I am off on a trip on my own. Yes ! Alone! I can't wait to get going to Europe to see some cities I really want to visit. It is great because I can choose what I want to do in each city. I am going to travel by train on the Eurorail.

     The train trip was fast and the views of the countryside were amazing. Now I am in Salzburg, Austria. The quiet hills of Austria are a great place to relax. The movie The Sound of Music was filmed around this area. Mozart, the famous musician, was from here. I listened to some of his classical music.

     The train ride to Amsterdam was a long one. It gave me time to write some postcards to send back home. Amsterdam is a fun city, full of friendly locals and many tourists. I spent the whole day visiting the art museums here. The museum about the famous Dutch artist Van Gogh is filled with history and beautiful art. I took a boat ride and saw local people in traditional dress. I even got to taste some delicious Dutch cheese.

     Copenhagen, Denmark, is one of the safest places in the world. I spent a busy and nice day at the Tivoli Amusement Park. It is a huge park which even has concerts and dance shows. Hans Christian Anderson, a famous writer of children's books, was born in this city. I found a lovely bookshop and bought two of his fairy tale books, The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling. My travels alone are done! What an adventure this trip has been! I love it.

    It was a sunny night. Jim was having a drink with his friend.  He drank too much, and he had to leave at half past eight because he had a ticket for a music festival, which would start at nine o'clock.

    It was half past an hour's walk from the pub to the theatre. Jim knew a shortcut that would only take ten minutes, but it meant crossing rails(铁轨), and was dangerous. He took the shorter way, however, and when he reached the rails, he tripped(绊倒) and fell over. Then he fell asleep with his face down. After a while, a train came. When the driver saw a body lying on the track, he tried hard to stop the train. When it finally stopped, it was several meters before the body. The driver quickly got off and checked. Luckily, he found the man was still alive, but sleeping. Though the driver tried hard to wake him, Jim just kept sleeping. The driver took Jim to the hospital, where he woke up at last.

    When Jim was told what had happened, he decided to give up drinking. “I'm so lucky that I have a chance to turn my life around,' he said.

    This is a story about a boy called Sparky. For Sparky， school was all but impossible. He failed every subject in the eighth grade. He got a zero in physics. It made him the worst physics student in the school's history. He didn't do much better in sports. Although he tried to join the school's golf team， he quickly lost the only important match.

    He didn't have friends， either. Other kids didn't care about him. If a classmate said “Hello” to Sparky outside of school， he would feel very surprised.

    Sparky was a loser(失败者） and everyone knew it. So he accepted it.

But one thing was important to Sparky—drawing. He was proud of his artwork. In senior high school， he sent some cartoons to the editors of the yearbook but he was refused. Sparky was hurt. But he didn't lose hope because he believed in his ability and he stuck to drawing. He decided to become a professional artist.

    He wrote a letter to the Walt Disney Studios after graduating from high school. The studio asked him to draw some cartoons on a certain subject. Sparky spent a lot of time on the cartoons. Finally， the reply came from Disney Studios: they aren't like cartoons.

    Was it time to stop drawing?

Sparky didn't think so. He started to put his own life in the cartoons. He created his childhood self—a little boy loser: Charlie Brown. He wasn't good at football.But Charlie Brown would soon become famous worldwide. Sparky， the boy who used to fail in school and who was refused again and again， was Charles Schulz. He created the Peanuts comic strip and the world-famous cartoon characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

    Bill is a smart boy. He can do all the math problems(问题) in his math book.

    One day, on his way to school, he sees a sign of a fruit store. It says: "Apples: Six for five  cents(美分)". Bill knows what to do, so he goes into the store.

    "How much are the apples？" Bill asks the man.

    "Six for five cents."

    "But I don't want six apples."

    "How many apples do you want？"

    "Well, it's not a question of how many apples I want. It's a math problem. If six apples are worth(值) five cents, then five apples are worth four cents, four apples are worth three cents, three apples are worth two cents, two apples are worth one cent and then one apple is worth ZERO! I only want one apple."

    Bill chooses(选择) a good apple and starts to eat it. The man is so surprised(惊讶的) that he can't say a word!

    Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, a cartoon film based on a popular Chinese cartoon TV series, has won the hearts of children in China. The Chinese cartoon began to be shown in public on 16th January, 2009, the first day of the winter holiday for Chinese primary school students. The children seemed to go straight from the school to the cinema.

    Two weeks after its release(首次上映), the cartoon film got a box office income(票房收入)of 68 million yuan, bigger than that of an American film, Madagascar 2, which was released in China on 1st January, 2009.

    “I think it is more interesting than Madagascar 2, ” said 8­year­old Wang Lu, who had seen both the Chinese and American cartoon films.

    However, some parents don't have the same enthusiasm for Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. “It's so childish that I almost fell asleep in the cinema, ”Wang Lu's father said.

    But because primary school children's great interest, the Pleasant Goat and Big Big wolf made a great success at the box office results. Parents join their children in the cinema—buying two or three tickets to keep them accompanied(陪同).

    Some young people find the film funny enough to watch. “The Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf are so cute, ” Dong Lei, a 22­-year-­old college student said.

    “However, compared with the animation(动画制作)technology of Hollywood cartoon films such as Kung Fu Panda, the film still has room for improvement, ” said cartoonist Yang Lin.