Years ago, I lived in a building in a large city. The building next door was only a few feet away from mine. There was a woman who lived there, whom I had never met, yet I could see her sit by her window each afternoon, sewing(针线活) or reading.
     After several months had gone by, I began to notice that her window was dirty. Everything was unclear through the dirty window. I would say to myself, "I wonder why that woman doesn't wash her window. It really looks terrible.”
     One bright morning I decided to clean my flat, including washing the window inside. Late in the afternoon when I finished the cleaning, I sat down by the window with a cup of coffee for a rest. What a surprise! Across the way, the woman sitting by her window was seen clearly. Her window was clean! Then it dawned on me. I had been criticizing(批评) her dirty window, but all the time I was watching hers through(通过) my own dirty window.
     That was quite an important lesson for me. How often had I looked at and criticized others through the dirty window of my heart, through my own mistakes?
     Since then, whenever I wanted to judge (评判) someone, I asked myself first, "Am I looking at him through my own dirty window?”
Then I try to clean the window of my own world so that I may see the world about me more clearly.

    Today I went to Sam's school in the UK. It was really different from my school in China.

    Girls wore grey skirts and white shirts, boys wore grey trousers, and everyone wore the school tie.

    Some of Sam's lessons were a bit strange for me. We were reading Shakespeare in the English lesson, and there were quite some old words like "thou" and "thee" to mean "you". In history we studied 20th Century China. It was strange hearing a foreign side of history — and hearing English people trying to say all our Chinese names!

    Classes were also a lot more relaxing than in China. Teachers were called "sir" or "miss", everyone shouted answers and raised their hands in classes. It was more like a debate than a class. A bell rang at the end of each lesson and everyone jumped up to go to the next class.

    At break we bought potato chips and cookies in the dining room. Lunch was later than in China at 1 o'clock. We had big plates of pie with carrots. For dessert there was hot sweet rice called rice pudding.

    It was good that I'd had an excellent lunch, because at Sam's school Monday afternoons are taken up with sports.

    I played my first game of netball — a bit like basketball, but with some differences. Luckily I'd had a quick look in the rule book before I tried to join in the game.

    I think the most terrible thing in life for my little brother is getting up in the morning. He is almost sick when my mother calls, "Herbert! It's seven o'clock! Get up!"

    Herbert answers, "I'm coming!" and goes right back to sleep. I'm not at all like my brother. I don't like to go to bed at night but I don't mind getting up in the morning.

    I usually wake up before my mother calls me. I jump out of bed and go into the bathroom to take a shower. I great dressed, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and get ready to go down stairs for breakfast as soon as my mother calls.

    But not Herbert. He just sleeps. A military band (军乐队) in our bedroom could not wake him up. I call him and say, "Get up!" Mum will be up here to pull you out of bed if you don't get up quickly.

    But he just sleeps. After calling a few more times my mother has to come upstairs and pull Herbert out of bed. It's that way every day with my little brother. Perhaps some day he'll learn to get up on time, but I really don't think so.

    Mrs Brown is very fat (胖).

    “Don't eat meat or cakes,” her doctor says to her.

    “I'm going to stop her eating them, doctor,”her husband (丈夫) says.

    The next morning, Mrs Brown makes a nice cake, and her husband eats half of it. After he goes out, Mrs Brown cuts (切) a very small piece of the cake and eats it. It is very good. She cuts a bigger piece and eats it. In a few minutes she finishes the cake. “My husband is going to be very angry (生气).” She says. “What am I going to do?”

    She makes another cake very quickly, eats half of that, and leaves half on the table.

    Her husband comes back later. He sees the half of the cake on the table and he is very happy.

    Frank was clever, but he never liked to work hard. He often said to his friends, "If you work hard, you will make a lot of money, but it is not so good. I want easy work and a lot of money. That's the most interesting thing in the world. "So he could only be a thief. But he still thought it was too much work, so he only told his friends what to do and got money from them.

    One day, Frank sent one of his friends to a very large and beautiful house. He told him to get money from that rich family. It was evening, and a man and a girl were in the room. They were playing a duet(二重奏)on a piano. Then the thief came into the house.

    When he returned, Frank asked him what he had got. But he said, "I didn't take anything. That family can't have much money. You know, two people were playing on the same piano there. They did not have money to buy another piano."