Tom has two good friends. They are Jack and Mark. They have different hobbies. Tom likes football. He often plays football on weekends. He thinks playing football can make him strong and healthy. He is in the school football team.

    Jack doesn't like sports. He likes listening to music. He likes Jay Chow best. He buys many of his CDs. He often listens to music on the way home after school. He thinks music can make him happy.

    Mark likes taking photos. He has a good camera(照相机). When he is free, he often takes it out and takes some pictures. Some of his pictures are in newspapers(报纸) now. He thinks we live in a beautiful world. He wants people to see the beautiful world in his pictures.

    Tyler opened the door to his house and went inside. His mother was in the kitchen. She felt surprised when she saw his sad face. “Tyler, what happened? Is everything okay?” “Nothing is okay, Mom.” “Is there anything I can do to help?” “That's just the thing, Mom. We can't help. There's nothing we can do.” Tyler kept talking,“Today, the teacher talked about Earth Day and the environment. Earth Day is a day when every person promises to do something to help take care of our world. Mrs. Green said that our world is getting dirtier and that many animals and plants are dying. She wants us to think of something we can do to help and I thought all the way home and there is nothing I can do. I can't stop people from polluting our air and water and I can't save all of the animals. There is not anything that I can do to make a difference.”

    His mother listened and after thinking for a minute said,“Of course you can. There are lots of things you can do. For example, you can walk to school. You can use both sides of your paper to save trees. You can plant a tree every year. You can clean up rubbish from your neighborhood park. Everything you do to help the planet makes a difference. The most important thing to remember is that Earth Day should be every day!” “Oh, I see. Mom, we each can make a difference to the world. Thank you, Mom.”

    Hello! I'm Barbara Green. I'm a girl. Look! I'm from America. I live at 225 King Street, Washington. (华盛顿) My telephone number is 474-8980. My e-mail address (电子邮箱地址） is barbaragreen@sina.com. Do you like to give a call or send an e-mail to me? I'd like to be your friend.

    I am Paul. I am in the classroom. What's under the teacher's desk?

It's a black schoolbag. Who lost the schoolbag? Let's look at the things in it. This is a pencil box with a pen, a ruler, an eraser and two pencils in it. This is a Chinese book. I always have my name on my books. But I can't see a name on it. I get the math book from the schoolbag and have a look. There is no name on it, either (either=too). How about the music book? Let me see. Here is a photo in this book. This is Sally but I don't know the other two girls in the photo. Is this Sally's schoolbag? I am not sure. I will call Sally and phone her about the lost schoolbag.

    March 20th is World Water Day every year. According to a report from the United Nations, more than half of the world's major rivers have serious water loss and are polluted.

    The Yellow River, the world's fifth longest river, watered some of the oldest farms on earth. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}Its source（源头）on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is drying up. In most of the past 35 years, it didn't reach the sea.

The Nile in Egypt, running 6, 650 km, is the longest river in the world. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Now it is down to 2 billion m³ or so. Australia's Murray River reaches the sea only every other year. One fifth of America's Rio Grande has no water, either.

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    Mostly it's damming（筑坝）and global warming that make rivers dry. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Now about 45, 000 of them lie across the world's rivers. They hold back around 15% of the world's fresh water from running to the sea.

{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Warmer weather takes water away. The glacier（冰川）are becoming smaller. The source of the Yellow River is drying up because of it. Global warming has had certain effects on water sources. Droughts happening around the world make people pay more attention to this fact.