I had the honor of being elected chief of my tribe(部落). With the title came great responsibility. It was my job to make peace with the Maori Tamaki tribe, whose village we visited. Their warriors leapt from a canoe and faced us down with fierce growls, bulging eyes and much swishing of sticks. They laid a palm frond on the ground and, as head honcho, I was compelled to accept this peace offering by picking it up, then touching noses with their chief. “Kia ora”, he said, welcoming us into the woodland home of his people.

    My “tribe” was my New Zealand tour group, who had forced me into being their leader. We'd been warned that the ceremony was a serious occasion and that to laugh or even smile would be considered rude to the Tamaki. After that it was non-stop fun as they showed their ancient customs and I received instruction in performing the haka, the war dance by the All Blacks rugby team.

    Then they pulled our dinner of lamb, beef and vegetables out of the ground. It had been slow-cooked in the heat that simmers just below the surface in the geothermal(地热的) area of North Island, a Maori tradition known as a hangi that goes back an extremely long period of time.

    Obviously, this form of it is put on for tourists but it was hugely enjoyable. The journey back to the hotel was alone worth the effort, our hilarious Maori elder driver being deserving of his own television show. “The wheels on the bus go round and round,” he got us singing, while he circuited(绕……环行) a roundabout three times.

    A couple of days from the end of my trip, there was still something missing, a New Zealand icon I yearned to see to make my grand tour complete. Riding over a hill, there it was – Aotearoa. The Maori name for New Zealand translates as “Land of the long white cloud”. Can I say “Kia ora, Aotearoa?” You bet I can.

    My motivation for starting our family tradition of reading in the car was purely selfish: I could not bear listening to A Sesame Street Christmas for another 10 hours. My three children had been addicted to this cassette（磁带）on our previous summer road trips.

    As I began to prepare for our next 500-mile car trip, I came across a book—Jim Trelease's—The Read Aloud Handbook. This could be the answer to my problem. I thought. So I put Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach into my bag. When I began to read aloud the tale of the boy who escapes the bad guys by hiding inside a giant peach, my three kids argued and fought with each other in their seats. But after several lines, they were attracted into the rhythm of the words and began to listen.

    We soon learned that the simple pleasure of listening to a well-written book makes the long miles pas more quickly. Sometimes reading became the most interesting part of the trip. I read Wilson Rawls's Summer of the Monkeys as we spent two days driving to the beach. We arrived just behind the power crews restoring（恢复）electricity after a tropical storm. The rain continued most of the week, and the beach was covered with oil washed up by the storm. When we returned home, I asked my son what he liked about the trip. He answered without hesitation “The book you read in the car.”

    Road trips still offer challenges, even though my children now are teenagers. But we continue to read as we roll across the country. And I'm beginning to see that reading aloud has done more than help pass the time. For at least a little while, we are not shut in our own electronic worlds. And maybe we've started something that will pass on to the next generation.

    Every day I see advertisements in the newspapers and on the buses claiming that it is easy and quick to learn English. There is even a reference to William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens to encourage learners even more. When I see advertisements like this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But many people must believe these ridiculous claims, or else the advertisements would not appear.

    Of course it is clear that students who go to England to learn English have a great advantage over others, but too many cannot afford to do so. Some go to the opposite extreme and think they can teach themselves at home with dictionaries. But it is wrong to assume that each word in English has a precise equivalent in another language, let alone produces good pronunciation and intonation.

    Most teaching is still based on behaviorist psychology. Behaviorists are fond of making students repeat phrases and making sentences. If we were parrots or chimpanzees, these methods might be successful. A large number of theorists seem to think it is a pity we aren't, because it would make it easier to use their methods.

    In my personal opinion, no one can ever learn to speak English or any other language unless he is interested in it. Human beings, unlike parrots and chimpanzees, do not like making noises unless they understand what the noises mean and can relate them to their own lives. It is worth remembering that language is a means of communication. What they listen to and read cannot be a formula. It must be real.

    There is another relevant point worth mentioning here. We need other people to talk to and listen to when we communicate. They can work with us and practice the unfamiliar forms with us in real situations, talking to each other about real life language.

    It is easier to float in the ocean than it is to float in a swimming pool. Do you know why?

    Ocean water is full of salt— and salt water can hold up more weight than fresh water. See for yourself!

    You Will Need:

    3 cups of warm water

    Measuring cup (量杯)

    Wide-mouthed jar

    Salt

    Spoon

    Raw (生的)potato

    You Will Do:

    ⒈Pour 1.5 cups of warm water into the jar.

    ⒉Add 1/3 cup of salt.

    ⒊Stir(搅拌) until the salt is completely dissolved.

    ⒋Add another 1.5 cups of water. Pour it slowly over the back of the spoon into the jar so that the two liquids will not mix together.

    ⒌Gently place the potato into the jar. Do not drop it.

    What Will Happen:

    The potato will sink— but only halfway!

    Why?

    Salt water is heavier than fresh water, so it will stay on the bottom. The fresh water will remain on top.

    The potato is heavier than the fresh water, but it is lighter than the salt water. That is why the potato will sink halfway down.

    Allan Guei, 18, was a star basketball player at Compton High School in the Los Angeles area before he graduated last month. His good grades made him eligible for an unusual competition: A free-throw contest in the Compton High gymnasium. The top prize: ＄40,000 in scholarship money.

    Guei, whose parents immigrated to the United States from the Ivory Coast, knew how much that financial aid could mean for his family. He was also feeling a fair share of pressure as students and teachers crushed into the gym to watch Guei and seven other randomly compete against each other.

    Guei won the free-throw contest by one basket and netted the ＄40,000. But it's what he did next that's truly astonishing.

In the weeks following the March free-throw competition, Guei learned that he'd scored a full-ride basketball scholarship to California State University—Northridge. NCAA(全国大学生体育协会)rules allowed Guei to accept the athletic scholarship and also keep most of the ＄40,000 he had won.

    But Guei couldn't stop thinking about the seven talented runners-up from the free-throw contest. They, too, had dreams and very real needs. So, he asked Principal Jesse Jones to make a surprise announcement at Compton High's graduation ceremony: Geui wanted to donate the ＄40,000 to the other seven students.

    “I've already been blessed so much and I know we're living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates,” Guei said in a statement. “It was the right decision.”

    Guei elaborated on his decision to give the money away in an interview with ESPN(体育电视网): “I was already well taken care of to go to school, to go to university for free… I felt like they needed it more than I did.”

    I spend half of my life with my mother and the other half with my father. My father lives with a twenty-pound cat named Tofu. He calls me his favorite daughter. I am an only child.

    My father's apartment is quite different from any other person's living space. Except for my room, there is no furniture. He doesn't like sofas or any comfortable chairs, so he has only a drawing table, a desk and his bed. He spends a lot of time lying on the studio floor. That's how he thinks, he says. Then he does yoga

    He has a big kitchen, and on top of the refrigerator is an old clock he winds every week for good luck. The last time the clock stopped, my father's car was towed(被警察拖走) and some other terrible things happened, so he has become very superstitious (迷信的) . When he goes out of town, he hires someone to feed Tofu and wind the clock so it won't stop.

    The one thing he has plenty of is house rules. You have to take off your shoes when you come in. He won't allow anyone who wears a baseball cap into his house. He says only baseball players should wear baseball caps and only the catchers should wear them backward. Every time I go to stay in his house, he makes up a new rule. "House rule number 579, no television programs with laugh tracks!" he will say. But then be can never remember the numbers, so they change constantly.

The rule that he always enforces is the one that requires me to write a two-page essay anytime I want something. He didn't speak English until he was sixteen, and he had a hard time learning to write it, so he wants me to become a good writer at an early age. This ritual(仪式)started when I asked him if I could have my ears pierced when I was nine. He said it was very cruel and told me I couldn't do it until I was thirty-five. But l kept asking him, and he finally said that if I wrote an essay and I could persuade him in writing why I wanted holes in my ears, maybe he would say okay. I wrote my first essay for my father, and after one month of writing and rewriting, he finally gave me his permission.