"What's it like to have a gap between your teeth?" a girl asked me one day.
Nobody had ever 1 before. My hand unconsciously rose to cover my mouth. But, as she looked at me, sincerely waiting for2, 1 realized she was not trying to be rude. "I never think about it," I truthfully replied. She nodded and turned away. I was left wondering if people3 me and saw only gappy teeth.
Later that day at home, I began to 4 my teeth again. I felt upset. I thought my life would be somehow better if my teeth were not gappy. How I wanted the perfect teeth that everyone else seemed to have!
Of course, Mom 5everything . She has lived her entire life with gappy teeth, and tried to convince me that there was nothing to 6. When I refused to listen, she told me I could get the surgery to close the gap if it was that important. "Let's be 7, though," she said. "If everyone got surgeries to become pretty, everyone would be exactly the same. There is beauty in differences."
Her 8 made me consider my teeth seriously. The thought of losing my gap was more terrible than the reality that people were going to notice it. I realized how important it was to me. It is part of my9.
Nowadays many people do ridiculous things to realize their dream of "perfection." The10 is that no one is perfect. When all potential for ugliness is removed, so is all of the potential for11.
So if that girl ever asked about my teeth 12, I would truthfully answer. "You know? It's really cute."
Keeping in touch with our friends is an important part of friendship. This does not mean that have to write or call our friends every day. It does mean, however, that we care enough about our friends to find out how they are doing from time to time.
People have different habits about keeping in touch with others. Some like to call their friends, sometimes many times day. Others prefer to e-mail their friends. Still prefer writing letters so that they can include photos or interesting articles the envelopes along with their letters. Some even write postcards while they are on vacation send them to friends.
Every kind of communication is important. It is important what kind of call we make or letter we send.is important is that we let others know we care about them.
What makes a gift special? Is it the price you see on the gift receipt? Or is it the look on the recipient's face when they receive it that determines the true value? What gift is worth the most?
This Christmas I was debating what to give my father. My dad is a hard person to buy for because he never wants anything. I pulled out my phone to read a text message from my mom saying that we were leaving for Christmas shopping for him when I came across a message on my phone that I had locked. The message was from my father. My eyes fell on a photo of a flower taken in Wyoming. and underneath a poem by William Blake. The flower, a lone dandelion standing against the bright blue sky, inspired me. My dad had been reciting those words to me since I was a kid. That may even be the reason why I love writing. I decided that those words would be my gift to my father.
I called back. I told my mom to go without me and that I already created my gift. I sent the photo of the cream-colored flower to my computer and typed the poem on top of it. As I was arranging the details another poem came to mind. The poem was written by Edgar Allan Poe; my dad recited it as much as he did the other. I typed that out as well and searched online for a background to the words of it. The poem was focused around dreaming, and after searching I found the perfect picture. The image was painted with blues and greens and purples, twisting together to create the theme and wonder of a dream. As I watched both poems passing through the printer, the white paper coloring with words that shaped my childhood. I felt that this was a gift that my father would truly appreciate.
Christmas soon arrived. The minute I saw the look on my dad's face as he unwrapped those swirling black letters carefully placed in a cheap frame, I knew I had given the perfect gift.
Still seeking a destination for your weekend break? There are some places which are probably a mere walk away from your college.
King's Art Centre
A day at the Centre could mean a visit to an exhibition of the work of one of the most interesting contemporary artists on show anywhere. This weekend tees the opening of an exhibition of four local artists.
You could attend a class teaching you how to 'learn from the masters' or get more creative with paint —- free of charge.
The Centre also runs two life drawing classes for which there is a small fee.
The Botanic Garden
The Garden has over 8,000 plant species; it holds the research and teaching collection of living plants for Cambridge University.
The multi-branched Torch Aloe here is impressive. The African plant produces red flowers above blue-green leaves, and is not one to miss.
Get to the display house to see Dionaea muscipula, a plant more commonly known as the Venus Flytrap that feeds on insects and other small animals.
The Garden is also a place for wildlife-enthusiasts. Look for grass snakes in the lake. A snake called 'Hissing Sid' is regularly seen lying in the heat of the warm sun.
Byron's Pool
Many stories surround Lord Byron's time as a student of Cambridge University, Arriving in 1805, he wrote a letter complaining that it was a place of "mess and drunkenness". However, it seems as though Byron did manage to pass the time pleasantly enough. I'm not just talking about the pet bear he kept in his roans. He spent a great deal of time walking in the village.
It is also said that on occasion Byron swam naked by moonlight in the lake, which is now known as Byron's Pool. A couple of miles past Grantchester in the south Cambridgeshire countryside, the pool is surrounded by beautiful circular paths around the fields. The cries of invisible birds make the trip a lovely experience and on the way home you can drop into the village for afternoon tea. If you don't trust me, then perhaps you'll take it from Virginia Woolf一—over a century after Byron, she reportedly took a trip to swim in the same pool.
Harvard researchers have created a tough, low-cost, biodegradable (可生物降解的) material inspired by insects' hard outer shells. The material's inventors say it has a number of possible uses and someday could provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic. The material, made from shrimp ('虾) shells and proteins produced from silk, is called "shrilk." It is thin, clear, flexible and strong.
A major benefit of the material is its biodegradability. Plastic's toughness and flexibility represented a revolution in materials science during the 1950s and '60s. Decades later, however, plastic's very durability (耐用性) is raising questions about how appropriate it is for one-time products such as plastic bags, or short-lived consumer goods, used in the home for a few years and then cast into a landfill where they will degrade for centuries. What is the point of making something that lasts 1,000 years?
Shrilk not only will degrade in a landfill, but its basic components are used as fertilizer(肥料), and so will enrich the soil.
Shrilk has great potential, the inventors said. Materials from which it is made are plentiful in nature, found in everything ranging from shrimp shells, insect bodies to living plants. That makes shrilk low cost, and its mass production possible should it be used for products demanding a lot of material.
Work on shrilk is continuing in the lab. The inventors said the material becomes flexible when wet, so they're exploring ways to use it in wet environments. They're also developing simpler production processes, which could be used for non-medical products, like for computer cases and other products inside the home. They're even exploring combining it with other materials, like carbon fibers, to give it new properties.
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the numbered blanks by using the information from the passage.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Since the earliest civilizations, people have controlled rivers to meet society's demands. Today, rivers are controlled for many reasons, primarily to maintain reliable water supplies for daily, agricultural and industrial needs, for power generation, for navigation (航行), and to prevent flooding.
River control is achieved by channelization, a term that covers a range of river engineering works, including widening, deepening, straightening and stabilization of banks, and by the construction of dams.
An important period of channelization took place in Europe during the l9'th century, when many large rivers were straightened and their beds deepened. One of the most dramatically changed was the Tisza River, a branch of the Danube that flows through Hungary. The controlling of the Tisza, designed to reduce flooding and make land for agriculture, included cutting off more than 100 meanders (河曲), shortening the river's length by nearly 400 kilometers.
One of the most common ways in which people control rivers is by damming them. The past 50 years or so has seen an increase in dam construction worldwide, and at the beginning of the 21st century, there were about 800,000 dams globally, some towering more than 200 meters in height.
Despite their successes, many dams also cause significant environmental changes that prove harmful. Some particularly deep reservoirs (水库) can bring about earthquakes due to the stress on their bottom rocks caused by huge volumes of water. Downstream of a reservoir, the river is certainly influenced in many ways: water volume, speed and quality are all affected, leading to changes in the landscape and among plants and animals.
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Directions: Read the following passage. Answer the questions according to the information given in the passage.
A wise teacher once told me that every teenager needs to experience a not-so-fun first job from working at a grocery store to the fast food industry.
Now I still remember my first day at a fast food restaurant three years ago. I wanted to save up money and buy my own car, so I applied everywhere I could that summer. The restaurant called me right away and I thought to myself, this is going to be easy. Within four hours of my first shift (.轮班)， I had angry customers who complained how slow I was. I watched in fear as a kid spilled his milk everywhere, and I heard the words that no 16-year-old boy or anyone for that matter wants to hear: "Mike, there's a problem in the men's bathroom and you might want gloves for this one." I realized right away that working at the restaurant was not going to be a picnic. The manager expected a clean environment and, particularly, fast service with a friendly smile.
Over three years later I still work at that restaurant whenever I go home during vacations. I love my co-workers there and all the customers know who I am. Every morning the same senior citizens come in and get their morning coffees. They chat with us workers and joke around. Our smiles have just as much to do with them making us a part of their everyday lives as the coffee does.
From my first job at the restaurant, I learned teamwork and devotion. I also learned staying positive no matter how rough things seem to get. I will forever carry the experience that I gained at the restaurant with me as I go forward in my life.
