I'm Katy. I have many good friends, and Jema is one of them. I'm in Class Six, and Jema is in Class Eight. We first met in our school tennis club. Both (两个) of us like playing tennis, and we often practice together.

    I often visit Jema on the weekend: Sometimes we swim in the pool or go shopping with our friend Sarah. She is in our school dance club and dances beautifully. I went to Jema's house today. It was raining, so we couldn't go out.

    "Let's watch a movie," Jema said. "You're my guest (客人), Katy, so you can pick it."

    I picked a movie called Dance of Joy. It's about a girl called Susan who likes to dance. Susan has a cat named Albert. Albert chews (咬) her dancing shoes, so she can' t dance anymore. Luckily, she gets a new pair of dancing shoes. Albert surprises Susan by bringing her the new shoes in his mouth. It is a wonderful happy ending.

    I told Jema I loved the movie. She laughed and said she found it quite boring. She only kept watching it because I was enjoying it so much. I felt a little bad about it, but it's nice to have a good friend like Jema.

C

    One night, when I was eight, my mother gently asked me a question I would never forget. "Cindy, my company wants to promote (升职) me but needs me to work in Brazil. This is like your teacher telling you that you've done well and allowing you to skip (跳) a grade, but you'll have to leave your friends. Would you say yes to your teacher?" She gave me a hug and asked me to think about it. I was lost in thought. The question kept me wondering for the rest of the night. I had said "yes" but for the first time, I realized the difficult decisions adults had to make.

    For almost four years, my mother would call us from Brazil every day. Every evening I'd eagerly wait for the phone to ring and then tell her everything happened during the day. A phone call, however, could never take her place and it was difficult not to feel lonely at times.

    During my fourth-grade Christmas break, we flew to Rio to visit her. Looking at her large empty apartment,   ▲    It was then I started to understand the difficult choices she had to make. She needed to think about both family and work. Faced with difficult decisions, she used to tell me, you wouldn't know whether you make the right choice, but you could always make the best out of the situation, with a positive attitude.

    Back home, I reminded myself that what my mother could do, I could, too. If she managed to live in Rio all by herself, I, too, could learn to be independent. I learn how to take care of myself and set high but achievable goals.

    My mother is now back with us. But I will never forget what the experience has really taught me. I've learned a lot because of this separation. There are lots of difficult decisions that we have to face in our life. We need to have a positive attitude no matter what happens.

    Once a young man hoped to study law and he wrote to Lincoln for advice, who lived most of his adult life as a practicing lawyer. Lincoln replied, "If you make up your mind to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. Always keep in mind that your own decision to succeed is more important than any other thing."

    Lincoln knew this because he had gone through it all. He had never, in his life，had more than a total of one year's schooling. And books? Lincoln once said he had walked to borrow every book fifty miles away from his home. A fire was usually kept going all night in the small house and he read by the light of it.

    He walked twenty or thirty miles to hear a speaker and, returning home, he practiced his talks everywhere—in the fields, in the woods, before the crowds. He joined several societies and practiced speaking on the topics of the day.

    Being short of confidence always troubled him. He was shy before women. Even when he was in love with Mary Todd, he used to sit there, nervous and silent, unable to find words, listening while she did the talking. Yet that was the man who, by practice and home study, made himself into a famous speaker with great eloquence(雄辩).

    When he spoke of his own great painful experiences, he wrote, "If you make up your mind to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."