C

     Elizabeth lived with her six children in a small house. One winter, there was a big flood(洪水) ,and quite a few houses were washed away, but Elizabeth's house was high enough to escape it.
     Elizabeth helped one of the families which had lost everything. She shared her home until the family could build a new house. Elizabeth's friends could not understand her since she already had so many children to take care.
      "Well," Elizabeth explained to her friends, at the end of World War II, there was a poor woman in a town in England .Her husband had been killed in the war and she had a lot of children, just like me now .”

      “The day before Christmas, this woman said to her children, “We won't be able to have much for Christmas. I'm going to get just one present for us all .Now I'll go and get it. She came back with a little girl who had no parents .Here's our present, she said to her own children. ”

      “The children were more than excited to get such a present. They welcomed the little girl happily, and she grew up as their sister. I was that Christmas present.”

    Jane is a school girl. She is twelve. She studies at a middle school. She is in Grade Seven. She is a good girl. Jane gets up at seven in the morning. Then she has her breakfast. For breakfast she has eggs and a cup of milk. She doesn't have tea for breakfast.

    After breakfast Jane goes to school. At twelve she comes home from school. She has lunch with her mother. For lunch she has hamburgers and salad. She likes salad, but she doesn't like hamburgers.

    At seven she has supper with her father and mother. They have chicken and vegetables. Her father likes chicken, but Jane doesn't.

    Nadia Comaneci, a famous gymnast(体操运动员), was born in Romania in 1961.

    When she was doing cartwheels (侧手翻) on the playground at the age of 7, a PE teacher saw her. He told her family that she was very good and advised Nadia to train in the capital of Romania. Although it was a long way from her home, Nadia went because she loved gymnastics(体操).

    After that, she trained hard and took part in lots of competitions. In 1975, she was named as one of the Athletes of the 20th Century.

    In 1976, Nadia went to the Olympics in Canada. She was so fantastic in the competition that everyone waited for the score, a high score. But the score board showed 1.00!

    Everyone was surprised. There wasn't a sound for a moment. Then a voice came. "Ladies and gentlemen, Nadia Comaneci…10!"

    The audience cheered very loudly. So what happened? Well, when the scoreboard was built, no one thought a score of 10.00 was possible. The decimal point(小数点) was in the wrong place! In fact, the scoreboard only had three digits (数位) to show scores, such as 9.50 or 9.85 at that time.

    In the 1976 Summer Olympics, Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect 10, which was thought impossible before. From then on, she was looked as a hero. In 1984, she got retired (退休的).

    It is believed in some ways that the daughter is father's lover. But my experience has taught me in a different way. For a long time my father has been a very vague figure(模糊形象)to me. He was a man of few words, tall but slim and nothing else.

    When I was in primary school, my father was never there to pick me up, and he never came to any of my parent-teacher meetings. He was always busy doing projects. I remember when I was in middle school and my head was badly hurt in a PE class. During my operation my father was nowhere to be found. This hurt me most. At that moment, I considered my father as a cold-blooded man who did not care about me at all.

    But things seemed different at my high school graduation ceremony where I was chosen to represent my class and give a speech. My father, once again, told me he had a business trip in a place outside the city and would be unable to show up(露面), "Don't come. I will be very nervous if I see you. "I told him.

    I remember my speech went smoothly. After the ceremony was over and I was about to leave, I suddenly noticed a familiar looking man sitting in a corner of the hall. It was my father！I was so surprised that I rushed to him with tears running down my face. "Well done," he said. His eyes were also filled with tears.

    Later, I found out that my father had managed to finish his work by staying up late, and he drove for eight hours to get back. He had been sitting in the corner because he didn't want me to see him. My father remembered every word in my speech.

    For much of my life I described my father was a cold-blooded man who only cared about his work. But when I thought deeply about this, it was obviously not true. At my graduation ceremony, I could feel my father's deep love. The fact is that seeing is not believing, and seeing may not be the fact if we don't perceive(感知)the world with our hearts and minds. There's no doubt that life doesn't lack(缺少)love, but sometimes our eyes have trouble seeing it.

    "It's time to wake up, Emily," my mom sings from the kitchen. I pretended to open my eyes. Why didn't the alarm on my cell phone ring?

    Soon, I realized it was April 8, the day for my program: "A day without technology." I didn't realize what I had gotten myself into until I was driving to school in my car. No radio blasting my favorite songs. I had to sing to myself.

    As soon as I got to school, I went to the library to print out my English project from my flash drive. "Uh-oh," I thought. "This isn't expected." Finally, I had to spend nearly an hour writing the report again.

    The school day went on and I finally got used to the rules. This wasn't so hard! I could do this every day.

    I drove home in silence again, and my mind eventually went into after-school mode (模式), depending on what I would eat for supper and who would be voted off (被淘汰出局)American Idol later that night. The last thing I knew, I was chat with friends on Face book, check email and watch a video on YouTube, all at the same time!

    My mom walked in and her jaw dropped.

    "What happened to no homework?" she asked me. I froze for the second time that day and ordered myself to go back to reality. I had failed.

    This experiment, which many teenagers would never have the courage to try, was actually convenient to me. Even though my attempt(尝试) at going about my day without these luxuries (奢侈品) was a failure, I realized that if I really tried, I would be completely successful without my addiction to technology.

    These devices suddenly make my life easier, and I'm sure I wouldn't practice getting rid of them altogether, but I do believe the lives of today's teenagers would be dramatically different without our tech dependence.