Celebrate!

Pinatas(彩饰陶罐)

    In Mexico, children often get pinatas on their birthday．Their parents put chocolates and other sweets inside the pinata and hang it on a tree．Then the children hit the pinata with a stick. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Noodles

    In China，people often celebrate birthdays by eating with family or friends，and the last dish of the meal is always noodles. The noodles are long and thin. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You can't cut them. In Chinese culture，long noodles mean you will have a long life.

Business birthdays

    A business birthday shows that a company is successful．Many businesses in the USA celebrate important birthdays, like 10, 50 or 150 years．{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Sometimes they make TV advertisements．It is a good chance to advertise the business.

Name days

    As well as a birthday, many people in Southern Europe also celebrate their name day. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} People have big parties and open their houses to anybody who wants to come．People bring small gifts，often flowers or a box of sweets．

Islamic New Year

    In Muslim(穆斯林) countries across the world，people celebrate Eid. Eid means festival or celebration．During Eid，people visit family and friends，as well as people who are sick or in hospital．{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Children receive toys，too．Children often wear special traditional clothes during the Eid celebrations.

A．You have to eat them in one piece.

B．They go out for a meal to celebrate.

C．Companies hold parties and send cards.

D．They give presents, such as sweets and food.

E．It breaks and the sweets fall out on to the ground.

F．This is one of the two important festivals in this country.

G．In Greece, name days are more important than birthdays.

    Daniel was born in New Orleans, LA., in 1962, slow to walk and talk, and short. He was the tiniest in his class, but he developed a warm, outgoing nature and was popular with his peers(同龄人). And he became skillful at sports.

    Baseball gave him his earliest challenge. He was an excellent players in Little League. At graduation, the coach named Daniel the team's most valuable player.

    His finest hour, though, came at a school science meeting. He entered an exhibit explaining how the circulatory system works. It was traditional, especially compared to（与…相比）the modern, computerized, blinking-light models entered by other students. My wife, Sara, felt embarrassed for him.

    It turned out that the other kids had made their exhibits. As the judges went on their rounds, they found that these other kids couldn't answer their questions. Daniel answered every one. When the judges awarded the Albert Einstein Plague for the best exhibit, they gave it to him.

    By the time Daniel left for college he stood six feet tall and weighed 170 pounds. He was in superb condition, but he quit baseball for English literature. I was sorry that he would not develop his athletic talent, but proud that he had made such a satisfactory decision.

    One day I told Daniel that the great failing in my life had been that I didn't take a year or two off to travel when I finished college. This is the best way, to my way of thinking, to broaden oneself. Once I had married and begun working, I found that the dream of living in another culture had disappeared. Daniel thought about this. After graduation, he worked as a waiter at college, a bike messenger and a house painter. With the money he earned, he had enough to go to Paris.

    The night before he was to leave, I tossed in bed. I was trying to figure out something to say. Nothing came to mind. Maybe, I thought, it wasn't necessary to say anything.

    Grey clouds move as low as smoke over the treetops at Lolo Pass. The ground is white. The day is June 10.It has been snowing for the past four days in the Bitterroot Mountains.Wayne Fairchild is getting worried about our trek over the Lolo Trail-95 miles from Lolo Montana to Weippe in Idaho, across the roughest country in the West. Lewis and Clark were nearly defeated 200 years ago by snowstorms on the Lolo. Today Fairchild is nervously checking the weather reports. He has agreed to take me across the toughest, middle section of the trail.

    When Lewis climbed on top of Lemhi Pass,140 miles south of Missoula, on Aug.12,1805,he was astonished by what was in front of him; "high mountain chains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.＂Nobody in what was then the US knew the Rocky Mountains existed, with peaks twice as high as anything in the Appalachians back East.

    Today their pathway through those mountains holds more attraction than any other ground over which they traveled, for its raw wilderness is an evidence to the character of two cultures:the explorers who braved its hardships and the Native Americans who prize and conserve the path as a sacred (神圣的)gift. It remains today the same condition as when Lewis and Clark walked it.

    The Lolo is passable only from July to mid-September. Our luck is holding with the weather, although the snow keeps getting deeper. As we climb to Indian Post Office, the highest point on the trail at 7,033 ft, we have covered 13 miles in soft snow, and we hardly have enough energy to make dinner. After a meal of chicken, I sit on a rock on top of the ridge .There is no light visible in any direction, not even another campfire. For four days we do not see another human being. We are occupied with the things that mix fear with joy. In our imagination we have finally caught up with Lewis and Clark.

    A warm drink of milk before bed has long been the best choice for those wanting a good night's sleep. But now a study has found it really does help people nod off—if it is milked from a cow at night.

    Researchers have discovered that “night milk” contains more melatonin (褪黑激素), which has been proven to help people feel sleepy and reduce anxiety.

    The study, by researchers from Seoul, South Korea, involved mice being fed with dried milk powder made from cows milked both during the day and at night.

    Those given night milk, which contained 10 times the amount of melatonin, were less active and less anxious than those fed with the milk collected during daytime, according to the study published in The Journal of Medicinal Food.

    Night milk quickened the start of sleep and caused the mice to sleep longer.

    While the effect of cows milk harvested at different time has not been tested on humans up to now, taking melatonin drugs has been suggested to those who are struggling to fall asleep at night.

    Previous studies have also indicated that milk can be excellent for helping sleep because of the calcium content, which helps people to relax.

    Milk is also sugar-free and additive-free with nutritionists recommending skimmed milk as the best choice before bed as it is the least fattening. The more fat you take in before bedtime, the greater burden you will put on your body at night.

    Most people can't live to 100. Those who do live so long can hardly walk, let alone take part in any activities. A few people, however, take part in dangerous activities even though they are more than 100 years old. They keep going and going! There is a great grandmother who likes challenging herself although she is 101 years old this year.

    Mary Hardison believes that people should always be cheerful and more importantly, take on all kinds of adventures while they physically still can. So, instead of celebrating her 101st birthday with a boring party, she decided to go paragliding（滑翔跳伞）﹣an idea she got from her 75﹣year﹣old son who recently took it up as a hobby.

    So on her birthday, cheered on by her big family, she tied herself up together with expert instructor Kevin Hintze, and jumped down fearlessly from the sky near her home in Ogden, Utah. And, it was not just a simple jump either. According to Kevin Hintze, the grandmother encouraged him to turn around, as they made their way down.

    This is not the first time that Mary has done something "wild" and "crazy". For her 90th birthday she rode all the adult rides at Disneyland. And, she is not done yet﹣ For her 102nd birthday she hopes to go down the 3,000 feet Alpine Slide at Utah's Park City Mountain Resort!

    Not surprisingly, this great action has made Mary Hardison very famous and also earned her a place in the Guinness World Records where she broke a 2007 record set by a 100﹣year﹣old British woman. What an amazing lady!

    Universities and colleges in the United States are trying new programs for international students to increase enrollment and income. Some universities are experimenting with bringing international high school students to their campuses. These programs permit students to complete their high school diploma while earning college credit at the same time.

    One example of this model is at the University of Southern Maine, or USM. The program is called the "International Academy". The school is expecting its first class of international high school students this fall. Joanna Evans is the director for the academy. The program is officially a "boarding school on a university campus" that serves 11th and 12th grade international high school students only.

    The students will take classes at the University of Southern Maine to complete their high school diploma. However, because the classes are university-level, the students will receive college credit at the same time.

    According to Evans, the students they admit will have to be very strong. Their course schedule will be the same as taking only advanced-placement courses. The goal is that, by the time they complete their high school diploma at the academy, they will be ready to start college as a third-year college student.

    Their English language skills also must be strong. The Academy looks for students with a minimum Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL score of 79,or a 6.5 on the International English Testing System, or EELTS. However, there are classes available to provide additional English language training when the students arrive if they need it.

    All incoming students at the academy are required to take a college writing class in their first term. If English is not their first language, they will take a class taught by teachers with a background in teaching students who speak English as a foreign language.

    Although they are only high school students, the expectations are the same as college students. "Students need to be ready to take university classes, and that is the deal" Evans said.