Sample Home Town Presentations

Sample Home Town Presentations

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First Example: Today I'm going to tell you about a place that is very dear to me. Maybe it's not on the map. Maybe others have never heard of it. But I have fond memories of [name]. Sure, it's not a famous resort town; there are no big lakes nearby. But when I was between ten and fifteen years old, I grew to love the area. We lived on the top floor of a two-story building, where I had my own bedroom. Two blocks away from my home was the school, from where I graduated. This is a picture of the school. An old Buddhist temple was five blocks away where my family and I went to worship on special days. There was a large Buddha outside the temple, plated gold. There was a little park, called [name] where my friends and I used to play ball [jump rope, throw frisbees, etc.]. On Sunday mornings, the park would be empty and we would have it all to ourselves for our games. Or we threw frisbees for our dogs to retrieve. I recall the fresh flowers in spring, which we used to pick and put in vases in our roomss or give to present in bouquets to our mothers on Mother's Day. Here's a picture of me at twelve years old playing with my friends. That's me, in the middle, jumping rope. Here's another picture of our favorite hangout, where we all used to congregate on weekends and discuss the latest singing sensation or the current movie stars. They sold greasy burgers and watery sodas, but that didn't matter at the time. We enjoyed it as our special hideaway from home, where we were free to be ourselves, since adults never patronized the place


Second Example: I lived in a big city, called [name]. Everybody knows about this city. But that's not the city I knew when I was nine years old. I knew nothing about what the older people loved about the city, the foreign restaurants and concert hall. At nine, what attracted me were the winding streets in the district called [name], where my younger sister and I used to roller skate and race the motor bikes that passed by. The old folks used to sit outside on summer evenings while my sister and I sat sipping iced teas or eating shaved ice. There was a fountain nearby where we liked to get splashed with cold water to cool ourselves. Then there was an especially eccentric neighbor who never came out of her house. So we used to throw rocks at the window hoping to incite her to chase us so we could get a glimpse of her. An old man in a grocery down the street used to cut us an apple or pear when we walked past, because he knew we didn't have money to buy one. We also had a backyard where we barbecued food on special days or when it got too hot indoors. We didn't have an air conditioner then. The yard wasn't very fancy, but it had grass on which we walked barefoot during the warm months and where we kept our pet dog, Sally. Here's a picture of me at nine hugging Sally. And here's another picture of how our yard looked at sunset. That's my mother seated in the chair, holding the house kitten, Meow. Perhaps my fondest memory is reading my favorite Japanese comic books [names] while sitting on the grass and sucking cherry lollipops. Days flew by that way.

Third Example: I lived in several places during my youth, but my worst memories are of living in a small rundown house on [name] Street in the area known as [name]. I couldn't stand that place. There was a smelly factory next door and the machines were always running so we always heard noise in our home. This is picture of me standing in front of the factory. There was no bus stop nearby, so we had to walk about ten blocks to one. We had a lot of mosquitoes so my mother was always spraying. I hated going to bed with the smell of spray. Here's a picture of the house. You can see all the leafage around it, which probably attracted the mosquitoes. There was only one child my age in the neighborhood, but she wasn't friendly and we never socialized. So I spent my time during the summer afternoons talking to the old lady next door. Her name was [name]. She told me stories of her deceased husband and how he struggled during the Japanese occupation. After a while I got tired of hearing the same stories over and over.  Apart from this old lady, I had no one to socialize with apart from my family and so I spent most of my time listening to pop songs on the radio. My favorite singers were [names]. After seven months we finally moved to a better neighborhood and a more spacious home. But the memory of that place has never left me and has inspired me to get a good education so I never have to live in a place like that again.