My Family Is Very Poor
    A little boy comes to a new city. His name is Peter. Of course（当然）, he lives with his mother and father. His family is very rich（富裕的）. They have a driver（司机） and a lot of servants（仆人）.
    Peter is going to a new school. On the first day his parents say to him, "peter, be modest（谦虚的）at your new school. Don't say we are rich. "And Peter says, "Yes, Dad, mom. ”
    So Peter goes to school. He sees his new teacher. And he sits down with the other children. The teacher says. “Good morning，children. The first exercise today is a composition（作文）. The topic（题目） of the composition is "My Family".So every child writes a composition. This is Peter's composition:
  “My name is Peter. My family is very poor（贫穷）. Both my father and my mother are very poor. Our driver is very poor and all the servants are poor…”

    A'Layah Robinson lives in Oklahoma, USA. She is only seven years old, but already she has big ideas for helping other kids!

    One Saturday morning when A'Layah was five, she noticed some teenagers who had a lemonade stand(柠檬饮料摊位). They wanted to raise money to help some of their friends. A'Layah wanted very much to help kids too, especially foster kids(寄养儿童)! You see, A'Layah and her brother were both foster kids. The little girl's birth mother was a drug addict (吸毒成瘾者), so she was taken to a foster care centre. Luckily, she finally found a forever home in the Robinson family.

    But A'Layah still couldn't forget the day when her brother came to live with them. She felt sad that he only had old clothes and shoes that were too small. She thought maybe she could help with a lemonade stand! That way she could raise money so that other foster kids could have a toy and a few other things of their own.

    A'Layah's first lemonade stand made $132! A'Layah was so excited to go with her mother to buy things for the foster kids. She decided they should have a toy, a toothbrush, a blanket and a book. Her first donation(捐赠物) was for 24 kids!

    A'Layah wanted to help more kids, so her mum helped her start a charity called A'Layah's Lemonade for Love. Till now, it has already raised over$17, 000! A'Layah hopes someday she will be able to send a toy to every kid in foster care.

    Mr. Harris taught sixth-grade science. On the first day of class, he gave us a talk about an animal called" birdcat", which died out during the Ice Age. He passed around a skull（头骨） as he talked. We all took notes carefully and later we had a test.

    When he returned my paper the next day, there was a big red"×" through each of my answers. I failed! There must be some mistakes! I wrote down exactly（确切地）what Mr. Harris had said. Then I learned that everyone in the class had failed. Why? "Very simple, "Mr. Harris said, "I made up all that 'birdcat'. But there had never been any such animal. So the information in your notes was not correct. Did you think you would get good grades for that?"

    However, we felt that was unfair. What kind of a test was this? And what kind of a teacher was he?

    Mr. Harris added, "I have told you many unbelievable things about this animal, such as the size, the color, but none of you have questioned. I hope you will learn something from this lesson. Teachers and textbooks are not always correct. In fact no one is." He also told us not to let our minds go to sleep, and to speak up if we thought he or the textbook was wrong.

    Up to now Mr. Harris' class gave me and my classmates something just as important: to look people in the eye and tell them they are wrong.

    In this August, I had a trip called "Cultural Trip: Germany, Italy & France" to go to Europe with a group of American students.

    This was not my first time to other countries, but it was unusual one. Why do I think the trip Unusual? Travel agencies (旅行社)usually have travel buses for tourists, What about us ? For five days, we traveled along Germany by bike. We were tired but happy! For some times on the trip, something went wrong with someone's bicycle. But at the end of the trip, everyone was safe and happy.

    In Italy, we went to a kitchen to learn to cook Italian dishes, we made a great dinner and ended by making the chocolate cake. I gave full marks to that night!

    France was the last stop, we went to the capital of France, Paris. We went to the Eiffel tower and we even got onto it. The tower is 324 meters tall, It has three levels(层) for visitors. There are restaurants on the first and second levels. The top level is 276 meters above the ground. If you climb from ground level to the first level, you need to climb over 300 steps. There are another 300 steps from the first level to the second level. That's why people usually get onto the top level by lift.