胡敏读故事记单词托福词汇115（在线收听）

Adventures in the second grade

二年级时的冒险

At high school, mike’s homespun humour was the cause of much laughter. If truth be known, though, many of his oft repeated stories soon began to ring a little hollow. Still, the lack of respect shown by his classmates did not hinder mike from persisting with telling his woeful tales. He was one of those people who simply cannot take a hint and would often go on talking until he was hoarse. What the rest of us found quite boring, mike thought hilariously funny.

Mike was different from the rest of our fairly homogeneous group in more ways than one. Born to a poor family, he would turn up to school in a suit of homespun cloth and consume his lunch of homemade pretzels, washed down with a bottle of homogenized milk. Rumour said that his father had died in the holocaust —as so many other victims of mass homicide, this was probably true, as mike was fond of paying homage to his ancestors in a little town in central europe.

One day in the second grade, our class went on a weekend ramble in the countryside. Hitherto, we had never been on such a long excursion, and we were all very much excited as we set out for the hilly expanse of the hinterland behind the river, up and down we walked all day, from hill to hollow. Pleasant as the scenery was, the area was economically backward, with nothing more than little homesteads, where small-time farmers would still be doing things like mend the hinges on their barn doors, hoe the soil, hollow out some piece of wood to make a simple tool or hoist the hay onto their carts by hand.

高中时，迈克朴素的幽默引起了很多笑声。然而，要是天机泄露，那么很多他经常重复的故事很快听起来就有点空洞了。但是，他的同学对他不够尊重这个事实并没有阻止迈克坚持讲他悲哀的故事。他是那种不会接受暗示的人。经常一直讲到声音嘶哑为止。我们认为很无聊的东西。迈克觉得非常有趣。

迈克和我们这组大致相同的人在很多方面有所区别。他生在一个贫困的家庭，到学校来会穿着用家里纺织的布做的衣服，吃的午饭是自制的松脆椒盐饼干，就着喝一瓶均质牛奶。有谣言说，他的爸爸和其他许多大屠杀的受害者一样死于那场浩劫。这可能是真的，因为迈克喜欢向中欧的一个小镇的祖先表示敬意。

读二年级时，有一天，我们班到乡村进行周末漫步。那之前，我们从来没有进行过如此长距离的远足，我们向河后面的内陆多山的广袤地域出发时，都非常激动。一整天，我们在山峰和山谷之间上上下下。虽然这个地区景色宜人，但经济落后，除了小农舍外没有别的，那里面，尚未脱贫的农民可能还在做着修畜棚上的铰链、锄地、挖空木头做简易的工具或徒手把干草吊到马车上之类的事情。

Hilly adj.多小山的，多坡的

Hinder vt.阻碍，妨碍

Hinge n.合面，铰链

Hint n.提示，线索

Hinterland n.内地，内陆

Hitherto adv.迄今，至今

Hoarse adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的

Hoe vt.用锄耕地，锄

Hollow adj.空心的，凹隐的 空洞的。Vt.形成空洞，挖空 n.洞，山谷

Holocaust n.大毁灭，大屠杀，浩劫

Homage n.敬意

Homemade adj.自制的，家里做的

Homespun adj.朴素的，家里纺织的

Homicide n.杀人

Homogeneous adj.同类的，均匀的，同质的，

Homogenize vt.使均匀。