Chapter 58 Samoa and the Elegy

Dear Xiaowen: There are fourteen small islands in the South Pacific Ocean called Samoa (Samoa is a group of 14 islands in the South Pacific Ocean.), the pile on the east belongs to the United States and is called American Samoa, and the one on the west is called Western Samoa (West Samoa). The small country is only one-thirteenth the size of Taiwan, with a population of 180,000. The three main things it produces are a bit stuttering (stammer): 1. bananas (banana) - nana Two, cacao (cocoa) - caca Three, coconuts (coconut) - coco As soon as he stuttered, he couldn't make it clear, and sure enough, he was in trouble.

Cocoa (cacao) is made of chocolate (chocolate) and cocoa powder, but the English word for cocoa powder is cocoa. coconut powder. (Because of a mistake in spelling, probably made by English importers many years ago, these beans became known as cocoa beans in English-speaking countries. This causes many people to think the beans come from the coconut palm tree instead of the cacao tree. ) The temperature in Samoa is very strange. December is the hottest month and July the coldest. December is the hottest month and July the coldest. Samoa people like to play cricket (cricket), but not like to play cricket (cricket), cricket and cricket, the same word in English.

The crickets are chirping (or are crying). (The crickets are chirping.) They are playing a match at cricket. (They are playing a match at cricket.) I prefer to play in the rain. (Samoans love to stay out in a cooling rain.) (Samoans enjoy dancing very much. They also love to play their own version of cricket, a game they learned from the English missionaries. They play cricket with teams that may have from 10 to 300 players, compared to 11 players in normal cricket game.) Men and women often wear a skirt called lava-lava, which is actually a piece of cloth rolled into a skirt. (Most Samoan men and some women wear only a lava-lava, a piece of cloth wrapped around the waist like a skirt. Some wear a blouse or shirt with their lava-lava. Most of the women wear dresses, or a skirt and blouse .)

Dresses are also worn in parliamentary meetings. Their prisoners do not sit in prison during the day, they go about their business as usual during the day, and report to the prison at night.And there are no iron bars in the prison (Prisoners live in jail without bars.), and the house is more decent than usual, because they usually only live in open-sided fale (open-sided fale), which is built with coconut trees as materials. (The people live in open-sided fale (house) that have a thatched roof supported by poles. They roll down palm leaf blinds when it rains.) There is an old Chinese saying, "to draw a circle on the ground for a prison, as was done in the "good old days" and "Theres no need to close doors at night." The standards of Western Samoans have all been achieved.

The Western Samoans have no money, they only have $75 per person per year, which is $6 per month (20 cents per day), but they don't need money. RL Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, died in Western Samoa ninety years ago.Only lived for forty-four years (his wife was eleven years older than him), and he wrote a poem (Requiem) before his death. (Requiem-1. A Mass for the repose of a departed soul or souls, Requiem (Mass for the dead soul). 2. A setting of the Mass for the dead, Requiem (that is, played during the Mass for the dead) 3. Any grand musical service of hymn in honor of the dead, serious music performance or magnificent Psalm.) (Chinese writer Tao Yuanming also wrote "Self Sacrifice".) Dad translated it for you:

REQUIEM Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. elegy Under the stars, so cheerful, Dig a grave, I lie down, I live well and die well, I was lying on my stomach, thinking about nothing. Please engrave this poem in my cemetery: Where he lies, is where he longs, The sailors have returned, from the sea, The hunter has returned, from the hill. The poem engraved on the back of the puppy on the card is the one above.

"Treasure Island" is a novel about pirates, you must read it.Very well written.The English school library must have it, and the Chinese translation includes "Treasure Island" from Kaiming Bookstore and "Treasure Island" with phonetic notation from Dongfang Publishing House. You have received your letter and birthday card to Dad, and your report card has also been received. Dad is so happy with your good grades.Literary Henry James once praised Stevenson as "the only man in England who can write a decent English sentence." (British only he can write the best English sentence).Dad hopes that you will do the same in class.

dad April 26, 1975