It’s sizzling. The hot air over the desert highway is motionless. From time to time, a mastodon-sized truck swims by, the metal and glass glaring in all directions. The disturbed air moves lazily aside before freezing over again just a few minutes later. The reddish-yellow spurs of the canyons are cracked from the heat, the brown hills overgrown with scattered bushes. Between them, spiky claws of giants, cacti stick out here and there. The outskirts of the town. A rundown two-story house with broken plaster on its corners, revealing timeworn gray sheets of plywood underneath. At the entrance to the garage, in the sun-bleached reddened grass, lies the rusty rim of a car wheel. Nearby, leaning on its rusted springs, the remains of an antediluvian …show more content…
But, after all, we got a lucky break. We moved to America! It was a sheer stroke of luck, pure and simple. A few years ago, back in Russia, they had a competition among schoolchildren. The topic: ‘Who knows America better?’ That’s how I became one of the twelve hundred kids that went to stay with American families for a year. The Americans organized this program… The idea was to let Russian youth learn more about America… To learn to love it, not to hate it… For me, it was an easy one. I’ve been dreaming about America since I was a child. I’d read everything about America I could find in our Barnaul libraries. And here it was, my lucky star shined on me finally. “Well, one couple, Jane and Jack, took me to their home. Once again, I was lucky that I’ve always been interested in biology. Otherwise, I would have ran from that couple without knowing where I was going… They bred reptiles and sold them worldwide. They converted their garage into a store. In their backyard, they built a pen and raised chameleons, grass snakes, turtles, and lizards. Lucky thing that they lived in Louisiana. The crocs almost crawl on the streets over there. In short, I found myself right where I belonged. Being with animals is not like being with people. They, the animals, never bore