Dear Alice,
I just received your letter. And I was very surprised to know that you decided to drop out of school and wanted to be a model （模特）.
Being a model for a living is not easy. In fact, a famous person like me has a lot of problems that you couldn't see. I can't eat what I like, even though I'm very hungry. Keeping thin makes me look more beautiful on the stage because no one would like to see a heavy model.
Besides, I have to wear a heavy coat in the hot sun, in a swimming suit in the cold air. And practicing walking nicely every day is tiring for me.
You might say I made much money from modeling. But my dear niece （侄女）, you have to know that money is, nothing, knowledge is everything. School is important and everyone should go to school for a certain period of time. The longer they stay at school, the better they will be. Very often, I hope I can give up my job and continue my studies at school. But it is very difficult for me to go back to school again. I am too old to go back to school now.
You are a pretty young girl with a bright future. You only have one year to finish your studies in high school. A year is really short. Please do consider my words carefully before you decide. Of course, there is only one thing I care about, and that is your happiness.
Love,
Emma

      Feeding a crowd of hundreds doesn't make Kenny Seals-Nutt nervous.

In fact, he does well and successfully in the kitchen. He's in his perfect place when dicing tomatoes, making salads and baking cakes.

      By the time Kenny, 16, reached his third year of high school at Hickory Grove,

      North Carolina, US, he had become president of his school's cooking club. He also opened his own food company, called Modern Fusion. 

      Kenny said he developed his love of cooking by watching his mother, and his grandmother, who owned a catering business（饮食业）. Kenny helped them both in order to remember their tips: how long to cook chicken so it stays wet, and the right amount of tomatoes to add to the noodles or fishes.

      At the age of 5, he cooked his first dish. Taking it for his school lunch, he warmed it up in the school's microwave, while the other kids ate their sandwiches.

      “I love to eat, and it started to become more fun to cook than to use a microwave,” he said.

      Cooking came easy to Kenny, and he enjoyed adding new ingredients （作料） into common dishes. “It started with a strong interest and I wanted to know more,” he said.

      He began to watch the Food Network and read chef（大厨）blogs.

      Last summer, Kenny put his skills to the test by working with his grandmother to cater（备办食物）for his uncle's wedding. While she cooked traditional dishes, Kenny wanted to add something new to them.

      Now Kenny spends his weekends catering his own events: weddings, birthday parties, baby showers and so on. Kenny's dishes are always a hit.

 Chef Frederick Mookie Hicks, owner of a catering business, said Kenny's success comes from his ability in the kitchen. Hicks said he has asked Kenny to cook with him on jobs three times now, and he presents Kenny as a positive example of a good chef to the students in his cooking classes.

“He's so smart at cooking that he doesn't let anything stop him,” Hicks said. “I knew in the first five minutes of working with the kid that he is something special.”

A

    Mrs. Brown is a woman about forty-five. Her husband has a factory in the town and gets much money. Her three children are all intelligent and they work in their factory. She has nothing to do at home and lives a happy life. Mrs.Brown likes meat and cakes very much. Her husband and children often buy some for her. And she doesn't like sports and often gets up at eleven o'clock in the morning. So she gets fatter and fatter and now it's difficult for her to walk. Sometimes she thinks something is wrong with her heart. She went to see a doctor one day. The doctor looked her over carefully and said, “You have got a heart disease, Mrs. Brown. It's bad for your heart to eat much sugar and meat. You'd better eat a piece of bread for each meal.”

    “That's easy, doctor,” said the woman. “But when do I have to eat the bread, before a meal or after a meal?”

    I'm a Chinese student studying in Canada. I have been a boarder(寄宿生) with the Carsons for more than a year and a half.

    The Carsons live in their own house, which has four bedrooms including the one in the basement(底层) which I live in. Judy does all the work in the house and Andrew is responsible for the work in the garden. When they go out in the evening, they often ask me to look after their children.

    Judy's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Morris, lived in another city. Judy was their only child and naturally they doted on(溺爱) Judy's children. They often sent the children presents.

    Last April Mr. Morris died. Now that Mrs. Morris was quite alone, I expected that Judy would want her to come and live with them. One day, Margaret told me grandma was coming to live with them and her daddy and mummy would want my room back. The news didn't surprise me and the next day I went to Judy and asked her about it. I said I couldn't think of living in their basement room any longer if it was needed for Mrs. Morris. Judy seemed surprised at first. Then she told me there was no deed for me to move, for they hadn't yet come to any decision about her mother coming to live with them. "Naturally I'm worried about my mother. She has been in poor health." She smiled sadly and added. "To be honest, Andrew and my mother have never got on well. We'll wait a bit and see what happens. Perhaps Moter will be all right living herself, of perhaps they will both change their minds."

    That was six months ago. During this time I've heard that Mrs. Morris has had two illnesses and that her health has got worse. A nursing home was mentioned once but Mrs. Morris refused to go there. So up to now she's still living alone and I'm still living in the basement room.

    Nigel is our new next-door neighbour. He's a pilot. He was in the R.F.A. He will fly to New York next month. The month after next he'll fly to Tokyo. At the moment, he's in Madrid. He flew to Spain a week ago. He'll return to London the week after next. He's only forty-one years old, and he has already been to nearly every country in the world. Nigel is a very lucky man. But his wife isn't very lucky. She usually stays at home!