Vanuatu is an island nation in the South Pacific. It is one of the smallest countries in the world. But tor those who are interested in adventure and sport, there is a lot to do. Vanuatu's islands offer visitors two of the most exciting and dangerous activities in the world: volcano (火山) surfing and land diving.

    Volcano Surfing

    On Tanna Island, Mount Yasur rises 300 meters into the sky. Yasur is an active volcano, and it erupts (爆发) almost every day, sometimes several times a day. For centuries, people have climbed this mountain to visit the top. Recently, people have also started climbing Yasur to surf the volcano. In some ways, volcano surfing is like surfing in the sea, but in other ways it's very different. Volcano surfers try to escape the erupting volcano-without getting hit by flying rocks! It's last, fun and dangerous-the perfect extreme sport (极限运动).

    Land Diving

    Most people are familiar with bungee jumping, but do you know bungee jumping started on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu and is almost fifteen centuries old? The activity, first called land diving, is part of a religious ceremony (宗教仪式). A man ties tree vines(树藤) to his legs. He then jumps head-first from a high tower to touch the earth with the top of his head-without breaking the vine. Every spring, island natives (men only) still take Dart in this amazing activity.

    Children with no shoes on do better at school than those with shoes on，a study suggests．

    For over 10 years，researchers from universities observed （观察） children in 100 schools from 25 countries．They found that classrooms were quieter when children took off their shoes．It provided a quieter environment where pupils were more willing to focus on study than those with shoes on．

    "Children are much more willing to sit on the floor and relax if they have no shoes on，"said professor Stephen Heppel，a lead researcher．

    "The last place a child would sit to read is an upright chair．And we've found that 95% of them really don't read on a chair at home，"Heppel added．"When they go on holidays，they read lying down．"Professor Heppel hopes to bring the"shoeless policy"to all U．K．schools．He says relaxing conditions at school make children feel as if they're at home．He believes all the teachers will be glad to adopt the habit．

    When you write a text message or an email, you might put a smiling face or other pictures at the end to make the message more fun. These pictures are emojis. The first emojis were on Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. Later, they were used on Apple's iPhone and Android phones. Now they are everywhere!

Before emojis, there were emoticons. The word is a mixture(混合) of emotion(感情) and icon(图标). Emoticons are made of the signs you can find on your keyboard, for example:) for a smiley or @};—for a rose. The first use of :-)was in 1982 and it was called "joke marker". Emoji is a Japanese word which means pictograph: e(picture) +moji (character). Emojis are real pictures, for example ，or . There are 1851emojis that can be used on mobile phones and other devices. There are all kinds of emojis, from faces and weather to things in the kitchen and animal.

    In England, we have a saying: A picture paints a thousand words. For many people, an emoji is like a punctuation mark(标点). It's like the tone of voice when we speak on the phone, or hand movements(gestures) used in conversation. Emojis are also changing the way we write. The more we use emojis, the less we use slang(俚语), such as LOL or OMG.

    When someone speaks and looks serious, we try to look serious, too, and when someone smiles, we smile as well. This is how we show empathy(同感) and make friends(and enemies!). But when we're online, we can't see the person's face and there's no emotion. The invention of emojis changed that! Scientists in Australia have discovered that when we look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain start working as when we look at a real smiley face. Our mood changes, and we try to change our face to match the emoji. This is something we learn as we get older. Our brains have developed this ability over the last two or three years. This means that emojis have created a new brain pattern(模式)in us!

    My name is Peter. I'm from New York and I am in Qingdao with my parents and my sister Lily now. My sister is eleven and I am twelve. We are in the same school. We go to school from Monday to Friday. Our parents are busy working and they don't have time to drive us to school. So we often go to school by bus. Sometimes we also ride a bike to school. We have four classes in the morning and two in the afternoon. My favorite subject is math. Science is my sister's favorite.

    I like sports. I like playing soccer and basketball very much. But I don't have much time to play them on weekdays. I help my sister with her math on Mondays, go shopping with my mother on Wednesdays, and practice Chinese on Friday afternoons. My Chinese friends help me with my Chinese. But on Saturdays and Sundays I can play sports, watch TV and surf the Internet.