We are a primary school in England. Our students start arriving at our playground from about 8:45 a.m. Most of the children live nearby, so they walk to school. But some children have to travel to school by car. Each of the children is dressed in a school uniform (校服) and carries the homework and packed lunch in a schoolbag.

    School starts at 8:55 a.m. The teacher on duty blows a whistle (哨子) and the children line up in their class groups. They wait quietly for the teacher to send them to their classrooms. When they arrive at their classrooms, the children empty their schoolbags and put their homework in their boxes. After the children take their seats, the teacher reads out each child's name in turn. Upon hearing his / her name, the child replies “yes, Mrs. (the teacher's name)” and the teacher writes down whether the child is in school or not.

    And then at 9:10 a.m. the children attend an assembly in our main hall. They sit on the floor in rows with the youngest children at the front and the older children at the back. As the children enter the hall, they listen to music quietly. Each week we have a different musical theme (主题). Besides, the children also listen to stories.

    After the assembly, the first lesson of the day begins at 9:30 a.m. Our morning lessons are usually English and Maths. Each of these lessons lasts an hour. Between classes, the children have their morning break from 10:20 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. They eat their snacks (小吃) or play games like football on the playground. At the end of the break, the teacher on duty blows a whistle. The children stand still and wait to be told to line up.

    Each day, the children have their lunch break from 12 noon to 1:10 p.m. Most of the children bring their own packed lunches from home. A packed lunch usually consists of sandwiches, fruit, a drink and a packet of crisps. Some children have a school dinner cooked in our school kitchen. While the children are waiting to have lunch or after they have finished eating, they play games on the playground or attend lunch-time clubs. We have teachers on duty, who look after the children during lunch breaks. After the lunch break, the children have afternoon lessons, which continue until 3:15 p.m. when the children go home.

    Winters are long and unforgiving in North Dakota. The winter of 1996 was especially brutal. It was a hard time in my own life too, A neck injury had kept me flat in bed for nearly a year. “Just in time for Easter,” my husband, Dick, said. But how could I feel the joy when the snow was four feet deep and I had months of painful physical treatment ahead?

    I was doing the dishes one day, feeling hopeless when there was a tap against the glass. It was a branch of the troublesome cottonwood (棉白杨).Back in the fall of 1979, it was a new subdivision (分支) then, an eight-foot stick. The people who'd briefly occupied the house before us had placed the pipe from the pump next to it. The earth was so wet that the poor thing had fallen down, most of its bare root system pointing skyward, and blowing hopelessly back and forth in the cold wind. Dick decided to pull it out one day, but I disapproved of it.

    “Look at how hard it's trying!” I said, pointing to the way it strongly kept hold of the earth. “It deserves a chance.”

    Dick borrowed some tools. We packed dry soil around the tree and put up some stakes (桩) into the ground, making it stand upright. That winter was still terrible. Surprisingly, in the spring my “rescue stick” put forth a few leaves, then with lots of branches. The year after that, we were able to remove the stakes. By the 1990s that little stick was a giant, towering over the house.

    Now the tapping at the window continued, louder as the wind picked up, almost as though to tell me to look up. At last, I did. I caught ray breath. In the window against the icy blue sky, thousands and thousands of fresh red buds were waving in the wind.

    The tree was bursting with life and I had a wonderful Easter.

    Australia is the smallest continent in the world. It is a little smaller than China. It is on the Southern Hemisphere of the earth. Australia is big, but its population is small. The population of Australia is nearly as large as that of Shanghai.

    Enough laws have been made to fight against pollution. The cities in Australia have little air or water pollution. The sky is blue and the water is clean. You can clearly see fish in the rivers. Plants grow very well.

    Last month we visited Perth, the biggest city in Western Australia, and went to a wild flower exhibition. There we saw large numbers of wild flowers on show, most of which we had never seen before. We had a wonderful time. Perth is famous for its beautiful wild flowers. Every year in spring Perth has a wild flower exhibition. After visiting Perth, we spent a day in the countryside. We sat down and had a rest near a path at the foot of a hill. It was quiet and we enjoyed ourselves very much. When we heard bells ringing at the top of the hills, we looked up, but what we saw made us pick up all our things and run back to our car as quickly as we could. There were about three hundred sheep coming towards us along the path.

    Australia is famous for its sheep and kangaroos. After a short drive from any town, you will find yourself among the white sheep. Sheep, sheep, everywhere you can see sheep.

    John is a mechanic, but he lost his job a few months ago. He has good heart, but always feared applying for a new job.

    One day, he gathered up all his strength and decided to attend a job interview. His appointment was at 10 am and it was already 8:30. While waiting for a bus to the office where he was supposed to be interviewed, he saw an elderly man wildly kicking the tyre(轮胎) of his car. Obviously there was something wrong with the car. John immediately went up to lend him a hand. When John finished working on the car, the old man asked him how much he should pay for the service. John said there was no need to pay him; he just helped someone in need, and he had to rush for an interview. Then the old man said, "Well, I could take you to the office for your interview. It's the least I could do. Please. I insist." John agreed.

    Upon arrival, John found a long line of applications waiting to be interviewed. John still had some grease(油脂) on him after the car repair, but he did not have much time to wash it off or have a change of shirt. One by one, the applicants left the interviewer's office with disappointed look on their faces. Finally his name was called. The interviewer was sitting on a large chair facing the office window. Rocking the chair back and forth, he asked, "Do you really need to be interviewed?" John's heart sank. "With the way I look now, how could I possibly pass this interview?" he thought to himself.

    Then the interviewer turned the chair and to John's surprise, it was the old man he helped earlier in the morning. It turned out he was the General Manager of the company.

    "Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but I was pretty sure I made the right decision to have you as part of our workforce before you even stepped into the office. I just know you'd be a trustworthy worker. Congratulations!" John sat down and they shared a cup of well-deserved coffee as he landed himself a new job.

    A body image is the way a person views his or her body. It affects how a person “feels” about his or her body. For example, when not looking in a mirror, people have a sense of what their bodies look like. A positive body image is having a realistic and accepting view of your body. However, very few women have a positive body image. Society, dieting, eating disorders, and overweight are all related to a negative body image.

    A century ago, full and curvaceous (曲线美的) bodies were admired. They were also more natural for women to keep. Nowadays, the best female body has a tiny waist, flat stomach, thin legs, and is very slim. Women are told to weight less than ever before. Supermodels are the new women's idols. However, most of them are teenagers, and many of them have eating disorders or diet strictly. Trying to follow these standards is hard to most women. As a result, they starve themselves, or exercise—excessively (过度地), or both.

    Most women who know the standard of beauty and body weight are dieting to reduce weight and change their figures. Eating disorders are not simply unhealthy diet habits; they are considered as mental illnesses and can sometimes end in death. Strict dieting or food restriction combined with a negative body image can become an eating disorder.

    A negative body image can also lead to overweight. This is due to excessive eating to comfort bad feelings about their bodies. In addition, yo-yo dieting, which often follows a negative body image, leads to increasingly higher weights with each diet attempt.

    A negative body image is bad for women. I may help them to see an advisor who is good at treating women with negative body images. Lastly, if society worked on encouraging healthy lifestyles and healthy looking bodies for women, a lot of good would come from it.

    Sports can help you keep fit and get in touch with nature. However, whether you are on the mountains, in the waves, or on the grassland, you should be aware that your sport of choice might have great influence on the environment.

    Some sports are resource-hungry. Golf, as you may know, eats up not only large areas of countryside, but also tons of water. Besides, all sorts of chemicals and huge amounts of energy are used to keep its courses (球场) in good condition. This causes major environmental effects. For example, in the dry regions of Portugal and Spain, golf is often held responsible for serious water shortage in some local areas.

    There are many environment-friendly sports. Power walking is one of them that you could take up today. You don't need any special equipment except a good pair of shoes; and you don't have to worry about resources and your purse. Simple and free, power walking can also keep you fit. If you walk regularly, it will be good for your heart and bones. Experts say that 20 minutes of power walking daily can make you feel less anxious, .sleep well and have better weight control.

    Whatever sport you take up, you can make it greener by using environment-friendly equipment and buying products made from recycled materials. But the final goal should be "green gyms". They are better replacements for traditional health clubs and modem sports centers. Members of green gyms play sports outdoors, in the countryside or other open spaces. There is no special requirement for you to start your membership. And best of all, it's free.