This is a true story that happened in Japan. In order to repair the house, a Japanese tore open the walls. Japanese houses normally have an empty space between the wooden walls. When pulling down the walls, he found that there was a lizard(蜥蜴) staying there because a nail(钉子) from outside was hammered into one of its feet. He saw this, feeling pity and curious. When he checked the nail, he found it was nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built.

    What happened? The lizard had survived in such a position for 10 years! It has been in a dark wall partition(夹层) for 10 years without moving! Then he wondered how this lizard survived for 10 years without moving a single step—since its foot was nailed! So he stopped his work and observed the lizard: What has it been doing? What and how has it been eating? Later, he didn't know from where another lizard appeared, with food in its mouth. Ah! He was astonished and touched deeply. The free lizard had been feeding it for the past 10 years.

    Such love, a beautiful love! Such love happened with this tiny creature… What can love do? It can do wonders! Just think about it: one lizard had been feeding the other for 10 long years, without giving up hope on its partner. If a small creature like a lizard can love like this, just imagine how we can love if we try.

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    Teaching idioms (习语) is a lot of fun. Here are some good books that can teach children idioms.

    THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER

    It has idioms that are widely used. Each idiom has a picture to go with it. It is for children in the 1st grade & up. It is written by Tamara James.

    THERE'S A FROG IN MY THROAT

    This book has 440 idioms about animals. Each idiom is given a short explanation to tell what it means. It is for children in the 2nd grade—6th grade. It is written by Loreen Leedy.

    BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH

    It shows a boy's first day of school through idioms. It is for students in the 1st grade—4th grade. It is written by Serge Bloch.

    MAD AS A WET HEN

    It is a book for teaching classic idioms. It is for students in the 3rd grade—5th grade. It is written by Marvin Terban.

    MY TEACHER LIKES TO SAY

    It is about idioms used by teachers. It is for students in the 1st grade—4th grade. It is written by Denise Nelson.

    I grew up with a group of pets. As a mother, I was determined to provide my daughter with the same joyful experiences. Indeed, by the time my daughter was in elementary school, our house was known as "the neighborhood zoo". Now that she is a teenager, we've reduced the number of animals in our home, but we still live with two dogs. I can't imagine life without them.

    Regardless, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the word "pet". When I came upon the conclusion by the University of Tennessee zoologist Gordon Burghardt that the best we can do for pets is a life of "controlled deprivation (剥夺)", I wished I had never bought Lizzy, our leopard gecko(豹纹守宫). I felt a pit in my stomach when I learned that Lizzy's constant clawing at the glass wall of her tank was most likely a signal of stress. It is perhaps not surprising that she died after only two years, despite our efforts to give proper care.

    The problems with the various small creatures we put into cages and tanks are relatively clear-­cut. More challenging moral questions, in my view, arise in relation to our closest furry friends: dogs and cats. Unlike animals that must spend their entire life in a cage or that must struggle to adapt to a human environment, most cats and dogs have it pretty good. Yet it is likely that our dogs and cats may be suffering in ways we don't readily see, because even the most well meaning owner doesn't always provide what an animal needs.

    It may be hard to recognize the harmful aspects of pet keeping when all we hear is how beloved pets are and how happy they are to be in our company. Advertisements showing golden­-haired children playing with golden-­haired puppies and YouTube videos of cats doing funny things make pet keeping look ever so precious.

    Yet if we really care about animals, we ought to know animals are not toys — they are living, breathing, feeling creatures.

    This story happened when I was in Saint Lucia with my family. My sister, Diana, who also happens to be my best friend and one of the funniest and kindest people I know, went blind in one eye about 9 years ago. Diana sometimes feels concerned about the way her eye looks now. The pupil(瞳孔) is no longer black; it's sort of "glows" in photos. Diana recently purchased a special contact lens (隐形镜片) that makes her eye look like it did before it changed color, but she doesn't wear this lens often because it becomes quite painful after about an hour.

    One night during our holiday, a hotel photographer was taking pictures of the guests as they entered the area set up for dinner. Diana casually said if she had known there was going to be pictures taken to capture this special memory, she would have worn her contact lens so her eye wouldn't be so shiny in the picture.

    The next day, I was sitting with Diana and her husband Ted. While we were talking, the photographer who had been at the dinner the night before, handed her a photo, leaned in and quietly said, "I matched the color of your eyes in the picture."

    As he walked away, my sister happily said to me and Ted, "Look! He fixed my eye!" The photographer stopped. He turned around and walked back to our table. He put his hand on Diana's shoulder, leaned in again and gently said, "Just to be clear: I didn't fix your eye. There isn't anything wrong with your eye. I simply matched the color. "

    Her eyes filled up with tears. It was very healing for her heart to hear these beautiful words. It didn't take much time and made so much difference. It helped her change the way she feels about herself.

    I have always loved the quote: "The world is full of good people. If you can't find one, be one!" Your acts of kindness can impact the world in profound ways!

    A mixture of deep sorrow and anger has swept Brazilians across the country — particularly in the city of Rio de Janeiro — with the burning of their beloved Museu Nacional, or National Museum.

    By Monday morning, when I visited the site, the firemen were busy trying to enter the huge, early 19th-century neoclassical building. For all we know, everything may have been burned to ashes. Fortunately, no one, not even the four security guards who witnessed the beginning of the fire, has been injured.

    Nobody yet knows the cause of the fire, but it is the officials' irresponsibility and the funding shortages in particular, which are being blamed for this tragedy.

    Some of the museum's researchers told the press that they had been able to save some things from the exhibition rooms before the fire moved in. However, we Brazilians have lost much of the material memory of our short past. A good part of our 518 years of history, or that which had been transformed into storable objects, disappeared in just a few hours.

    The people of Rio de Janeiro were fond of taking their children  or grandchildren to the museum to show off their knowledge of the odd-looking mummies brought in from Egypt by the Emperor Dom Pedro II, a huge skeleton of a humpback whale, or the brightly coloured feathers of a headdress of the Kayapo tribe.

    When I think that I can no longer take my youngest daughter to the Museu Nacional — that is what gets me emotional. It is this feeling that has penetrated (穿透) our souls and may leave Brazilians feeling empty for a long time to come.