Esperanza lives in a poor Latino(拉丁美洲的) neighbourhood in Chicago, America. She dreams of having her own house one day. Her parents told her that when they moved from their last house, they would have a new and shiny(亮闪闪的) house. But the house is small and old.
Many people live in Mango Street, in a big old house, Esperanza lives behind it with her family. A lot of the people who have come from Mexico don't speak English. Many miss their home country. Esperanza understands their sadness, but she also feels at home in America. She is an American, but her roots(根) will always be Latino.
Esperanza is young. Like her friends, she has to grow up fast. She is stuck between being a girl and being a woman. In the poor and dangerous area where she lives, this is difficult for her. Mexican people usually live in a close neighbourhood. This means that people live packed(挤塞的) in together. Everyone knows everyone else. So Esperanza knows other older girls that do things she is not comfortable doing. It is just a fact of her life.
But Esperanza has good friends too. She becomes friends with two sisters named Lucy and Rachel. They ride bikes and have adventures(冒险) together. Esperanza is also friends with a girl named Alicia. Alicia is afraid of the rats in her apartment. She shares her poems with Esperanza.
There is a famous English saying "You are what you eat", and it means what you put in your mouth will become part of you. Many experts use it to tell people it's important to have a good eating habit. For example, too much sweet food makes a person overweight. To avoid being fat, kids are told to keep off sweet food. But, a team of American scientists have found something new about eating sweet food.
"When we say some people are 'sweet', we mean they are kind and friendly to us. Perhaps this word can help us learn more about people's feelings and acts," said Brian Meier, a scientist from the study team. "Taste is something we experience every day. What we have done is find whether we can know someone's character and behaviour according to his or her taste."
In one of their experiments, students were asked questions about their character - whether, for example, they were soft- hearted or not. Then they were asked to make a list of their favourite food. According to their answers, the scientists found that the students who liked sweet food were nicer.
In their another experiment, the scientists found that people who preferred sweet food, such as cookies and chocolate, were more willing to help other people in need, and those who ate non-sweet food such as chips weren't. For example, people with a sweet tooth were more likely to volunteer to clean up their city, visit sick children in hospital and so on.
The result of the experiments is that people's helpfulness or being nice has something to do with their taste for sweet food. So eating sweet food is a useful way to make people nice and helpful. Next time, try some ice-cream.
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Dear Fiona, Here we are on the farm of Nykonos in the south of America, and we are having a good time. We are staying in a village. There are a lot of children here. We are playing games all day. I'm writing this letter in the house you can see in the picture on the other side of this postcard. Jacqui is learning to swim, Terry is lying in the sun, John is reading a newspaper and the children in this village are playing football near the river now. What are you doing now? We are enjoying this holiday very much. See you soon! Love, Janet |
Fiona Graham 22. Park Street Stow-on-the-Wold Gloucestershire ENGLAND |
In kindergarten your idea of a good friend was the person who let you have the red pencil when all that was left was the ugly black one.
In first grade your idea of a good friend was the person who went to the bathroom with you and held your hand as you walked through the dark halls and shared their lunch with you when you forget yours on the bus.
In second grade your idea of a good friend was the person who was willing to change square dancing parents in gym so you wouldn't have to be alone, and he/she saved a seat on the back of the bus for you.
In third grade your idea of a good friend was the person who went up your new crush, and asked them to dance with you, so that if they said no you wouldn't have to be embarrassed, and helped you pack up your stuffed animals and old baseball cards so that your room would be a "high schooler's" room, but didn't laugh at you when you finished and broke out into tears.
In fourth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you pick out a college, assured you that you would get into that college, helped you deal with your parents.
We are pleased to announce (宣布) the results of our competition to create a new school festival for students to celebrate this year. This competition, which we have had twice, has been a huge success. But this year, we have had more entries(参赛作品) than ever before!
We have received many wonderful suggestions, including one that suggested there should be a festival of shoes! This was certainly a creative idea, but not surprisingly, our judges(裁判) liked other suggestions more!
The winning suggestion was from Henry Chan, who suggested that there should be a festival of bicycles. It was the judges' favourite. Henry, who is in Grade Eight, said that he went to school by bicycle every day and enjoyed taking bicycle trips very much. He added that so many public bicycles were in use in our city that it would be a shame not to celebrate them.
As part of the festival a bicycle trip will be organized in the city. Then students will hold a ten-metre bicycle riding competition in which anyone who can ride the slowest wins. What's more, you students are called on to ride bicycles to school as often as possible.
The Bicycle Festival will start on June 18th and last two days. We hope you will take part in the festival and do your bit to protect our environment!
Australia at last! The flight was tiring, but here I am at last, in Sydney! Look! Here we are at last! The Sydney Opera House! It looks like shells!
It's wonderful and amazing! And I'm taking the plane to New Zealand on Tuesday. I'll post again from there.
Coffee and Paris! Paris is beautiful! We went on a great city tour. We also took a boat ride on the River Seine. And it's nicer to just sit at a street care and watch the world go by. But, to tell you a secret. Frank's disappointed because no one can understand his French!
Don't come here! We're staying at a farm in Utah. There is nearly nothing! It's too quiet. Every morning, we get up really early, and we ride the horses. Then it's breakfast and more riding--not my idea of fun! So, today I walked to a little town near the farm where they actually have Internet! Next week, we're shopping in New York. I can't wait!
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Bill: My favourite book is The Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, the Witch(女巫) and the Wardrobe(魔衣柜) by C.S, Lewis. It's about four children who find a magical(神奇的) land inside a wardrobe. A witch makes the land winter forever, The children help save the magical land from the witch with the help of Aslan, a great talking lion. The children become leaders. But then they come back to our world ... until their next journey in Narnia. |
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Eric: I like reading The Magic School Bus written by Joanna Cole best. The magic school bus can go everywhere, even inside the human body. I like Arnold, a boy in Ms. Frizzle's class. He's really funny and he's always afraid. |
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Grace: One of my all-time favourite books is Ugly by Donna Jo Napoli. It's the story of an ugly young duck. It's a little sad, but after you finish reading it, you'll want to read it again and again. The way Donna Jo Napoli writes is special, and you can really get inside the characters' heads. It sounds like music when it's being read to you. |
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Sally: My favourite book is Bloomability by Sharon Creech. It's about a girl whose parents are always on the move. Then she is suddenly taken to Switzerland by her aunt and uncle, away from her family. Interested? Then read this book! |
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Jane: My favourite book is Nancy Drew Mystery(疑案) Stories by Carolyn Keene. I have read it about four times! It is about a girl who loves solving mysteries, and she finds a statue that whispers. Well, I'm not going to tell you the story. I'll let you read it by yourself. |
These days haze(雾霾) is around us here and there. In fact, everyone has the power to change their living habits to help reduce it. Many local governments call on their people to take action to make the air cleaner.
Transport is one of the biggest contributors(促成物) to haze. When, where, bow, why and what you drive all affect air quality. When one drives to work for one year, he uses as much energy as a bus rider uses in 10 years. So walk or ride your bicycle to work or school whenever possible. If it is necessary, you can use public transport instead of your car. Each person using public transport for a year instead of a car can save nearly a tonne of pollutants, including CO2, from going into the atmosphere.
Carpooling is another way to reduce carbon emissions (排放). Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car. It immediately reduces your car's emissions by half.
What you do inside your living space can have a big effect on the air quality outside it. You can do a lot of things inside and around your home that will help you pollute less and save some money.
A large amount of our energy supply comes from burning coal, another contributor to haze. By cutting down your electricity use, you are cutting down on haze. So you may try to reduce your use of electricity by turning off lights, using your air conditioner wisely during the summer months, or updating some of your electrical appliances to low-energy models. For example, you can use energy-saving lamps that require less energy and last 10 times longer than common bulbs.
Cross- country skier Man Dandan won the women's 1.4 km individual sprint here on Monday, earning China's first gold at the eighth Asian Winter Games in 2017.
"I was in good form today," said the 28 year-old girl after winning the title in the final round with 3 minutes and 48. 29 seconds. "I didn't think much, but just focused on the games. As an old member, I want to set a good example to my younger teammates by doing my best no matter what the result is."
Mikko Olavi Virtanen, the head coach of the Chinese cross-country skiing team, said after the game he was satisfied with Man Dandan's performance. "She is a super talented sprint skier. Her biggest problem before was to maintain the speed for four rounds of the competition. We have been working on that for the past seven months. I have been giving her advice, such as how to save the energy till the final round," he said, adding that Man is a good learner.
He also said that the Chinese cross-country skiing team had a huge potential. "We have quite a young team. We still have five more years to Beijing Winter Olympics. I hope we can continue this good work for a long term," he said.
Yelena Kolomina from Kazakhstan took the sliver and Ju Hyeri from South Korea got the bronze. Australia's Casey Wright finished the third in the final round but did not get a medal as a guest athlete.
Why do we like drinking water from plastic bottles? Some people think it is healthy and clean. Others drink bottled water because it's easy--you can carry it around with you. In hot countries, like Greece, we often buy bottles of cold water in the summer.
However, making tots of plastic is not a good idea for many reasons. First of all, we need a lot of oil for plastic products. We usually use oil as a source(资源) of energy. If we reduced the number of bottles we made, we wouldn't need so much oil. Plastic bottles also pollute the environment. If we recycled all our plastic bottles, we wouldn't need so much space for rubbish dumps. But in Greece, we don't recycle much of the plastic we use. In 2006, Greeks recycled only about 10% of plastic waste. The rest became rubbish on land and in rivers and seas.
So next time you want to throw away a plastic bottle in the litter bin, stop and think. If you recycled it, you would help the environment. But what can you do when there isn't a recycling bin near you? Well, there are lots of useful ways that you can use your bottles again. For example, an empty bottle makes a great piggy bank for your pocket money, and if you cut a bottle in half, you will have a plant pot. Go green! You can make a difference.
