Christina Horsten and Felix Zeltner tried not to panic when they were hit with a $400 rent increase on their Park Slope apartment in 2016, and realized they would have to move for the second time in two years. Instead of feeling intimidated by the unexpected event, they hit upon an unconventional idea: Why not move to a new neighborhood every month for a year?
At first, things went remarkably well. They found their next apartment, a beautiful apartment in Chinatown. The next months brought stops in Staten Island and Harlem. As September approached, their next place to live proved difficult to find. When their Harlem lease (租约) ended, they took a road trip, then fell for a false advertisement in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, when an apartment they found advertised online wasn't actually available to rent. And eventually they got their money back through Paypal. “That was rock bottom,” Ms. Horsten said.
Over the rest of the year, they spent time in a townhouse in Mott Haven, as well as apartments in Chelsea, the East Village, Hell’s Kitchen, and Williamsburg. “In the end, we were like, ‘Why should we even stop doing this?’ ”Ms. Horsten said. But then a lease takeover on Listings Project caught their attention: a two-bedroom apartment atop an Upper West Side townhouse.
A second daughter, Lily, was born in January. And with a newborn, they have no intention of moving again anytime soon. Still, many aspects of their adventure have remained with them. “In the same way that we’ve tried to keep minimalism (极简主义) in our life, we try to stay in touch with all the people we’ve met,” Ms. Horsten said.“We realized it was a lifelong project to try to get to know NewYork City,” she added. But there is one member of the household eagerly waiting for a repeat: their 4-year-old daughter Emma.“ I think she loved it the most,” Ms. Horsten said.“At all the places we stayed, she found things I never noticed: children’s books, a dollhouse, a drum set. Even now, she’s like,‘When are we moving to a new home?’ And we’re like,‘We kind of like it here.’ ”
【小题1】What does the underlined word “intimidated” in Paragraph1 mean?| A．Frightened. | B．Surprised. |
| C．Embarrassed. | D．Confused. |
| A．In Chinatown. | B．In Sunset Park. |
| C．In Staten Island. | D．In Harlem. |
| A．Buying a townhouse in Brooklyn. |
| B．Staying in the apartment in the Upper West Side. |
| C．Donating their daughter’s toys to those living nearby. |
| D．Looking for a two-bedroom apartment for their newborn. |
| A．East or west, home is best. | B．Where to start, where to end. |
| C．Wherever you are, there is home. | D．Another month, another neighborhood. |
