F2F Class Notes (Nemo) [R]

Vocabulary

wheelchair (n): 1-a chair on wheels that people who are unable to walk use for moving around
E.g.: He spent the last ten years of his life in a wheelchair after a fall that left him paralysed from the waist down.
E.g.: The building isn’t designed very well from the point of view of wheelchair access.

retire (v): 1- to leave your job or stop working because of old age or ill health:
E.g.: Since retiring from the company, she has done voluntary work for a charity.
E.g.: He is due to retire as chief executive next year.

wander (v): 1- to walk around slowly in a relaxed way or without any clear purpose or direction:
E.g: We spent the morning wandering around the old part of the city.
E.g.: She was found several hours later, wandering the streets, lost.

traipse (v): 1-to walk from one place to another, often feeling tired or bored:
E.g.: I spent the day traipsing around the shops, but found nothing suitable for her.
E.g.: More than 6 million people traipse through the national park each year.

megaphone (n): 1-a cone-shaped device that makes your voice louder when you speak into it, so that people can hear you although they are not near to you.
E.g.: He often speaks in public with a megaphone.

curtain (n): 1-a piece of material, especially cloth, that hangs across a window or opening to make a room or part of a room dark or private. 2-a thick layer of something that makes it difficult to see anything behind it:
E.g.1: Heavy curtains blocked out the sunlight.
E.g.2: They could see nothing through the curtain of rain/smoke.

windmill (n): 1-a building or structure with large blades on the outside that, when turned by the force of the wind, provide the power for getting water out of the ground or crushing grain. 2-风车
E.g.: The windmill played an important role in Dutch history

amateur (n): 1-a person who takes part in an activity for pleasure, not as a job: 2-someone who does not have much skill in what they do:
E.g.1: This tennis tournament is open to both amateurs and professionals.
E.g.2: I won’t be giving them any more work – they’re a bunch of amateurs.

10y-decade, 100y-century,1000y-millennium

It’s great being a tourist and leisurely wandering around old towns and villages seeing the sites, but is it such a thrill for the local residents? Villagers living in the area known as ‘Old Holland’ outside of Amsterdam have had enough of visitors traipsing around and of tour guides with megaphones disturbing their peace. They have got together with local tour companies to create rules of conduct for tourists. The rules include not photographing residents without permission, not strolling into their gardens and not dropping litter. The new code of conduct is an attempt to deal with the growing popularity of the region. Tourism is booming and the number of tourists is expected to rise by 50 per cent in the next decade.

Old Holland is an idyllic area that matches people’s image of Dutch life from a slower, bygone age. There are windmills everywhere and locals live in beautifully preserved, traditional wooden houses. Local resident Peter-Jan van Steenbergen told Holland’s Het Parool newspaper that the village of Zaanse Schans is like an open-air museum. He said: “I talked to one resident who opened his curtains in the morning and looked into the camera lenses of nine amateur photographers.” He added: “The visitors seem happy to knock on the wooden houses to see if it is real wood. If you are the resident of that house, that is not pleasant, of course.” He said the busloads of tourists were the biggest nuisance.