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【老外说】是一档以“采访”老外为主的节目，帮助大家更好的了解中西文化差异，一窥英国人、美国人日常生活。每周一更新。本栏目适合精听/泛听。可做听写练习。
如果可以选，你想去哪个国家居住？今天采访到的这位老外去过好多个国家，目前住在她认为最喜欢的城市，让我们一起来听听是哪里吧！
I was born and raised in the United States, mainly in California.
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Gwen
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So have you been to countries outside of America?
I have. Currently, I'm living in Bogota, Colombia. But before that, I've visited London, England, Holland, and for Asia, I visited South Korea and Japan.
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Gwen
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So which country or which city do you like the most?
Oh, that's a very difficult the question. I've enjoyed so many different cities because they have their own feel to them, whether its energy or the people.
In terms of living, I would say Bogota, which is where I am currently located.
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Gwen
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Why do you think that is perfect for living?
The people are very different, at least compared to where I'm from, which is Los Angeles. Even though it's a big city, their view on life is quite different. Even though money is a necessity, they see family and whether it's their religious beliefs or their passion for life, whether it's like as an artist or anything like that, that takes more of precedence (优先), than a career does here. It’s a Latin American country, but it definitely has European touches (风格) to it because of the previous settlement here.
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Gwen
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So how long have you been living there?
I’ve been here for about four months now.
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Gwen
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And you still intend to live for some more months?
Yeah, I plan to live here a little bit longer. At least about nine more months.
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Gwen
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You're living there alone.
I am. I came here on my own. I actually wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't planned. I was only supposed to be in Bogota for about a week.
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Gwen
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Ah. You found out is so brilliant and you 've decided to live there for longer.
Exactly. I just ended up falling in love with the city and the people, and the country as well. So Bogota is actually the capital city of Columbia, and Columbia is located in South America. It's the very top of the continent of South America.
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I don't know if you've ever heard of like Pablo Escobar? Pablo Escobar, I think, unfortunately, is pretty much the reason why Colombia is known other than its coffee.
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巴勃罗·埃斯科巴 (Pablo Escobar)
(1949年—1993年12月2日），有史以来最嚣张的毒枭，曾被《财富》杂志评选为全球7大富豪之一。
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Gwen
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It sounds intriguing. So apart from the people that you mentioned, are there things that attracted you to live there? What else? I mean. How about the sceneries? How about the city itself? Are there any views worth visiting?
Yeah. So basically Bogota is located right near the Andes (安第斯山脉), which is a huge mountain line that goes across South America.
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And what's interesting about the city is we are located about 2641 meters from sea level. So we're very high, and that's why the city is very unique, and there are a lot of views. There's a very tall mountain, actually, that's higher than where the city located. And it's called Montserrat (蒙塞拉特山). Montserrat is very famous here for religious reasons. In Latin America, the biggest religion is Catholicism here. And so there's actually a Catholic church at the very top of this mountain that the locals will climb up to go to.
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There are other things. A lot of the coffee around the world comes from Columbia, and it has to do with the rich soil here, and because actually part of the Amazon jungle is located in Colombia. Yeah, the coffee is amazing here.
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Gwen
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So how about the temperature there? Are there four seasons or are there two?
There's mostly two at least in Bogota. Because we're high up in the mountains. We either have summer or pretty much like kind of like a spring type of weather. It rains a lot here.
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Gwen
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So is it convenient, I mean like big cities, that you can buy things in the shopping malls and you can always have places to go, apart from the scenic views?
Absolutely. Yeah. I would say Bogota has the most malls that I've ever encountered in a city. There's usually like a central mall, probably every, I have to say within like three kilometers, like it's just so dense with people that there's a mall pretty much every three kilometres, along with universities, too. I've never come across a country that has had so many universities.
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Gwen
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It's just like a combination of nature and modern city life.
Yeah. And especially because the country is starting to... it was a third world country and it's around...they say within about ten years, it'll be a first world country, especially because there's been so many startups (新公司) that have come over from overseas. And due to that, there's a huge boom in the economy and also within technology. So it's kind of really interesting to see the old style of living meeting new world technology. So you definitely see that nature versus city life, kind of colliding (相撞).
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Gwen
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Since you mentioned the economy in the city, how about the public security? That issue, I mean is it safe, especially for girls, to travel there or to live there?
So it had a bad reputation specifically because of Pablo Escobar. He was a huge drug lord. Essentially what he was, was he control the huge amount of cocaine that was coming in and out of the country and due to that he was paying off a lot of the government officials and that his actions actually really affected the country, and due to that, there was also a lot of cartel wars that people were killing each other. And this was going on up until about ten to fifteen years ago. And since then, it’s actually dramatically changed.
The people here, because they have gone through so much bloodshed, so much tragedy, they have started to live life in a much more calmer way. And they realize that because people, tourists are coming in, they wanna make sure that the country is much safer for the tourism because that's the reason why their economy is also booming, it’s because so many people are coming and visiting.
And they do say that it is dangerous and it definitely can be dangerous. My first month here I had my passport, my cell phone stolen, but that can happen in any city if you wander in the wrong area or anything like that. From what the reputation, like what people say about the place, it's definitely a lot safer. I am completely comfortable here. I would say I would I felt more unsafe in London, England than I do in Bogota. So, a lot of women do travel solo here as well, I’ve come across a lot of solo females out there.
提起哥伦比亚，有没有想起《摩登家庭》里面的Gloria？她口中的家乡那可是非常吓人啦。你是否也通过今天这位小姐姐的话，对哥伦比亚、对波哥大的印象有所改观呢？
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大家还想听“老外”说些什么？欢迎留言哦
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-等你很久啦！-
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