2012年高考英语湖北卷 - 阅读理解A

You’ve just come home, after living abroad for a few years. Since you’ve been away, has this country changed for the better - or for the worse?
你在国外住了几年后刚回家。你离开后，这个国家变好还是变坏？

If you’ve just arrived back in the UK after a fortnight’s holiday, small changes have probably surprised you - anything from a local greengrocer suddenly being replaced by a mobile-phone shop to someone in your street moving house.
如果你在两周的假期后刚回到英国，小的变化可能会让你感到惊讶——从当地的蔬菜水果店突然被手机店取代，到你的街道上有人搬家。

So how have things changed to people coming back to Britain after seven, ten or even 15 years living abroad? What changes in society can they see that the rest of us have hardly noticed - or now take for granted? To find out, we asked some people who recently returned.
那么，人们在国外生活了7年、10年甚至15年后回到英国，情况发生了什么变化？他们能看到我们其他人几乎没有注意到或现在认为理所当然的社会变化吗？为了找到答案，我们询问了一些最近回来的人。

Debi: When we left, Cheltenham, my home town, was a town of white, middle-class families - all very conservative. The town is now home to many eastern Europeans and lots of Australians, who come here mainly to work in hotels and tourism. There are even several shops only for foreigners.
德比：我们离开时，我的家乡切尔滕纳姆是一个白人中产阶级家庭非常保守的小镇。该镇现在是许多东欧人和许多澳大利亚人的家园，他们来这里主要是在酒店和旅游业工作。甚至有几家商店只为外国人开设。

Having been an immigrant myself, I admire people who go overseas to find a job. Maybe if I lived in an inner city where unemployment was high, I’d think differently, but I believe foreign settlers have improved this country because they’re more open-minded and often work harder than the natives.
我曾经是个移民，我很佩服那些出国找工作的人。也许如果我住在一个失业率很高的内城，我会有不同的想法，但我相信外国定居者改善了这个国家，因为他们比本地人更开放，工作更努力。

Christine: As we flew home over Britain, both of us remarked how green everything looked. But the differences between the place we’d left behind and the one we returned to were brought sharply into focus as soon as we landed.
克莉丝汀：当我们从英国飞回家的时候，我们俩都注意到所有的东西都是绿色的。但我们离开的地方和返回的地方之间的差异，在我们一着陆就强烈吸引了我们。

To see policemen with guns in the airport for the first time was frightening - in Cyprus, they’re very relaxed - and I got pulled over by customs officers just for taking a woolen sweater with some metal-made buttons out of my case in the arrivals hall. Everyone seemed to be on guard. Even the airport car-hire firm wanted a credit card rather than cash because they said their vehicles had been used by bank robbers.
在塞浦路斯，第一次在机场看到持枪的警察是很可怕的，他们非常放松，我在入境大厅从我的箱子里拿出一件带金属纽扣的羊毛衫，就被海关官员拦了下来。每个人似乎都在戒备，就连机场租车公司也想要信用卡而不是现金，因为他们说他们的车被银行劫匪抢过。

But anyway, this is still a green, beautiful country. I just wish more people would appreciate what they’ve got.
但无论如何，这仍然是一个绿色美丽的国家。我只是希望更多的人会欣赏他们所拥有的。