Dear Laura,
Thanks for your message. Yes, I'm having a great time on my student exchange(交流)programme in France. I was a bit 1before I arrived here, but there was no need to be. My host family is really nice.
They try to make me 2 at home. The grandmother knows that I miss Chinese food a lot. So she actually learned how to 3Chinese food！She also has a teenage granddaughter about my age who is really 4. She always talks to me in French to help me practise. You wouldn't 5 how quickly my French has improved. 6I still make lots of mistakes, it doesn't worry me as it used to.
My biggest 7is learning how to act at the dinner table. As you can imagine, things are very different from the way they are at home. For example, you shouldn't put your elbows(胳膊肘)on the table. 8, I thought that was pretty strange, but now I'm used to(习惯于)it. Another example is that you shouldn't eat anything with your 9except bread, not even fruit. You have to cut it up and eat it with a fork. Another thing is that it's impolite to say you're full. If you don't want any more 10, you should just say, "That was delicious. "I have to say that I find it difficult to 11 everything, but I'm gradually(逐渐地)getting used to it. I don't find French customs so 12any more.
I'll write again soon and tell you more about my life in France. |Hope you're having a good school year.
Yours,
Lin Yue
I entered St Thoma's Hospital as a medical student at the age of 18 and spent five years there. I was an unsatisfactory student, for my heart, as you might have guessed, was not in it. I wanted, I had always wanted to be a writer, and in the evening, after my high tea, I wrote and read. Before long, I wrote a novel, called "Liza of Lambeth", which I sent to a publisher and was accepted. It appeared during my last year at the hospital and had something of a success. It was of course an accident, but naturally I did not know that. I felt I could afford to give up medicine and make writing my profession; so, three days after I graduated from the school of medicine, I set out for Spain to write another book. Looking back now and knowing as I do the terrible difficulties of making a living by writing, I realize I was taking a fearful risk. It never even occurred to me.
The next ten years were very hard, and I earned an average of £100 a year. Then I had a bit of luck. The manager of the Court Theatre put on a play that failed; the next play he arranged to put on was not ready, and he was at his wits' end. He read a play of mine and, though he did not much like it, he thought it might just run for the six weeks till the play he had in mind to follow it with could be produced. It ran for fifteen months. Within a short while I had four plays running in London at the same time. Nothing of the kind had ever happened before. I was the talk of the town. One of the students at St Thomas's Hospital asked the famous surgeon with whom I had worked whether he remembered me. "Yes, I remember him quite well," he said. "One of our failures, I'm afraid."
Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa (today part of Italy)between 31 October, 1450 30 October, 1451 and (die)on 20 May, 1516. He was well-known explorer. Throughout his life, Columbus completed four voyages(3 August, 1492~11 May, 1502), and his efforts(努力)(build)settlements on the Island of Hispaniola, started the Spanish colonization(殖民)of the New World.
Although Columbus was not the first European explorer (reach)the Americas, his voyages led the first lasting European contact with the Americans.
(him)played a (real)important and great role in the historical (develop)of the modern (west)world.
