The Wrong Train
A story about Gal, who travels alone by train for the first time, gets on the wrong train and learns something from it.
Tap any word to hear it · dotted words have a definition in the glossary
🎧 Listen
1Gal had taken the train to her aunt's house in Haifa many times, but always with her mother. This time, at fourteen, she was going alone. "The train to Haifa leaves from 2. Check the sign before you get on," her mother repeated three times at the station in Tel Aviv. Gal rolled her eyes. "Mom, I know."
2Two trains were standing at the . Gal jumped onto the nearest one, found a seat by the window and put on her headphones. She started a new series on her phone, and one episode followed another. Then she heard an : "Next station: Ashkelon." Ashkelon was in the south. Haifa was in the north.
3Her heart began to . Her phone battery was at four percent. She thought about calling her mother, but she could already hear the words: "I told you three times." Instead, she took a deep breath and walked over to a woman in a train .
4The woman smiled. "It happens every day," she said. She explained that Gal should get off at Ashkelon, to the other and take the next train north. She even wrote the times on a piece of paper, because Gal's phone was about to die.
5Gal arrived in Haifa two hours late. Her aunt was waiting at the station, looking worried. That evening, Gal called her mother and told her the whole story. To her surprise, her mother laughed. "When I was your age," she said, "I once took the wrong bus and ended up in Jerusalem."
📘 Glossary
- platform - the raised area beside the tracks where passengers wait for a train
- rolled her eyes - moved the eyes around to show you are annoyed
- announcement - a spoken message on a loudspeaker
- pound - to beat hard and fast
- uniform - special clothes worn by people in a job
- cross - to go from one side to the other
Questions
Finding details
1. Why was this trip different for Gal?Making inferences
2. Why did Gal roll her eyes?Finding details
3. What did Gal do after she found a seat?Finding details
4. How did Gal find out that she was on the wrong train?Making inferences
5. Why didn't Gal call her mother?Word meaning
6. In paragraph 3, "Her heart began to pound" means that her heart…Finding details
7. Give TWO things the woman in the train uniform did to help Gal.Reference words
8. In paragraph 4, the word "She" in "She even wrote the times" refers to…Finding details
9. How late did Gal arrive in Haifa?Making inferences
10. What does the mother's story at the end show?
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