VOA Special English -- English Central 

FancyEnglish       "Britain Has Changed Me"        百科知识 

VOA Special English -- English Central Lucélia Rodrigues: "Britain Has Changed Me" What we're looking at here is the Nottingham House, which is the British entry to the Solar Decathlon competition, that is happening in Madrid on June this year. This competition brings 20 of us together and the main idea is to raise awareness on energy efficiency and sustainable design. The house is not just energy efficient, but it is zero carbon and sustainable. This is the creative village homes project where we're building houses and getting people to live in them, and then monitoring them over a period of time, so we can tell if the energy efficiency that we designed for is actually achieved when users are living in here. It allows us to try it first and then to show the world how it works. The next house explored is the Nottingham House. And once the competition is finished, and we have won hopefully, we're gonna bring the house back here and sit in that plot just over there. I think the government and the people in Britain are being very brave to try to address the carbon challenge, to try to get into a more sustainable way of life. This is the Environmental Education Center, it's the design studios. There's always a buzz. There's always a lot happening and people from all over the world. Britain is very vibrant. It's very multicultural. I never had experienced such a globalized classroom. What a great surprise, but it was absolutely brilliant. Coming to Britain has obviously changed me professionally because now, my architecture is based on sustainable architecture, but, also personally has changed me enormously. It has opened my eyes to a huge world that is out there, then now feels a lot smaller, a lot closer, because I can have it all here. I never felt so close to other cultures as I do feel here, and my level of tolerance and acceptance has changed immensely, and I'm a completely different person. Now, I cannot tolerate prejudice of any kind from anyone.