Prana was a beautiful dog, whose name means “breath of life”. Although he died several years ago, I can still remember the days we spent together and what he has taught me about love.

    I have two apple trees in the garden. Prana loved apples. When he went outside, he'd catch an apple and take it into the house to eat later. The apples had been on the ground and were often dirty so I wasn't always happy that Prana had brought them into the house.

It was an autumn day in America, but it was very cold. A big snow fell and we had not done anything for its coming. On that special day, Prana went outside and I watched him through the window. I noticed that he was madly digging(挖) holes and bringing the apples to the ground so they could be seen above the snow. I did not know why he was doing this. He seemed to want to do something special.

    When I called him back, he had his usual one apple in his mouth. About five minutes later, I looked outside. The garden was completely covered with birds. Prana had dug up all those apples for his bird friends to eat. He knew that they wouldn't have stored enough food for the coming winter!

    John Smith is an old porter. He works at the railway station. Every day he is busy carrying heavy things for passengers（乘客）. He is kind to everyone and always ready to help others.

    One morning, John stood in the station. A train was coming. He was waiting for it. Just then he saw a man running in the station with a big bag in his hand.

    “No train is starting. Why is he in such a hurry?” the old man thought to himself.

    John went up to the man and asked, “May I help you?”

    As soon as the man saw the old porter, he stopped running.

    “Can I catch the 10:35 train to London?” the man asked. He looked worried.

    John looked at him for a few seconds and said, “Well, sir. I'd like to help you, but I can't answer your question because I don't know how fast you can run.” Then he continued, “The 10:35 train to London left five minutes ago. Can you run fast enough to catch it?”

    An old gentleman whose eyesight (视力) was falling came to stay in a hotel room with a bottle of wine (酒) in each hand. On the wall there was a fly which he took for a nail (钉子). So as soon as he hung them on, the bottles fell broken and the wine split all over the floor.

    When a waitress discovered what had happened, she felt really sorry for him and wanted to give him a hand.

    So the next morning when he was out taking a walk in the garden, she put a nail on the wall exactly where the fly had stayed.

    Now the old man entered his room. The smell of the split wine reminded him of the accident. When he looked up at the wall, he found the fly was there again! He walked to it carefully and hit it with all his strength.

    On hearing a loud cry, the waitress rushed in. To her great surprise, the poor man was there sitting on the floor, his face was pale and a lot of blood was running on his right hand.

    Mr. Brown is from England. He and his wife（妻子）are teachers. They teach English in Shanghai. They have a boy and a girl. They are John and Lucy. John is a middle school student, but Lucy is not. She is only six.

    They have two bikes. One is big, and the other is small. The big one is for John. The small one is for Lucy.

    On Sundays, sometimes they are at home, sometimes they go to the parks. They like China.

    They have a lot of（很多的）Chinese friends.

    It is interesting to visit another country, but there are some problems when we don't know the1very well. It may be difficult to talk with the people there. We may not know how to use the telephone in the country we are visiting. We may not know how to buy the things we need. In a2country we might not know where to eat or what to order in a3. It is not easy to decide how4to tip waiters or taxi drivers. When we need help, we might not know how to ask for help. It is not pleasant to have an experience5that. After a short time, however, we learn what to do and what to6, We learn to enjoy life in another country, and then we may be sorry to leave.

The other day, my husband called me to the balcony(阳台). "Come, dear, look at that car!" 

"What's up?" I asked, looking down at the square in front of our apartment building. A driver was trying to park between two cars. 

"That must be a woman," my husband said.

"How do you know?"

"I've watched the car move back and forth twenty times. Men can't be so bad at driving!"

"What if the driver is a man?" I asked.

"I bet you 50 yuan that the driver is a woman!"

We stood on the balcony and watched the car. It felt a little silly. Five minutes later, the car was finally parked perfectly, and a man slowly got out.

"Fifty yuan please," I said to my husband as he silently walked away.

My husband is not alone in looking down on female drivers. On weekends, my friend Lily likes traveling around the city by bus. But she always hesitates to get on a bus if the driver is a woman. "I can't trust a female driver," she told me one day. "Women are not born to drive, you know."

"Sorry, but I don't know," I said. I go to work by bus every day, and I never think female drivers are any worse. In fact, they are often more careful than men. Research also shows that female drivers are 8.8 times less likely to cause accidents than male drivers.

There are not many female bus drivers, though. And in the history of Formula One(一级方程式赛车), only 0.26 percent of drivers have been women. Without role models, many girls may think they are not meant to be good drivers. But the ability to drive has nothing to do with gender. Women can drive well, too. It's time to stop making jokes about female drivers.