地道美语听力练习:Halloween

地道美语听力播客English as a Second Language Podcast (ESLPod)，是一家位于美国加州洛杉矶的英语教育研究机构推出的英文听力会话，于2005年7月23日首播， 主播Dr. Jeff McQuillan为南加州大学的语言学博士， 现专注于外国语学生的英语学习研究。该播客在iTunes store播客的教育子分类中，与Grammar Girl Just Vocabulary常居前三甲.

As a kid, I always liked Halloween. I liked dressing up in a costume that I pick out at the store or, more often, we made out of odds and ends at home. The best part was going trick-or-treating. Some years, I went with my brothers and sisters. When I got a little older, I went with my friends. We would go to the houses in our neighborhood and knock or ring the doorbell. When the door opened, we would yell, "Trick or treat!‚" We never played tricks and always got treats. The neighbor would put some candy and chocolate bars in our bags. We would go home at the end of the night and eat them to our hearts' content.

To get ready for Halloween, my parents would buy pumpkins from the market or from the make-shift pumpkin patches on the side of the road so that we could make jack-o- lanterns. We took each pumpkin and cut off the top, scooped out the seeds from the inside, and carved faces on the front. At night, we would put candles inside the jack-o- lanterns and put them on our doorstep. Sometimes we carved scary faces and sometimes they were funny ones.

I remember that one year, we had a Halloween party. Our friends came over dressed up as witches, ghosts, superheros, cartoon characters, and anything else you can think of. We would play party games like bobbing for apples, and we even created a haunted house in our backyard. It was a blast! Halloween is truly a holiday for kids.

Script by Dr. Jeff McQuillan