A Play: Four Butterflies

Characters: Red Butterfly (RB), Green Butterfly (GB), Green Tree (GT), Rose (R), Grandpa Sun (GS)

    Look! There are four butterflies in the garden. One is red, one is yellow, one is green, and the other one is white. They play games and dance together every day, and they are very happy. One day, it's fine. Four butterflies are playing a game in the garden. Suddenly it is full of dark clouds and it begins to rain hard.

1) GB: Oh, it's raining hard. Green Tree is over there. She can

help us.

GB: Green Tree, our wings are wet. Please let us stay under your leaves.

GT: Green Butterfly, I like you. We have the same color. You can come in, but the other three butterflies must go away.

GB: No, thank you. We are good friends. We love each other and must stay together.

RB: Rose is over there. She can help us.

2) RB: Rose, our wings are wet. Please let us stay under your leaves.

R: Red Butterfly, I like you. We have the same color. You can come in, but the other three butterflies must go away.

RB: No, thank you. We are good friends. We love each other and must stay together.

3) GS: What good friends they are! This is a real friendship. I must help them.

    The sun drives the clouds away and asks the rain to stop. Soon the sun gives off bright light and dries up their wings.

4) Four butterflies: Oh, the sun comes out. Our wings are dry. Let's play and dance again.

    I did not have a rich father. I tried 3 times for university, but all failed. I applied(申请)for Harvard for 10 times, but all failed. They didn't even want to see me. For the last time, I went to the teachers' college which was regarded as the third class of my city. I applied jobs for 30 times.

    A lot of people said Alibaba was a terrible model. As I said, "I believe it. I think this thing could be big. I never thought it would be so big like today. "I believe that something, something is waiting for me there, and I have to work hard to prove myself. That was the tough experience. So we gathered 50 thousand US dollars from 18 founders. Little by little, we built up our business. And now, after 16 years, we have a Alibaba group; We have a T-mall group; We have a Taobao group; We have Alipay.

    “You are so smart, how could you make a company like that? People asked. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Jack Welch, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, the difference between those people and other people, they are always optimistic(乐观的)for the future. They never complain. They always try to solve the problems of the others. When you are optimistic, it's always an opportunity (机会).“Jack, Where's the opportunity? I don't have a job. I don't have this. I don't have that.” We are at the best of time of this century. The best asset(财产)you have is that you are young. Don't complain. Let the other people complain. The opportunity lies, always lies where people complain. I saw a lot of people, especially young people have fantastic ideas every evening. But the next morning, they go to the office on time again.

    Tomorrow is new. Make the move. Make action. Whether investors(投资者)believe this or not, whether your friends believe it or not, whether your parents believe it or not, that's not important. You believe it. Your team believe it and work day and night on this. Everything happens. Make enough mistakes. You fall, and you stand up. Any mistake is an income and a wonderful revenue(收益). Don't worry about the money. Money follows the people. Young people should follow the dreams. If you have a dream, just to go ahead.

    Mike is a factory worker. He is often very tired after a day's work. His wife(妻子), Jenny, has no job, so she stays at home to cook the meals. Every day he can have his dinner when he gets home from his factory.

    One day, Mike came home very late because he was very busy in the factory. He was very hungry when he got home.

    He was not happy when he found his dinner was not ready. He was very angry with his wife. He shouted out, "I'm going out to eat in a restaurant." "Wait for five minutes," said his wife. "Why? Do you think that dinner will be ready in five minutes?" asked Mike.

     "Of course not," she answered. "But I can be ready to go with you in five minutes."

    You can always see some park workers dressed as movie or cartoon characters(角色) in some theme parks(主题公园）like Disneyland. We call them costumed characters. What is it like to be a costumed character at a theme park?

    Dave Jackson has this interesting job. He works as a costumed character in Disneyland. There are always so many visitors in this park. Every day Dave puts on a Mickey Mouse suit and plays with the visitors to make them happy. Many visitors, especially the young children, take photos with him.

    Some people may think his job is quite easy. But in fact, it's sometimes a little difficult. First of all, the costumes are very heavy. And it's difficult to go to the washing room with a heavy costume. Second, the space he works is very small, so he usually gets tired after standing there for a long time. What's more, the most difficult part is working in hot weather! He alwayssweats a lot, and the sweat can run into his eyes.

    "My job is not easy, but it is also great fun." says Dave. "Looking back, I must be in quite a lot of people's family photos. It is really cool.

It was a cold winter morning. My 12-year-old granddaughter, Jayne, sent me messages on the phone every hour during her six-hour drive to our house.

"Grandma, can you put some snow in the fridge (冰箱)? That way, I can feel snow when I get there," she wrote. Jayne lives in the south of Georgia, the US with her parents, so she never saw snow before.

"Yes, I will," I wrote. "There is still some snow on the ground in the yard." And I sent her a few photos of it. However, the weather report brought me bad news. It said the weather would be sunny at noon. This made me feel concerned.

In the afternoon, they finally arrived. Jayne got out of the car first. She ran into the yard and put her hands in the snow. She looked so excited. It was great that the sun didn't come out that day.

"Grandma, the weather is so cold, but I enjoy playing with snow," Jayne said. Then she started to build a snowman. She made two large snowballs first. They were the head and the body. It looked nice. Jayne kept playing outside until her hands got wet and cold. Watching Jayne playing in the snow made me feel warm and thankful.

I still remember the lovely cold day. Small things in our lives can also make us happy.

What would life be like if you were a rocker, a soccer player, a professor(教授）at Stanford University, and a Nobel Prize winner? Carolyn Bertozzi from the US lives such a cool life!

Bertozzi, 56, wins this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry and becomes this year's only female(女性) winner in science and the eighth female to receive the chemistry prize in history.

Bertozzi won the prize for studying the sugar coats of cells(细胞）. She has found a smart way to connect cells together. This finding helps to develop better tests for serious diseases like cancer.

However, Bertozzi said she only fell in love with chemistry until her second year at Harvard University."Most of my classmates thought the class was very difficult. But I liked it a lot because in my eyes the problems were challenging even though it usually took me long hours to solve them."

Besides doing science studies, Bertozzi has lived a colorful life. She was a keyboarder in a rock band and she also played soccer, winning an athletic scholarship from Harvard.

Moreover, Bertozzi never forgets her job as a female scientist. "In the late 1980s, only 10 percent of the students were females," she told Chemical & Engineering News. "There were maybe only one or two females in a lab, so we tried to support each other by starting a monthly get-together. Now, I'm so glad to see more and more females taking part in science." In 2022, Bertozzi won an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her work to increase diversity(性别多元）in science.