Cordia Harrington owns three McDonald's restaurants in Illinois. Being a single mom, she is very successful. Now let's talk about her story.

    China's female swimmer Fu Yuanhui came third in Women's 100 meter backstroke(仰泳) on Monday morning(Beijing time)at Rio(里约)Olympics．China's online community has gone crazy about the 1996一born girl，not because of her performance in the semifinal or her achievement，but because of her cheerful answer to her performance during an interview by CCTV．

Finishing the 100 meter backstroke with 58.95 seconds，Fu，who thought it was 59 seconds，was quite surprised with the result．This was the first moment when she impressed Chinese audience with her surprising look and body language in front of the camera．The second time that the young swimmer amazed the audience was her honest and direct answer to a question raised by the reporter． “We know that your body condition was not that good in the past year and it's not easy to have such a result．Do you think you are now as good as before?”asked the reporter． “It is my best score ever．I have worked for three months on the recovery．Only tile ghost knows what I have come through．”said Fu．“It was so painstaking that sometimes I felt like l was going to die．”

    In the interview, Fu used a phrase ”Hong Huang Zhi Li” to describe the great efforts she has made in preparing for the competition，which soon became a popular word on the Internet．

    Tony Wheeler was born to travel. His father worked for an airline. For the first 16 years of his life, Wheeler and his family lived in many different countries.

    In the early 1970s,Tony met a young woman named Maureen. They soon married. Before getting jobs, Tony and Maureen wanted to travel. They took a year long trip from England, through Asia, to Australia. On the trip,they visited places like Iran(伊朗),India, and so on.

    When Tony and Maureen arrived in Australia, people asked many

questions about their trip. To answer these questions, Wheeler wrote a book called Across Asia on the Cheap. The book told people about different countries' weather, customs (风俗), and places to see. But unlike other travel books then,Tony Wheeler's book also talked about places most tourists did not go. He also wrote about unusual things to see and do. The book was very popular.

    Tony and Maureen started a company called Lonely Planet. They

continued travelling. They wrote books for each place they visited. Today,800 people work {or Lonely Planet. The company has over 650 books. Tony Wheeler,the great traveller, still writes about travels to many places and will bring us more surprises.

    One windy spring day, I noticed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Colorful creations of different shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds flying and dancing. As the strong winds blew against the kites, a string (线) kept them in control.

    Instead of blowing away with the wind, they rose against it to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining (控制的) string and the cumbersome (笨重的) tail kept them in control, facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled against the string, they seemed to say, "Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!" They rose beautifully even when they fought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose (松散的). "Free at last," it seemed to say. "Free to fly with the wind."

    Yet freedom (自由) simply put it in the control of an unkind wind. It fell down to the ground and landed in a mass of weeds and string against a dead bush. "Free at last", free to lie powerlessly in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along the ground, and to stop lifelessly against the first obstacle (障碍物).

    How much like kites we sometimes are. The Heaven gives us adversity (逆境) and rules, rules to follow from which we can grow and get strength. Some of us break away from the rules so hard that we never reach the heights we might get to. We keep part of the rules and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.

    Let us each rise to the great heights, knowing that some of the rules that we may be angry about are in fact the strong force that helps us achieve.

    This morning I woke up being a little bit worried. Too many unlucky things happened and I needed to make many decisions. I decided to go for a walk and tried to relax. On the way, I kept repeating to myself," Don't stop being kind. Others may have worse situations than me." I already felt better when walking in the park enjoying the beautiful trees and the smiles to and from strangers. I decided to go shopping on my way back.

    After paying. I sat-down for a while and got a coffee. An elderly man sat next to me and started talking very loudly. I noticed that he had hearing aids(助听器)in both cars. He had a coffee too. I tried talking with him, but I realized he could not under-stand anything. I stayed anyway and he told me about his difficulties with hearing, his son who worked in the supermarket and that he was at the age of 89! He felt happy to still be able to do the shopping on his own.

    He said he liked talking to people and he apologized many times. I told him it was lovely to talk to him and after a while I said goodbye, shook his hands and wished him a good day. He was so happy and grateful(感激的).He thanked me many times and the last thing he said was" Thank you for listening". I thought the whole point was" I just stayed and listened".

    Terry Fox was only seventeen when he got a cancer (癌症). He must have felt hopeless when the doctor said his right leg would have to be cut off 6 inches above the knee.

    But to everyone's surprise, Terry Fox made up his mind to become a long-distance runner and do something about the cancer. What a dream!

    Although it seemed impossible, Terry decided to run across the whole country. He hoped to raise one million dollars for cancer research. Few believed he would make it. Anyway, on April 12, 1980, Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope. For the first days of his marathon, Terry Fox was alone. He started running at 4:30 am. Day by day, people began to realize that something big was happening on the lonely road. As people saw Terry, they stopped and donated (捐赠) money for cancer research.

    However, his health took a rapid turn for the worse several months later. He had to give up his marathon on September 1, 1980. Terry died three months later, at the age of 22. In his short life, he raised $24 million for cancer research—one dollar for each person in his motherland.

    Since his death, the yearly Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to be the world's largest one-day fundraiser (筹资活动) for cancer research.