Source A: The island after the postcard

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The postcard showed an island almost without people. A white house stood above a dark bay, and the caption used the word untouched. I kept the card beside my appointment letter for a temporary library post at the school. In my flat, untouched sounded restful. It suggested a place where nobody would ask why I had not answered an email while three other emails were arriving.

The ferry landing was not untouched. It had a timetable, a forklift, two waiting vans and a man trying to prevent a sheet of paperwork from leaving ahead of its owner. Wind pressed my coat against my knees. I stepped onto the quay with the awkward confidence of someone who had packed too much because she believed she was travelling towards simplicity.

The school administrator met me in a car full of boxes. Before we discussed the view, she asked whether I had brought the right adapter for the library computer. Then she explained the delivery schedule, the spare key and which number to call if the heating failed. The island was acquiring instructions faster than I could attach them to the postcard. Nothing she said was unwelcoming. It was the kindness of somebody giving a new colleague enough information to manage an ordinary week.

At the school, pupils were arguing about a game they had played online. One wanted a book which had not arrived with the last shipment. Another asked whether I could help print a design. Through the window, I could see the bay, now bright beneath a break in the cloud. Inside, the room required the same mixture of patience, equipment and attention as any library I had known. Distance had changed how supplies reached it, not removed the need for them.

On Saturday, I walked towards the house on the card. A man was fixing its fence. I asked whether the view ever became ordinary. He said sometimes it became difficult to see through the rain, then asked if I had found the shop’s winter hours. His answer disappointed the little interview I had prepared in my head and helped with the afternoon I was actually living.

I still loved the bay. I took a photograph when the light returned. Before sending it to a friend, I added a sentence about the delayed book and the useful winter opening times. The island did not need to lose its beauty in order to contain work. It was not an untouched space waiting to simplify me. It was a place already being lived in, and I had begun, very cautiously, to join the arrangements.

Source B: From Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan — Jamie Zeppa

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 16–18).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how expectations of a place change after arrival.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.