Listen to Jackie and Steve talk about the best homes they have lived in and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
0 Steve ……………. in many different places around the world.
A. has lived
B. hasn’t lived
C. would like to live
1 Steve’s flat in Cairo
A. had great views.
B. was very big.
C. was very long.
2 On his balcony Steve had
A. a table, two chairs and a bar but no plants.
B. two tables, chairs, a bar and lots of plants.
C. two tables, two chairs, lots of plants and lights.
3 At night Steve
A. played Arabic music and danced with his friends.
B. sat on his balcony with friends.
C. took a boat and cruised up the river.
4 Jackie was surprised by her home in Malawi because
A. it was bigger than expected.
B. it was very basic.
C. it was very small.
5 Jackie
A. lived alone.
B. shared the house with someone else.
C. didn’t like the house she lived in.
6 When talking about the garden Jackie says
A. it made the house special.
B. it was impossible to grow anything there.
C. she looked after it.
7 When Steve lived in Ghana
A. he didn’t do the washing.
B. the wind used to blow away all the washing.
C. there were monkeys in the garden.
8 In Greece Steve
A. decided to buy a traditional house.
B. lived on the islands.
C. stayed for three years.
Hello Steve.
Hello
Now, I know that you have lived in many different places around the world…
Yes, that’s right.
Could you tell me which is the nicest place you have lived in.
That’s very difficult to answer because I’ve been lucky enough to live in several really interesting countries and in really nice houses in those countries. But I think I would have to say my flat in Cairo, in Egypt, was the one that stands out.
Why is that?
Why is that? Because it was right on the river Nile and had an enormous balcony looking right over the river.
How big was the balcony?
Absolutely huge! It was probably about… ooh… I don’t know, maybe… twenty metres long?
Wow!
Wide enough to have two… two sets of… furniture, two tables and chairs around and it had a bar at one end that was built for me and lots of plants, and at night the boats would cruise up and down on the river, playing Arabic music with all the Egyptians on the upper deck dancing and having a really good time and it was really nice just to invite friends around and to sit on the balcony and have a drink and look out at this really nice scene. So that was, that was fun.
That sounds lovely!
Jackie, you’ve lived in lots of places abroad as well, where’s the nicest place you’ve ever lived?
I think the nicest place I’ve lived in was when I was a volunteer in Africa. I lived in Malawi for three years and I was very surprised when they said that I was living in a three bedroomed-bungalow in a very small town. I had expected something quite basic, I suppose, and I got this lovely bungalow which I shared with another volunteer and the nicest thing about the house was the garden. It was a huge garden and although we had a gardener who tried to grow things, it really looked after itself and it was full of wonderful exotic trees like pawpaws and hibiscus and bougainvillea and lots of trees that I didn’t know the names of. And lots of strange animals, including monkeys as well and baboons we had living in the garden so that made the place very special for me. So that was the nicest place I lived in.
That sounds really nice, I’m really envious actually. I stayed in Ghana in West Africa for three months and also had a really beautiful garden but no monkeys. The maid used to do the washing and hang my clothes to dry on the bushes so sometimes I would come home and the whole garden would be covered in shirts and trousers all over all the bushes. That was very nice.
Could you describe what would be your ideal home.
I went to live in Greece for three years and I used to travel to the islands quite a lot, it was very cheap in those days, and I think ever since then I’ve had this sort of dream of having a little white-washed traditional stone house on an island in the Aegean very plain with a terrace outside flooded with sunshine, wooden floors, very little furniture and that’s really it. Just this very nice little house flooded with the light of the Aegean. Maybe one day I will still do something about that, I don’t know.
That sounds lovely, thank you very much Steve.
Key:
1A 2B 3C 4A 5B 6A 7A 8C
