Last Friday, I was just in France to visit my 96-year-old grandmother who is very dear to me ­­­­­­ 1   lives alone. I don't visit her very often, so every time I go to see her,   2of us think that it might be the   3    time we see each other. Last time I visited her in December of 2014, I did some video interviews about her life. I asked her  4   it was like to grow up with her father in the 1920s, to live with two young children, with her husband   5  in a prisoner's camp (集中营) in Germany. I also asked her about her greatest   6  . I learned a lot of amazing new things about her that I never know before.

     This year, I did not really have questions to ask. I only wanted to tell her how loved she is. So, I cooked for her and read stories. I gave her a foot massage （按摩）.   7    leaving, I wanted to leave something  8 behind besides the memory of our time together. So I wrote her five different love and thank notes to let her knows how much she means to me. I   9 them in different places where I knew she would  10  find them. One of them was under her pillow. 11    one was hanging from the lamp shade by which she reads in the evening.  Another one was by her toothbrush. One was in her mailbox which she has to check every day. And the last one was in her car. She still  12  to the nearby village a couple of times a week!

       I knew that these cards would surely cheer her up after I left. Really she called me as I was catching my plane back to the US. She said, “ I found your three cards! By the time I discovered the third, I was laughing out loud! They did me so much good. Thank you so much!” I smiled to myself, 13  she still has two more to go! It is Sunday today, so my guess is that she hasn't  14   her mailbox or driven her car! I can  15  how happy she will be when she finds them.

    About five hundred years ago, an earthquake (地震) happened in a small village. Luckily for them, nothing was destroyed (毁坏) and no one was hurt. But a huge stone fell from a nearby mountain and stopped in the middle of the road.

    When the earthquake stopped, many people came to the road and saw the stone. Some of the strongest men tried to lift the stone out of the road. But they couldn't move it. They tried to push it but failed. They tried to pull it with ropes but nothing worked.

    "Well," they said sadly, "there's nothing we can do about it. We'll have to change the way."

    At this time a boy about 12 years old said, "I think I can help you to move the stone away.

    "You?" they shouted. "What are you talking about?" The men all laughed at the boy.?

    The next morning, some people came into the road. One of them shouted, "The stone is gone." More people ran out to see what had happened. It was true. The stone wasn't on the road any longer. It wasn't even near the road.

    The boy walked over to where the stone had been and said, "I buried it."

    The people looked rather surprised. "You see," he said, "I dug a deep hole next to the stone and I dug a small incline (斜坡) up to the stone and the stone rolled (滚) down into the hole itself. Then I covered it with earth."

    The villagers shouted, "Clever boy! Clever boy!" And some of them said, "Why didn't we think out this good idea?"

    Nasruddin(阿凡提) was a very clever man. When a nobleman named Shah heard Nasruddin's stories, he decided to ask some questions to puzzle him.

    On a sunny morning, Shah rode his horse and set off. When he got to a crossroads, he saw a man coming to him. He stopped his horse and asked,“I say, Mula（对有学问的人的一种尊称）. Do you know Nasruddin? Where does he live? Tell me.” Shah had a habit of asking the way when he saw every scholarly-looking man. Luckily, this man was Nasruddin.

    Nasruddin looked up at the nobleman on the horse and asked,“How did you know I was a Mula?”

    “How did I know?” he bragged（自夸）.“Well, I am a mind-reader. That's how.”

    “I am very pleased to meet you,” said Nasruddin with a smile,“I live in the next door to Nasruddin. I know his address. Since you are a mind-reader, read my mind and find the way to his house all by yourself.”

    When Mary Smith was a1, she wanted to be a teacher, 2 she liked children. When she was twenty, she began teaching in a small school. She was a good teacher, and she3 a lot with the children in her class. They4 her teaching.

One day5of the girls in her class said to her, "Miss Smith, 6does a man's hair become grey before his beard（胡子）does？"

Mary laughed and answered, "I don't know. Helen, do you know？"

    "I don't know7, Miss Smith, "said Helen, "but it happened to my father." The8children in the class laughed when they heard this.

    Then a boy said, "I9, Miss Smith! A man's hair becomes grey10because it's sixteen years older than his beard."

Mother Tongue (语言)

    My name is Jiniku but everyone calls me Joey, including my parents. My father is American but my mother is not. My mother grew up in a country whose name I cannot pronounce correctly. She was educated in French and Latin, Spanish and German.

    My mother wrote all day, but never showed anyone what she wrote. She had notebooks she would write in, and a typewriter to straighten out (整理) the final copy.

    When she had typed (打字) pages, she put them in a box. This box was deep under the bed that she and my father shared.

    There were only two words that she ever said in the real voice, with her real accent (口音), real tongue. I heard her say them only three times in her life. She taught them to me one night as I lay on her legs, sweating (出汗) with fever.

    "Jiniku," she said in a low voice. "Jiniku." I focused (集 中) on her voice through my fever, realizing that something had changed. She was speaking from a part of her that she had not opened for a long time. She took my hand, and placed my palm (掌心) over her heart. "Juriszu." She stared out the window. There was a long silence. I could feel her heartbeat, which was calmer and slower than my own. "My name," she said at last, speaking once more in English, "means „dark ocean (海洋).‟ And you, Jiniku, my baby, yours means „life.‟" She looked out the window again. "„Ji‟ is the word for a happy birth. One where everyone lives and there is little pain. „Ni‟ is a tree that had its roots (根) spread far and whose branches (树枝) shelter (庇护) all. „Ku‟ is spirit. You have this all-encompassing (包罗万象的) life." She placed her hand on my heart. "The first and last letters of our names are the same," she said. "Don‟t forget that, Jiniku."