It is Sunday morning. Sam wants to visit his friend. On his way to his friend's home. He is very tired. So he stops his car and wants to take a nap(打盹).

    A man walks to Sam´s car and knocks(敲)on the window. "Excuse me. sir. "He asks." What time is it now?"

    Sam doesn't have a watch. He looks at the clock of his car and says. ”8:15”.  The man says," Thanks."

    After a short time, another man knocks on his window. "Sorry, sir. But do you have the time?""8:25". Sam say says and he is a little angry(生气的).  The man thanks him, too.

    "I really want to take a nap." Sam thinks. Then he takes out a pen and writes" I don't know the time." on the paper. And he posts(张贴)it on the window.  But soon another man sees it and knocks on the window. "Sir. sir? It's 8:45 now. "

    When George was thirty-five, he bought a small plane and learned to fly it. He soon became very good at it and made his plane do ①all kinds of tricks.

    George had a friend. His name was Mark. One day George wanted to take Mark up in his plane. Mark thought, "I've traveled in a big plane several times, but I've never been in a small one. So I'll do."

    They went up, and George flew around for half an hour and did all kind sof tricks in the air.

    When they came down again, Mark was very glad to be back ②safely, and he said to his friend in a shaking (颤抖的)voice ,"Well ,George, thank you very much for those two trips in your plane."

    George was very surprised and said, "Two trips?"

    "Yes, my first and my last," answered Mark.

When was the last time you gave or received a hug（拥抱）？ Do your parents hug you before you go to school？ In Western countries, it is quite common to greet close friends or relatives with a hug.

You might hug your teammates after winning a basketball game. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Friends who haven't seen each other for a long time will usually hug each other when meeting.

{#blank#}2{#/blank#} After coming to China, I've noticed that the Chinese seem unwilling（不愿意）to hug.

My Chinese friends tell me that hugging is considered to be very intimate （亲密的） in their culture. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Chinese people don't usually hug in public. But people's attitudes towards hugging can also change.

I remember watching a video story about a "hugging party" that was held in shanghai.. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} The Chinese who took part in the party looked uncomfortable. However, after the party, several of them changed their minds. They found that hugging didn't have to be embarrassing and could actually be quite nice.So next time you see your parents, give them a hug and see how it makes you feel.

ClothesDonation (捐赠) Box

    Have youever put your old clothes into the donation box in your neighborhood? If not,you can do it right now because the clothes donation is becoming a trend (趋势) in Urumqi.

    "Fromtime to time, my mother clears out the clothes which I no longer wear. Youknow, we teenagers are growing fast. I think it's a good way to helpothers." Lin Tao, a junior student says.

    "Ioften pick out some of my clothes which are out of style after going shopping.Then I put them into the donation box." Miss Li, a pretty young lady says.

    "Thatseems like a good idea. Some clothes in the box are quite new. People caneither wear them or usethem to make things such as handbags and pencilcases," Mrs Wang, an old woman says, "sometimes I also look throughthe box for some nice clothes."

    However,there are some problems along with the popularity of clothes donation.Recently, a UTV reporter from Focus on the City has made a survey. Here are theresults:

    Some boxesare full of clothes in a short time. There is no more room for people to giveaway clothes.

    Somepeople sell the clothes in the donation box for making money instead of wearingthem.

    Somecommunities set the boxes in unsuitable places. So there are few clothes in it.

    Manyclothes are too old and shabby (破烂的).

   "What's worse," one of the staff in a community added,"we quite often see people throw rubbish into the box when they pass by.We've tried to stop them several times but failed. It has been the most seriousproblem since we set the box."

    In orderto make the donation box work in an efficient (有效的) way, our government is taking action. Clothesdonation will be better-organized and it'll be more convenient for people inneed to take the clothes away.

On 18th November.1908, three men went up in a balloon (气球).They started early in London. The headman was Augusta Gaudron, and the other two men were Tannar and Maitland. They had a big balloon and they were ready for a long way.

Soon they heard the sea. They were carrying the usual rope, and it was hanging down from the basket of the balloon. At the end of the rope they had tied a metal box. This could hold water, or it could be empty. So they were able to change its weight. It was for use over the sea. They were also carrying some bags of sand.

After the sun rose, the balloon went higher. It went up to 3,000 metres, and the air was very cold. The water in the balloon became ice. Snow fell past the men's basket, and they could see more snow on the ground. The men tried to throw out some more sand, but it was hard. They tried to break the icy sand with their knives, but it was not easy. The work was slow and they were still falling, so they had to drop some whole bags of sand. One of them fell on an icy lake and made a black hole in the ice.

At last they pulled the box into the basket. It was still snowing, so they climbed to get away from the snow. They rose to 5,100 metres! Everything became icy. They were so cold that they decided to land. They came down in Poland heavily but safely. They had travelled 1,797kilometres from London!

A novel is a long story, usually a fictional book, which describes human experiences and interactions. It is in the form of prose(written or spoken language in its ordinary form), rather than poetry. The English-language novel, as we know it today, mainly began its development in the 1700s. Realism became important in literature at this point. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} It was in this time period and mode of literature that women writers truly came into their own. Two famous women authors who influenced the history of literature were Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf.

Jane Austen(1775-1817) was an English author. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Jane's father was a priest. They were middle class, thought not rich. In the polite society of that time, which they were part of, the lives of girls and women were very much ruled by the social rules and morals of the day. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The writer Walter Scott said of her novels, "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I have ever met with."

She was concerned with how women came to marry as it was not a simple matter of falling in love with someone in those days. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}The other problem was money; parents needed to provide women with some money to take into a marriage. Parents often tried to find their daughters the right partners. That's why Jane herself never married and died aged only{#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

A．Parents had to be of a similar social place.

B．This means that authors tried to have their novels reflect real life.

C．Jane saw the ambition(野心) of parents in many of these situations.

D．Jane's stories focused on middle to upper class society which she knew, and the place of women in it.

E．Among her most famous novels are Sense and Sensibility(1811), Pride and Prejudice(1813) and Emma(1815).