A

    Tom lives in a town near New York. His father has a factory there and his mother is a doctor. He is seven and begins to go to school this September. The school is a little far from home and his father drives a car to take him to school five days a week. So he is never late for class and his teachers like him very much.

    It is Monday today. Miss Green is teaching them to count from one to ten in the morning. Tom is studying hard. Soon he can count them. Miss Green is happy and asks," How many people are there in your family, Tom?"

    Tom stands up and says, "Two, Miss Green."

    "Who are they?"

    "My father and my mother."

    "Oh," Miss Green is surprised. Then she says, "There are three people in your family."

    "But now I'm not at home. I'm at school, you know!"

B

    Once upon a time, a man punished （惩罚）his 5-year-old daughter for using up the family' s expensive gold wrapping (包装 ) paper. Money was always not enough, and he became even more upset when on Christmas Eve, he saw that the child had pasted ( 贴) the gold paper to decorate a shoebox to put under the Christmas tree.

    The next morning the little girl, filled with excitement, brought the gift box to her father and said, "This is for you, Daddy!"

    As he opened the box, the father was sorry for his earlier behavior.

But after he opened it, he found it was empty and again he was angry. "Don't you know, young lady," he said, "when you give someone a present there's supposed to be something inside the package!"

    The little girl looked up at him with tears running from her eyes and said, "Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was all full."

    When the father heard this, he fell on his knees and put his arm around his dear little girl. He begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger.

    An accident took the life of the child only a short time later. It is told that the father kept that little gold box by his bed for all the year of his life. Whenever he was sad or faced difficult problems he would open the box, take out an imaginary kiss, and remember the love of this beautiful child who had put it there.

    In a very real sense, each of us as human beings have been given an invisible golden box filled with love and kisses from our children, family, friends and God. This is the most expensive possession (财产) anyone could hold.

    Yasutaro Koide, the world's oldest man, died at the age of 113, in Nagoya, Japan on January 19, 2016. But along with his many years, Koide also left us with a piece of advice for a long and fruitful life.

    Koide was born on March 13, 1903. He learned sewing and worked as a tailor(裁缝) for a men's clothes shop in most of his life. He moved to live with his daughter when he was 107 years old. When he turned 110, Koide could still read newspapers without glasses and could eat well without dentures(假牙). In August, 2015, Guinness World Records confirmed(认证) that he was the world's oldest man.

    Koide always loved sitting in front of his sewing machine, enjoying making all kinds of clothes by hand. Being a tailor was his only and last job before his death.

    When he was given the world record in 2015, he told reporters about his secret of living a long life, "No smoking or overdrinking! Be happy about everything. Never overdo things. Work and live with happiness.

Where would you like to stay when you go on a vacation? What kind of hotel would you like to choose? Different people have different ideas. In fact, there are all kinds of special places to stay when you go on a vacation. There are hotels, motels, youth hostels, B&Bs (bed-and-breakfast), home stays, and more. Each is for a different kind of people. If you travel by car, a motel is good for you. You can park your car outside your room. A youth hostel is good for young backpackers (背包客). A B&Bs might be best for couples (夫妻) or anybody who doesn't like being noisy.

    For people who like reading, the library hotel in New York is a must-see. Each of the hotel's 60 rooms is full of books. In fact the hotel has over 6, 000 books in all. If history is your thing, the 9th floor is for you. If you are interested in math and science, you can stay on the 5th floor. Artists will feel at home on the 7th floor. The Poetry Garden is on the 14th floor, and there is a cozy sofa in it. You can sit on the sofa and enjoy reading a good book or relax outside in the Poetry Garden.

    We live on the earth. We use the sea around us. What do we take from the ocean? And what do we give to it?

    We take fishes from the ocean—millions of kilograms of fish, every year, to feed millions of people. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}We take minerals (矿物) from the ocean. We can get salt by evaporating (蒸发) seawater. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}such as gold. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Seaweed (海草) becomes food of many kinds—even candy and ice cream—as well as medicine. Believe it or not, fresh water is another gift from the sea. We can't drink ocean water. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}But ocean water becomes fresh water when the salts are removed. In the future, we will find ourselves depending more and more on fresh water from the sea.

    The sea gives us food, fertilizer, minerals, water and other gifts. What do we give the sea? We pollute the ocean all the time. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Throwing waste into the ocean is killing off sea life. Yet as the world population grows, we may need the sea and its gifts more than ever.

    We are finally learning that if we destroy our sea, we might also destroy ourselves. Hopefully, it is not too late.

Do you often visit bakeries (烘焙店) for a sweet treat? And have you ever wondered what happens to the unsold bread? Lately, this topic has brought a wide discussion on the Internet.

Unlike ice cream, bread is kept at room temperature, leading to a short shelf life (保质期).

"Freshly baked bread can only be kept for 24 hours, while packaged (包装好的) bread lasts 3 days." said a bakery manager in Jiangxi Province. At the end of a day, some bakeries sell the near-expired (临期的) bread at a lower price. But others would rather throw it away because they are afraid that many customers will just wait until the end to buy cheaper bread.

If so can bakeries make less bread in the first place to reduce waste? The answer is "No." In fact, a shelf full of bread will increase people's desire to buy more. Also, bakeries need to make many kinds of bread every day to meet different customers' needs.

Throwing away the unsold bread will lead to a huge waste for sure, so some bakeries are looking for better ways to deal with it. For example, some bakeries sell near-expired products through "blind boxes". At a bakery in Shanghai, there is a blind box sale from 8 to 9 p.m. every day. People can get a random (随机的) type of near-expired bread at a low price. "It's great because it reduces food waste," said one customer. "And the blind box always gives me a little surprise!" What's more, some bakeries give away the near-expired products to people in need. Even the expired bread can be sent to recycling companies and turned into food for animals.