Today I went to Sam's school in the UK. It was really different from my school in China.

    Girls wore grey skirts and white shirts, boys wore grey trousers, and everyone wore the school tie.

    Some of Sam's lessons were a bit strange for me. We were reading Shakespeare in the English lesson, and there were quite some old words like “thou” and “thee” to mean “you”. In history we studied 20th Century China. It was strange hearing a foreign side of history—and hearing English people trying to say all our Chinese names!

    Classes were also a lot more relaxing than in China. Teachers were called “sir” or “miss”, everyone shouted answers and raised their hands in classes. It was more like a debate than a class. A bell rang at the end of each lesson and everyone jumped up to go to the next class.

    At break we bought potato chips and cookies in the dining room. Lunch was later than in China at 1 o'clock. We had big plates of pie with carrots. For dessert there was hot sweet rice called rice pudding.

    It was good that I'd had an excellent lunch, because at Sam's school, Monday afternoons are taken up with sports.

    I played my first game of netball—a bit like basketball, but with some differences. Fortunately(幸运的是), I'd had a quick look in the rule book before I tried to join in the game.

    Once a king got two nice falcons(猎鹰)from his son. He had never seen such beautiful falcons before. He loved them so much and he ordered the best falconer to train them to fly.

    After several months, the king came to see how the training was going on. He found that one falcon had already been able to fly high in the sky, while the other was staying on the branch(树枝) of a tree quietly, just keeping still.

    The king called all his falcons together and ordered them to try every way they could to make the other falcon fly. But none of them succeeded. One day, while the king was taking a walk in the forest, an idea came to his mind. Maybe someone who knew the natural environment well could solve this problem. He sent for a farmer who lived in the forest into his palace to train it at once.

    The next morning, the king saw the other falcon flying above in the sky freely. “It is unbelievable !” shouted the king. How could you make it happen?”

    The farmer replied, “It's very easy. I just cut off the branch where the falcon rested.”

    It is always the same to human beings. We all have “two flying wings” in our hearts as well, but we often seem not to notice them and stay where we just for safety and comfort. We won't realize we can fly so high and freely until the “branch” we are resting on breaks.

Clouds change every second, bringing nature's{#blank#}1{#/blank#}to us But can you see it?

Cloud spotting, by its name, is just looking at clouds. Some people do cloud spotting to simply relax {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. Others do it to try and better understand clouds, from their {#blank#}3{#/blank#} to their names. Ji Yun, 36, is a cloud spotting expert in Beijing. 

In October 2013, Ji got a message from a friend, {#blank#}4{#/blank#}that some rare (稀有的) clouds were heading toward southeastern Beijing. Ji then bought tickets and went on a high-speed train to chase after them. 

"As soon as I got the information, I{#blank#}5{#/blank#}out of my home. After guessing where they were likely to head. I took a train to Tianjin. In the end, I {#blank#}6{#/blank#} in taking several wonderful pictures in the Wuqing district of Tianjin, "Ji said. The cloud took pictures of{#blank#}7{#/blank#}out to be one of the world's top 10 rarest clouds. 

This experience made Ji famous among the cloud spotters. He set up a WeChat group later that {#blank#}8{#/blank#}year to put people with similar hobbies together. They then set up chat groups in 2019 to cover different areas of China. Now, there are plenty of cloud spotting chat groups. Together, they became known as the Sky Enthusiasts Association(天空爱好者协会). Three years after the association was set up, cloud lovers collected every kind of cloud in the International Cloud Atlas. The International Cloud Atlas is a reference (查阅) book made by the World Meteorological （气象）Organization. 

"We created a book with all of these {#blank#}9{#/blank#} photos. And then we published （出版) it in late 2023, " Ji said. "This is a gift to all{#blank#}10{#/blank#}who love clouds. "