2008星火30篇文章贯通考研词汇(1)

But the man had called Paulo, who came and helped us. Paulo was always smiling, always happy. He was from Seville (塞维利亚) , a busy city of many people, and he knew many people. Paulo found work for us. I made good money on the farms. I picked cabbages, beans, cucumbers and peas. I picked great round yellow squashes (南瓜) that smelled of rich perfume when you broke them. The farmers hired us by the day, and were content. The local people would never work for the wages we are paid. But there were many farms, and many crops to be picked. We were welcomed.

I shared a small clean house in the town with seven other workers. We had journeyed from Ecuador, Colombia (哥伦比亚) , Venezuela (委内瑞拉) , even Argentina (阿根廷) . Paulo found the house for us - he knew the landlord and arranged a good price. We lived well, with enough food and sometimes wine. I earned more in a week than I could in three months back home if there had been work to do there. I sent most of the money that was left to my wife and parents, and wrote many letters to them. Then the government changed the rules so that we needed work permits.

I queued with hundreds of other workers, waiting for the application forms. We sat on the stone benches beneath the trees and read the forms. Some of the other workers are from small villages and towns, and cannot read as well as I can, so I explained to them that the government wanted our birth certificates, driving licenses, passports and many other documents. Many of the workers had perhaps one or two of these documents, but most had none. I helped the others complete the forms and we gave them to the clerk. He looked at our documents, stamped the forms many times and told us that they would be sent to Madrid (马德里) , and our permits would be returned in two or three months if the forms were approved.

We had to wait. Even Paulo and his friends could not help us.

The first month was not too bad as most of the farmers continued to use us; their crops were rich, waiting to be picked. Then some men from Madrid visited all of the farms, and maybe half of the farmers stopped using us. The farmers told us that they were sorry, and we understood them.

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