My name is Sam. I am a junior high school student. My school is close to my home, so I always go to school on foot. Classes start at 8 a.m., and I am seldom late. I like Geography best. I enjoy learning about different places in the world.

    In the morning, we usually study Chinese, Maths and English. We have our morning break at 9:50 a.m..  When the bell rings, I run to the playground with my best friends Tom and Jack. We often play games. Break ends at 10:10 a.m..

Lunch is from 11:50 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.. Afternoon classes end at 3:30 p.m. Then Tom, Jack and I take part in the school bank practice. We make great music together.

    I always have a good time at school.

    Modern life is impossible without traveling.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}With a modern airliner （客机） you can travel in one day to places which it took a month or more to get to a hundred years ago.

    Traveling by train is slower than by air, but it has its advantages . You can see the country you are traveling through. Modern trains have comfortable seats and dining cars.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    There are large liners and river boats. You can visit many other countries and different places. Traveling by sea is a very pleasant way to spend a holiday.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Many people like to travel by car. You can make your own timetable （时间表）{#blank#}4{#/blank#}You can stop wherever you wish where there is something interesting to see, at a good restaurant where you can enjoy a good meal, or at a hotel to spend the night.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} while people usually take a train or a plane when they are traveling on business.

A.That is why traveling by car is popular for pleasure trips.

B.Some people prefer to travel by sea when it is possible.

C.Some people prefer to stay home all the time.

D.The fastest way of traveling is by air.

E.You can travel three or four hundred miles or only fifty or one hundred miles a day, just as you like.

F.They make even the longest journey enjoyable.

     "Tome Stay is a form of study abroad program. It allows the visitor to stay with a local family to better understand the local lifestyle. It also helps to improve the visitor's language ability. If you wish to learn more about foreign cultures or to get foreign experience，you should join this kind of holiday. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} ," said a teacher during a school meeting last term.

    After this meeting,  {#blank#}2{#/blank#} . At last, I had such a chance to go on such a holiday with some of my schoolmates last month. We went to London, a place where I had wanted to go since years ago.

    After we got to London, we went to stay with different families. I was lucky that my host family（寄宿家庭）was a white couple who had a daughter about my age. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} . They were interested in me and I learnt a lot of things from then on.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} . After breakfast, a local teacher would come to take us in his car. Then we would have classes or go on a sight-seeing trip to different places of interest like Big Ben, London Bridge, and Buckingham Palace. We would go back to our own homes after the activities.

    The holiday was a valuable experience for me. I enjoyed every minute of it. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} . Three weeks later, we had to leave "home" for Hong Kong.

    A ratio compares two numbers. For example, if you have 3 pens and 4 pencils, the ratio of pens to pencils is 3 to 4. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} 3 to 4, 3:4 and 3/4. One type of ratio is expressing (表示) numbers as a percent. A percent is the ratio of a number to 100. In other words, a percent compares one number to 100. The percent means "per hundred". {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You can use "%" to express percent. So 35% means 35 out of 100, and 15% means 15 out of 100. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Probability means the chance (可能) of some things happening in the future. For example, if there is a 90% chance of rain, 90 times out of 100, it will rain. That is a very high probability. However, if the weatherman says that there is only a 10% chance of rain, then 10 times out of 100, it will rain. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    You can also express probability by using ratios. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} 5 of them are black while only 1 of them is red. If you choose a pen at random (随机地) from the pencil box, then the probability of choosing a black Den are 5 to 6, or 5/6. On the other hand, the probability of choosing a red pen is only 1 to 6, or 1/6.

    Kevin has an interesting hobby. He likes collecting tropical fish (热带鱼). He keeps his hobby for seven years. Now he is fourteen. There is a big aquarium in his room. There are many fish in it.

    Kevin often travels around the world with his family. He loves it because he can see the underwater world in many places. Under the water, he can see lots of tropical fish. Sometimes he can see sharks (鲨鱼). He wants to keep one or two small sharks in an aquarium, but he can't do it at home. So Kevin goes to help in the ZO0 on the weekend. There he can see a lot of sharks and some other big fish. Kevin likes working in the zoo because he can work with his favorite animals and learn more about them.

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All Together Now!

    Have you ever heard of homemade music? That's right-homemade music. Music that is made at home can be lots of fun. And all of the family can take part in it. You don't have to have good voices. And you don't need to buy a musical instrument. What a family needs is the willingness to make music.

A singing game my family like is Crazy Voices. Each person sings a different song. But everybody sings at the same time! We do sound a little crazy. But the tunes (曲调) all fit together. Sometimes we get all mixed up. Then we just hum the songs. Or we put our hands over our ears. Then we try it again. And crazy voices fill the air. We really have homemade music when we play the Tap-a-Glass. Why? We make the instrument- that's the Tap-a一Glass. This takes some time. First, we hunt for drinking glasses that have a good ring to them. We tap them with a spoon to find out. We need eight glasses- one for each tone (音调) of the scale. How do we get different tones? By putting different amounts of water in the glasses. The more water, the lower the tone. After a while, we have all eight tones of the scale. Now the Tap-a-Glass is ready. One person takes the spoon and taps out a simple tune. We always give the player time to practice a little bit first. Then we try to guess the name of the song.

    Sometimes we do echo (回声) singing. In echo singing, we sing the same song. We pick a simple tune. One person begins to sing. Then a second person starts-right after the first singer! Sure enough, we have homemade music with a homemade echo!

    My family have fun with homemade music. We enjoy the time being together. Sometimes we get all mixed up. Sometimes we have to stop because we are laughing s0 hard. But more importantly, we can make music ourselves. To us, it sounds great.