When I came to Cincinnati as an au pair (家庭打工留学生), a lot of things there were different from what I knew. My host family lived in a huge house I could only describe as a "castle"．In Germany I had lived in a small apartment together with my mom. Soon I found out that the "castle" was actually rather small in our neighborhood.

Everybody there was very friendly and polite. They greeted you when they were walking by at least 3 feet away from you. They must not have seen a German au pair before, for most people I met asked me all kinds of questions about Germany. I enjoyed answering their various strange questions. I made a lot of friends and I started to hang out with them.

    Of course, there were a number of new things, and it took me the whole year to find them all out. I never got homesick. Perhaps it was because I did not have too many negative experiences and felt loved and welcomed there.

However, I had undergone some painful experience back in Germany. I was frustrated by the way people would run me over and not even say "Sorry."  Taking up my studies at the TU-Dresden, I felt lonely. Everybody here seemed to be withdrawn(离群的) and I missed everything I had in Cincinnati. Germany was so "cold". I found it so much harder to make new friends. After six months I got a roommate and only two good friends. I also flew back to Cincinnati several times for long periods. I felt that without those visits I was not able to make it.

    Now I am over this German culture shock. It almost took me an entire year. I am still going back and forward between Dresden and Cincinnati four times a year.

51. When the author lived in Cincinnati, ________.

   A. she lived in a real castle

   B. some people were not very kind to her

   C. many people were curious about her motherland

   D. she lived in the biggest house in the neighborhood

52. In the opinion of the author, life in Cincinnati was________.

   A. wonderful          B. hard                  C. painful                     D. strange

53. The underlined word "undergone" in Paragraph 4 probably means________

   A. welcomed          B. accepted            C. expected           D. suffered

54. Which of the following statements is TRUE about the author?

   A. She lived with her mother in a big house in Germany.

   B. She never went back to Cincinnati after she came back to Germany.

   C. She seldom hung out with her American friends as she was too busy.

   D. She did miss her friends in Cincinnati when she was at the TU-Dresden.

55. What is the best title for this passage?

   A. University life in Germany                 B. My culture shock experience

   C. Advantages of living in USA              D. How to be an au pair in USA

Dad loved children. And he always wanted a   21  family. Eventually, he got what he wanted with twelve children in the family. Without fail, he would show us all to visitors.

Once, Dad   22  presented the first three children in the family, Ann, Mary and Ernestine, to some visitors. Then he picked up a fourth child, and said, “And this is our   23  model, complete with all the improvements. And don’t think that this is all, we are   24  the 1953 model some time next month.”

But what he   25  most was taking us out for a drive. On one occasion a man in a village we were passing through shouted   26  that he had seen eleven people in our car, not   27  Mum and Dad.  28  , Dad called out over his shoulder, “You   29  the second baby up from the front here, Mister.”

Another time, Dad told us this joke, though we were not sure whether he was telling us the   30  . Mum, who was a psychologist, once went to give a lecture and left Dad in charge of the   31 . When Mum returned, she asked him if everything had been OK. He said everything was   32  except that one of the children had been taught a lesson because he had been   33 . When he pointed at the child that had been   34  Mum looked at him calmly and said, “That’s not one of ours, dear. He   35   next door.”

1.                A．rich           B．lovely          C．close D．large

2.                A．surprisingly      B．nervously       C．generously    D．proudly

3.                A．dearest         B．smallest         C．latest     D．youngest

4.                A．ordering        B．selling          C．expecting D．improving

5.                A．hated          B．enjoyed        C．cared    D．hoped

6.                A．doubtfully       B．excitedly        C．calmly    D．directly

7.                A．counting        B．naming         C．showing  D．reading

8.                A．Immediately     B．Carefully        C．Angrily   D．Easily

9.                A．saw            B．missed         C．forgot    D．left

10.               A．truth          B．story           C．adventure D．accident

11.               A．lecture         B．house          C．office D．activity

12.               A．expensive      B．regular         C．correct    D．fine

13.               A．troublesome     B．careless        C．active D．quiet

14.               A．found          B．caught         C．punished D．wounded

15.               A．goes to         B．belongs to      C．works D．plays

Dad loved children. And he always wanted a  1  family. Eventually, he got what he wanted with twelve children in the family. Without fail, he would show us all to visitors.

Once, Dad   2  presented the first three children in the family, Ann, Mary and Ernestine, to some visitors. Then he picked up a fourth child, and said, “And this is our  3  model, complete with all the improvements. And don’t think that this is all, we are   4   the 1953 model some time next month.”

But what he   5   most was taking us out for a drive. On one occasion a man in a village we were passing through shouted   6  that he had seen eleven people in our car, not  7 Mum and Dad.   8  , Dad called out over his shoulder, “You   9  the second baby up from the front here, Mister.”

Another time, Dad told us this joke, though we were not sure whether he was telling us the 10. Mum, who was a psychologist, once went to give a lecture and left Dad in charge of the  11 . When Mum returned, she asked him if everything had been OK. He said everything was 12  except that one of the children had been taught a lesson because he had been  13 . When he pointed at the child that had been  14  Mum looked at him calmly and said, “That’s not one of ours, dear. He  15  next door.”

My friend Dr. Dong had a wonderful chance to go to Seattle to present a paper at a professional meeting. When he got back to Beijing, he told me his experience.
Dr. Dong enjoyed his first days very much. At the medical conference, he felt quite confident in his area of research and was able to perform well in his presentation. But after a few days, he began to feel uncomfortable. His medical English was fine, but the social communication skills were different.
He got more and more worried that he was misunderstanding simple English greetings and table talk conventions(习俗). When someone greeted him with, “Hi, how’s it going?” he thought they had asked him “Where are you going?” and answered with the name of the conference hall, only to get a surprised stare from them. At a western style dinner, a colleague asked, “So how’re you enjoyin’ the States?” he thought he heard, “how are you enjoying your steak?” and answered that he was eating chicken, not beef. That time, they smiled, and patiently repeated the question, then both laughed at the error.
By the end of the meetings, Dr. Dong felt a deep sense of “cultural stress” and was worn out from having to pay attention to so many new expressions and ways of dealing with things. He felt his handshake was not as firm as Americans’, found that people reacted unusually when he modestly insisted his English was not good after they complimented(称赞) him, didn’t know how to accept dinner invitations properly and therefore missed out on going to several lunches, and so on. Eventually, he was so confused that he felt the full impact of “culture shock”.
【小题1】Why did Dr. Dong travel to Seattle?

A．To improve his spoken English.	B．To experience culture shock.
C．To give lectures on his research.	D．To attend a medical conference.