Long Conversation M: It’s good to have you back at work Emily. How was your trip to the Amazon rainforest? W: It was like______1______; I saw so many more things than I ever could have imagined. The plants are so thick that you couldn’t even see the sun or the sky above, and there are more _____2___than I’ve seen before in my life! M: Wow, with so many plants, how did you get around? W: We rode ______3_____down the Amazon River – it connects the whole jungle, and the local people use it to travel, too. It’s amazing being somewhere so far away from technology, without any____4_____ for miles and miles. The local people don’t even see the world outside of the jungle, never traveling _____5________up or down the river their whole lives! M: What an _____6____ different lifestyle! It must be completely different there. Did you get to meet any of the villagers? W: Oh yes! Here’s the story: I finished a small blue bottle of wine and was about to_____7______. The tour guide told me to ___8___it. Later, when we arrived at one of the villages, he introduced me to an old woman there who greeted our boat. I gave her the wine bottle as a gift. She looked at it like_____9____, and she said that it would be ______10_____for her hut. I was shocked that something so small and common for me – could mean so much! M: Emily, I suppose we really take modern life for granted. Passage I believe watching nature programs on television is not going to give us and our children a real experience of nature. On the contrary, they may _____11_______nature – actual nature – even further. Because real nature experiences mean _____12______nature. It means being with and within nature, to experience it with all five senses. True, TV programs give us joy but they will never be able to____13_____ a relationship with nature. We watch our small screens come alive with______14_____ and we all let out “aahhhh ...” and “wooooow”. But, never once will we feel the pleasure of being close to nature. _____15_____– the programs such as those on the Discovery Channel make nature seem so strange, and so far away, in the forests of the Amazon or in the wilds of Africa. Children may _____16____without even realizing that the flowers, plants or a couple of trees in their backyard are nature and they are equally_____17____. The truth is – nature is so close to us. We don’t need to go anywhere far to enjoy such experiences. It is right there in our____18_____. Or, in parks, gardens, forests, or national parks. All we need to do is_______19_____ to get closer to nature – know it, appreciate it, and explore it. Feeling the soil under our feet and the wind in our hair; listening to the sound of ______20_____and taking in the smell of the wet soil – all these are pure joy to the senses that we must experience.