美語情景對話 第827期:The Shack 鄉村小木屋

Yuri: So Shirley, you were talking about the shack. Can you tell me some more about it?

尤里：雪莉，你之前說到了鄉村小木屋。你能詳細說說嗎？

Shirley: OK, well, the shack — not as horrible as it might sound. I was actually born in the city, and yeah, grew up on the edge of the city of Glasgow, and my parents ... maybe I was about seven or eight years old ... my parents decided they would buy this little wooden house in the country side, only about forty-five minutes drive from where we lived, but right in the countryside, and it was really basic. It was huge. It looked like a barn, and my parents wanted to try and make it into something livable like a holiday house that we could go to on the weekends and summer holidays and stuff, so anyway we went there ... for the first time we went, it still looked like a barn, and had some beds in it and stuff like that, but no running water, no electricity, no toilet, no bath, no shower. It was like a barn in the middle of nowhere, so as you know, me and my brothers, we are kind of raised in the city, and although, you know we were kids way before video games and iPods and things like that, there was no TV. That was the biggest tragedy. There was no TV, and we though what on earth can we do up here? It's like we're in the middle of nowhere, how boring this summer holiday's gonna be, so we just had to you know, try and figure out how we we're gonna enjoy this holiday and what could we do with no television.

雪莉：好，小木屋，其實並不像聽上去的那麼可怕。我出生在城市，在格拉斯哥市邊緣長大，在我七八歲的時候，我父母決定買下這個鄉村小木屋，那裏離我們住的地方只有40到50分鐘的車程，因爲在鄉村，所以木屋的設施很簡單。那座木屋非常大，看上去像穀倉，我父母想把小木屋改造成適宜居住的房子，供我們在週末或暑假期間度假使用，我們第一次去那裏時，那座小木屋依然看上去像個穀倉，裏面有幾張牀，但是沒有自來水，沒有電力，也沒有衛生間，沒有浴室，沒有洗澡設備。那就像在偏遠地區的一個穀倉，你知道，我和我哥哥是在城市長大的，雖然我們小時候沒有電子遊戲或iPod這樣的娛樂設備，可是小木屋連電視都沒有。那真是最大的悲劇。那裏沒有電視，我們到底還能在那裏做什麼？就好像我們身處一個偏遠的地方，我們當時想，這個暑假得有多無聊啊，所以我們只能試圖尋找能享受這個假期的方法，尋找除了看電視以外能做的其他事。

Yuri: Yes, exactly, what did you do? How did you spend you days?

尤里：那你們做了什麼？你們是怎麼度過假期的？

Shirley: We were out in the country side. I mean, you just need to go out and look, and there's so many possibilities to have fun: making tree houses, making dens out of the woodland ferns and things like that, going on searches for frogs. We seemed to do that a lot. Poor frogs. We made like a tennis court out in the front of the ... we called it the hut. Right, I keep calling it a barn or a shack, but actually what we called it was a hut, although it was a really huge kind of wooden house, and so yeah, we made up a kind of a tennis court and when it wasn't raining we could play tennis. We had to go collect water from a well near like, I don't know, maybe four hundred meters away, and we'd always have to go in twos because of course there's always an argument with kids. I did it last time. He has to do it this time. So we always had to go in pairs to get the water. For lights we'd just use a gas lamps. For cooking it was a kind of two stove ... two ring stove, connected to a gas bottle. We did have television, which was powered by a car battery, so we would save that until Saturday night, because always on a Saturday night there was a movie, so we would save the car battery power for the Saturday night movie, and it would usually last until the end of the movie.

雪莉：我們在鄉下玩耍。去外面看看你就會發現，有很多可以玩的：建造樹屋，用森林裏的蕨類搭個小房子，找青蛙。我們好像經常這麼做。青蛙太可憐了。我們在木屋前面做了個網球場。我一直稱那是穀倉或是小木屋，不過那其實是非常大的木屋，我們做了個網球場，不下雨的時候我們可以打網球。我們要去附近的水井裏打水，水井離我們的木屋大概有400米，我們一般兩個人一起去打水，因爲孩子之間經常會吵架。比如，上次是我去打的水，這次得你去。所以我們會兩個人一起去打水避免這種爭吵。我們用煤氣燈照明。用爐子做飯，那裏有兩個和煤氣罐連接的爐子。其實我們有一臺用汽車電池提供電力的電視，我們要把電力留到週六晚上才用，因爲週六晚上放電影，所以我們要把汽車電池留到週六晚上看電影用，電力可以持續到電影結束。

Yuri: So it was a bit like camping.

尤里：就像露營一樣。

Shirley: Yeah, yeah, I suppose but like camping, only thankfully we didn't get wet when it rained.

雪莉：對，沒錯，是像露營一樣，幸運的是，下雨時我們不會淋溼。

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重點講解：
1. make into 把…變成；使…成爲；
例句：We made it into a beautiful home.
我們把這裏變成了美麗的家園。
2. in the middle of nowhere 在遙遠偏僻處；
例句：At dusk we pitched camp in the middle of nowhere.
黃昏時，我們在茫茫荒野中紮營。
3. on earth （用於以how， why， what 或 where 開始的問句，表示強調，通常表示問題沒有答案或很難回答）究竟，到底；
例句：Where on earth have you been just now?
剛纔你到底上哪兒去了?
4. figure out 想出；理解；弄清；
例句：I can't figure out why she got into such a state of inflammation.
我弄不懂她爲什麼會如此激動。