went to Manhattan. It's funny to see Brooklyn now perceived as a mecca for culture hounds, artists and hipsters. Now, people from Manhattan actually take the subway TO Brooklyn. For a native New Yorker, this is always mind boggling.
I have to say that's the biggest change I've seen happen to Brooklyn. It's not a place people want to escape anymore. It's a place people strive to be.
I am excited by what has happened to Brooklyn, but I am also wary. I miss the earnestness of Brooklyn that existed when I was young; I even miss some of the griminess. I miss the Brooklyn that existed before the hipsters descended.
However, the beauty of New York (and thus, by extension, of Brooklyn) is that it's always changing. I don't know what Brooklyn will look like thirty, forty, or fifty years from now; but I sure do want to see it.
Why people once wanted to leave Brooklyn were the same reasons people anywhere want to leave: poverty, crime, boredom.
There wasn't anything "cool" about Brooklyn 20/30 years ago, at least not compared to today. It was a borough where different enclaves of struggling, often poor immigrant families (Italian, Latin, Chinese, Russian, Jewish, the list goes on) came to raise their kids. That part is still somewhat true. There were no trendy restaurants or cool bars. Many parts were unsafe. Witnessing muggings or violence (or being attacked oneself) was common; my sister was mugged in high school. I saw people get their things snatched right in front of me on the subways.
Basically, it wasn't considered a cool or terribly safe place to be.
I grew up in Haifa, and Kfar Saba(Israel) before moving to the US.
I consider Kfar Saba my hometown, since that's where I went to Kindergarten and 1st-3rd grade, Haifa is remembered much more vaguely so here are my thoughts:
Kfar Saba was a more middle-upper middle class suburbia (it's literally translated to Grandfather Village) where I was growing up, when I could run to the store, and I would walk all around. I roller bladed around a lot, and it was a great place to be a kid.
Despite school with bullying, I don't remember ever feeling anything negative, but also didn't feel attached to it until I left. Whenever I come back, it's bigger, better, with a train station, more bars, and still a somewhat town feel as it's starting to feel like a city that's exploding in population.
I could totally see myself raising a family there--and who knows, I may be back there.
Kfar Sabnikit for life.（for life此处为最爱的意思，或者理解为万岁。Football for life）
I'm from Detroit, Michigan. The actual city, not the suburbs. I grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood, but I don't think it would fit that description today.
I don't have any particular nostalgia for my home town. I haven't lived there for more than thirty years and know very few people there. I certainly wouldn't want to live in the cold North again. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd think about it much at all if it weren't... well, Detroit. The poster child for urban decay. The largest municipal bankruptcy. Detroit.
I am sad that the city has come to its current state, and hopeful that it's on the way back up, however slowly. I see that the areas around the center city are revitalizing, but I think it may be a long time before the neighborhood I grew up in is anything like what I remember.
Back then, when you came out, thinking about all the ills of the place. This is the time of redemption. This is a greener pasture（更好的机会/工作等。Just imagine yourself a sheep）.
However, reality is different. You realize, language is different, people psyche is different. You can't identify yourself with them a whole lot. Your start appreciating friends, relatives, known (whom you though not progressive) at the time.
While the ills of the hometown stay, and they aren't in your new dwelling, there are other ones. The challenges of daily life are just different, not removed.
1) First is the comfort of our home. Aha! It feels so good to even think about it. We can be ourselves. Shout, laugh, cry do whatever we want.
2) Food - No matter what we do all day, hot food will be ready for us at the right time. That too our favourites most of the time.
3) Everyday chores - No washing clothes, no cleaning anything, nothing at all. Just our job is to live there. No worries at all.
4) And the person responsible for all the above happiness is our mom. She does everything for us. Every single thing. Right from cooking, washing clothes, taking care of our demands everything.
My hometown favourite is my mom. Love you mom!
It is nostalgic for it brings in the little happy moments back, alive from my happy past, when hometown was a synonym to heaven.
My father was in the army and you can understand how my life would have been, one place to the other, every three years we get to see our home town, during our vacation.
Home town is like a dream destination to us, we would start planning a month before we start home! The excitement we experience cant be expressed in mere words.
There on every vacation I see......
- my grand ma waiting with her warm hug and always ready to cook us any thing, at any hour of the day!
-my grand pa who would take me out in the evening and show me around town and teach me handle a calf.
-My uncles who would buy me little gifts, every vacation.
-As I come from Kerala, the climate, the geography, the people, the attire, the cuisine, every thing is different from (normally) where my father gets posted! Thus gets easily registered in our heart and mind!
-All the little festive occasions, the south Indian Kerala style temples, the early suprabhatam, each has a special place in my heart.
- the morning and evening bath in a near by river in those days and all those people who wants to know how the life is in places where we come from, and then that serene silence I still enjoy in that godly place that is seldom found in cities.
All these feels like excuses, rather right reasons to give up the city life and run right back into the arms of nature where life still is as simple as breathing.
Now after all the adventure in distant places away from home, I am back in my hometown and planning to settle here for the rest of my life!
Hometown : where you are born and brought up, where you have been friends with not just people of your age, but with people of your parents age, with that uncle of shop who sometimes gives you a free chocolate, with that dog, who was not yours, but still you used to give him biscuits and every day, with that summer wind under which you used to play cricket every day with your friends, that park where you used to go everyday with your grand parents, That school where you learnt first lessons of your life, that street where you could play whole day without being tired.
For me, missing hometown is missing everything mentioned above and that unexplainable feeling of being away from all these and much more!
I'm born in Bergen, but we moved when I was 1, so the town I consider to be my hometown, and where I spent my childhood is NordfjordeidNorway.
It's on west-coast, the centre of Eid municipality, it's really more like a village than a town though. Slightly under 3000 inhabitants in a municipality of 6000.
The most remarkable thing about Eid, or about the entire west-coast of Norway really is the scenery. I spent much of my childhood hanging out in the mountains surrounding Eid. It's situated at the east-end of a fjord leading out to the ocean, and there's 2500-3000 feet mountain-ranges on the south and on the north side of that fjord.
I didn't consider it extraordinary of course, like all kids I considered my present location to be simply "normal", I had nothing to compare to. So I'd eat my picnic lunch here, thinking of this as a perfectly ordinary kind of view.
The best thing about Nordfjordeid is that the size is big enough to have a decent set of offerings - it's got a library and a cinema and a swimming-pool and an opera (not a typo!) and a pretty decent variety of sports-teams and other leisure-activities to take part in -- while at the same time being small enough that you can know it all and it feels safe and comfortable.
Being allowed to go wherever you want, at whatever time of the day you want (unless next day is a school day) at age 9 gave us an amount of freedom that many children growing up in bigger cities lack. We roamed many miles from home, and there was no mobile-phones back then, thus we'd be back when we were back, and my parents (rightly) felt comfortable about this.
Everything about my hometown attracts me there.
My hometown is Mangalore, a small coastal city in the western part of Karnataka, India.
Where would you want me to begin?
First and foremost the people and the Tulu language. Even today, I become ecstatic, when I reach my hometown and I hear people speaking this language. There's a sense of belongingness in this particular language, which I adore.
Second, the beaches. Mangalore has many beaches and my personal favorite is the Thannir Bhavi beach, near the New Mangalore Port.
The pleasant, sometimes humid weather and heavy rainfall, which is almost absent in the city that I stay now.The local cuisine, I was surprised to find a page on Wikipedia namedMangalorean cuisine. My personal favorite is the Neer Dosa. Neer dosa, a Karnataka breakfast fare, literally means ‘water crepe’ since the batter is of flowing watery consistency. Neer in Kannada and Tulu language means water. It's a delicacy.And last but not the least, the feeling of being with my immediate and extended family makes me feel blissful
I was born in a small city called Bandarawela in a small island called Sri Lanka :)
What attracts me to my hometown the most is the ring of mountains circling the whole town. I have a spiritual bond with those mountains. I always felt like that their spirit runs in my veins. My school was located on the top of a small mountain and I remember walking about a kilometer early morning while inhaling the pine tree scent and the sun was shining through the trees.
When I moved to the city and when I had to leave my mountains behind, it created a hollow that nothing else could fill up. The mountains gave me strength. I can't explain how but I know it is true.
Good thing is, every time life gets too rough on me, I can visit them and they are always there. Every time I cross this certain area that divides the mountain range from the city side to the countryside, I feel like that the air is getting lighter and its easier to breath.
There are endless tea estates, pine trees, other flora and fauna... the mountains have different shades of blue/green colours.
My hometown feels like listening to smooth jazz. So very laid back. Un-assuming people. Cold climate. Freshly baked buns. My dad standing outside early morning facing his back to the sun and getting sun-baked, me waking up in the morning and not opening up my eyes till I finish my tea, my mom cooking rice on the stove made of mud and wood, the scent of her embedded in her tattered jersey [I loved that jersey, it was like my comfort blanket when I was small].
Hong Kong is one of the most magical places to be. Amidst the hustling bustling city there is tranquility. You've got mountains as well as skyscrapers, sand and the sea, and of course the lush greenery. Basically you've got the best of both worlds. In other words, you can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you :')
