Customs at the Sydney Airport

I traveled to Australia ten years ago on my student visa and went through the Customs at Sydney Airport. I handed my declaration form to a Customs office who was in his 50s and looked friendly.

 “Do you have any food with you?”

“No.”

 I thought I was lucky as I had given my beef jerky to my mother before I boarded the plane.

“Could you open your backpack?” I zipped my bag open.

“What’s this?”

“That’s Chinese eight ingredients tea.” My God! I forgot there were some ingredients which could be called food in my tea bags.

“Do you know you can’t bring this into Australia?”

I didn’t reply; he already had taken my Chinese tea and thrown it into a big box full of prohibited and restricted items.

 After X-raying my suitcases, he asked me in an austere tone,

“Do you have prohibited items in your suitcase? You will receive severe penalties if you tell a lie. ”

 I was becoming nervous and doubted my mother who must have put some food into my suitcases without telling me. But I had to let him check it out. He unzipped my suitcase, and, suddenly, he laughed when he saw the “evidence.” He opened the lid wide and let me see: an iron wok with a “wood” handle sitting at the bottom of my suitcase.

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Three Things I Have Learned

Dynamic character, "changing or growing personally," is what I have learned from the guide to literary terms. Pascal, the main character of Ghosts, is the typical dynamic character who is from a radio news writer with full career dreams to a person affected by gang members. 46 words

Quotation is " the exact words", which has changed my thought. I use to quote the whole sentence as a quotation in my paragraph writing. Now I know I need a phrase to lead my reader to my quotation and a quotation is only " part of sentences." 46 words

The practice of writing quotations in class helped me to understand a quotation needs to be "fully explained." The sentence written by our group, Pascal is shocked by her mother's "the disdain for those she served," does not explained the point of attitude towards those gang members. 47 words