OK, I’d like to talk about consumerism in capitalist and communist countries. I don’t know if anyone has actually noticed but Japan is very, what’s the word, "consumerized." Everything is built for the consumer. You’ve got huge adverts, you’ve got talking trees, you’ve got people with microphones outside the shop screaming "Ireshaimase" at everybody as they go past. Everything is built for advertising, for consuming, for buying, for competing, for constantly making newer and better goods so people buy them. A complete reverse of this is somewhere like Cuba, which is one of the last sort of communist states around, and probably the only place where communism has actually worked. In Cuba everything is owned by the government so there’s no companies competing with each other for advertising space, sort of trying to out do each other, and driving prices up, everything’s done by the government, any adverts are for the same products owned by the same people. When I was living in Cuba we tried to explain how in a capitalist society, how consumerism would work, so I’d like to give you a quick example.

好，我想谈谈资本主义国家和社会主义国家的消费主义。我不知道是不是所有人都意识到了，但是日本是一个非常“消费化”的国家。所有的东西都是为消费者建造的。你会看到巨型广告，会说话的树，你会看到在商场外面用麦克风对所有过路人说“欢迎光临”的人。所有的东西都是为广告、消费、购买、竞争、不断制造更新、更好的物品而建造的，这样民众才会购买这些商品。与日本完全相反的地方就是古巴，那是一个绝对的社会主义国家，可能是唯一一个真正实行社会主义制度的地方。古巴的所有东西都归国家所有，所以没有互相竞争广告版面的公司，没有这种试图把竞争对手赶出去，并竞相抬价的行为，所有的东西都是由政府完成的，同类产品的广告都由一个人来掌控。我在古巴生活期间曾经试图解释消费主义在资本主义社会的运作，现在我想举一个简短的例子来说明。

Todd: OK, Raphael, I’m going to ask you about Sunday. (Yes) OK, what do you like to do on Sunday?

托德：拉斐尔，我要问你有关周日的事情。（好的）你周日喜欢做什么？

Todd: OK. Cat, we’re back. We’re gonna talk about things you can do.

托德：好。凯特，我们回来了。我们要谈谈你可以做到的事情。

Michael: Alright, so Simon, do you have a favorite movie?

迈克尔：好的，西蒙，你有最喜欢的电影吗？

Todd: Kawabe, can you explain the difference, or compare, Tokyo and Osaka?

托德：川边，你能说明或者比较一下东京和大阪的不同吗？

OK. Growing up in America, in the United States, as a young child, we have three special people, mythical people, we believe in and we really like because they give us gifts or money. The first special person is the tooth fairy, and the tooth fairy gives you money for your teeth, so it works like this: when you’re very young you lose all your teeth, usually one by one, so every time you lose a tooth you put your tooth under your pillow and when you wake up the next day, magically there is money under your pillow, usually it’s a silver dollar, and so you’re always very excited to get the money and it’s kind of cool because, you know you’re happy to lose teeth, maybe the only time you’re happy to lose teeth you’re entire life. The other special character we believe in is the Easter Bunny and the Easter Bunny hides Easter eggs on Easter Sunday. The Easter Bunny is a rabbit. Bunny means rabbit, and on Easter Sunday, a Christian holiday in March and April we go outside with a basket and we look for eggs the Easter bunny hid in the garden or backyard or something like that and there are two types of eggs: there are real eggs, hard-boiled eggs that are painted on the outside and often the children decorate those themselves and there are plastic eggs and plastic eggs are hollow on the inside and you can open them, and when you open them, there is candy or money, so those are the ones the kids really want to get. Actually, it’s funny, sometimes kids won’t even pick up the real eggs because they just want the eggs with money or candy in them.

作为在美国长大的孩子，我们有三个特殊的人物，神话人物，我们相信他们，而且我们也非常喜欢他们，因为他们会给我们礼物或是钱财。第一个特殊的人物是牙仙子，牙仙子会拿走你的牙齿，然后给你钱，事情是这样的：你小的时候会换掉所有的牙，通常会一个接一个地换牙，每次你掉颗牙，就把它放在枕头下面，然后第二天你醒来以后，会发生神奇的事情，你枕头下面会有钱，通常是一块钱，你得到这笔钱会非常的兴奋，这很酷，因为你知道掉牙的时候很高兴，你一生中可能只有这种时候你会为掉牙感到高兴。另一个我们相信的特殊人物是复活节兔子，复活节兔子会在复活节那天把复活节彩蛋藏起来。复活节兔子是一只兔子。Bunny一是兔子的意思，复活节是一个基督教节日，三月和四月的时候我们会拿着篮子外出寻找复活节兔子藏在花园或是后院的彩蛋，彩蛋有两种：一种是真的鸡蛋，在水煮蛋上涂上颜色，通常孩子们会自己描绘，还有一种是塑料彩蛋，里面是空心的，你可以打开它，打开以后里面会有糖果和钱，这是孩子们真正想得到的彩蛋。实际上，这很有趣，有时孩子们甚至不会去拿真正的彩蛋，因为他们只想要里面有钱和糖果的彩蛋。

April 1st is an unofficial holiday in the United States called April Fool’s day. In the past, April 1st used to be celebrated as the New Year. And then in the year, I think, 1592, or something like that, the official New Year was changed to January 1st and some people never heard of this change so they continued to celebrate the New Year on the April 1st, but the people who knew of this change called them fools. A fool in English is someone who is not smart. We have many words for this in English: dumb, a dummy, stupid, imbecile, idiot, but you’re all nice people so you’ll never need to use those words so you can forget that. But the people who continued to celebrate the New Year’s on April 1st were called April fools. So a tradition started, that on April 1st people would try to make, would do pranks on other people.

4月1日是美国的一个非正式节日，称作愚人节。过去，4月1日曾经被当作新年来庆祝。我想大概是在1592年，新年正式更改为1月1日，可是有些人并没有听到更改的消息，所以他们继续在4月1日庆祝新年，而知道更改日子的民众便称那些人是愚人。英语中说的愚人就是那些不聪明的人。英语中有很多词来形容这个意思：愚蠢的，笨蛋，笨的，蠢货，白痴，但是你们都是善良的人，所以你们永远不需要使用这些词，所以你可以不去管那些。但是继续在4月1日庆祝新年的人被称作四月愚人。所以这就是这个节日传统的由来，在4月1日，人们会对其他人做恶作剧。

I am totally English but I spent my whole life basically living in other countries, well, my parents spent most of my life living in other countries. I’ve actually been at school in England for quite a while of it. Living away from your own country is great. I guess it’s really good when you’re young you get to see different countries. I stopped off in Africa and Nigeria. I was actually born in England, but I went there fifteen days after I was born so, my first plane flight was 15 days old, and I can’t really remember obviously that much of that but then we went to Holland for nine years, which is great and it’s, you know, I’m very lucky to have grown up in a different culture, although very embarassingly I can’s speak the language cause I always went to an Enlgish school, but it’s kind of difficult cause you, wherever you go, you make friends. You get close to people and then suddenly you have to move, and move house, go on to somewhere else, and I found this to be the sort of hardest thing, when I was 8, I went off to boarding school in England cause my parents thought I’d get a better education that way than moving around to different schools all over the world, and this was you know, it was good it was fun, but something like I always envied was the way, all the other kids at school, there school friends were just their friends in term time, but their real friends were friends that, you know, they had known since they were little, since you know, since they had been born or, you know their early school friends and they still knew them and you know even when I was 18 years old, still, my friend’s from school had their real friends at home who they’d known all there lives, and I’ve kind of always envied that because we’ve always been moving around and as I say, you know, I’m very lucky, we’ve been in Holland, Scotland, and Africa, and I’ve very lucky to have seen all of these places but it’s kind of hard as well, not having a root, not having a place where you can actually call your home, somewhere to go back to at the end of the day and have all of your family and friends around you.

我是彻头彻尾的英国人，可是我一生中几乎都生活在其他国家，我的父母使我生活在外国的时间非常长。其实我在英国上学的时间算很长了。住在其他国家非常棒。我想在你年轻的时候去不同的国家看看很好。我在非洲和尼日利亚待过一段时间。实际上我是在英国出生的，但是我出生十五天以后就去了非洲，我在15天的时候第一次坐飞机，显然我并不记得那次飞行的太多事情，之后我们在荷兰生活了9年的时间，这非常好，你知道，能在不同的文化中成长我感觉很幸运，虽然我不能说那个国家的语言这件事令人非常尴尬，因为我一直上的都是英语学校，不过困难的事情是，你去的每个地方都会交到朋友，你和人们变得亲近之后，突然你不得不搬走，不得不搬家，再继续去别的地方生活，我发现这是最难的事情，我8岁的时候回到英国上寄宿学校，因为我的父母认为，相比于在世界各地不同的学校上学，在英国读寄宿学校我会接受更好的教育，而这很有趣，不过有些事是我一直都很羡慕的，那就是，学校里其他孩子在学校里的朋友就是他们在上学期间的朋友，而他们真正的朋友是他们从小就认识的朋友，可能是他们出生以后、学龄前的朋友，他们一直保持联系，我18岁的时候，我学校里那些朋友，他们在家乡的真正朋友是那些他们出生后就认识的朋友，我一直都很羡慕这一点，因为我们总是在四处搬家，像我说过的我很幸运，我们去了荷兰、苏格兰和非洲，我很幸运能去这些地方，但是同样艰难的事情是，我没有定所，没有一个可以称为家的地方，那是在一天结束的时候可以回去的地方，可以和所有家人、朋友待在一起的地方。

Todd: So, Eli, can you talk a little about England and maybe about it’s climate and it’s weather, it’s leaders, what people eat?

托德：艾丽，你能谈谈英国吗，有关气候，天气，领导人，还有食物之类的？

Adrienne: So, Mike, you don’t eat fast food, huh?

埃德里安娜：迈克，你不吃快餐，对吧？