Americais a mobile society. Friendship between Americans can be close and real, yet disappearssoon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmasgreetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while, then no more,If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up thefriendship.

   Thiscan be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendship betweenus flows more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending(延伸) sometimesdeeply into both families.

   Americansare ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays and theirhome life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept theirhospitality (好客) easily.

   Anotherdifficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they includeus warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don't show their politeness tous if it requires a great deal of time.This is usually the opposite of thepractice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes,we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet afriend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends.Americans, however, express their welcome at home. But they truly cannot managethe time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They willprobably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. Andthey expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes,the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves to be treatedhospitably.

   ForAmericans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to theirhomes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accepttheir hospitality at home!

Feeling "worried" can describe lots of different feelings from being tired or sad to being frustrated, nervous or a bit sick.

You might be worried about something in particular, like a test, or you might not know why you feel worried, which is normal and okay too.

Ways to stop feeling worried

When you are feeling worried, you may begin to lack confidence and start feeling that you're not good enough.

This is normal. The best thing to do is to stop, take a deep breath and focus on all the things you are good at or talented in, however small they may seem.

Positive thoughts will help you feel better in yourself.

Other ways to stop yourself from feeling worried include:

★Doing a different activity

★Getting some exercise

★Eating some healthy food

These will help you feel fit and strong.

Sometimes the best solution is to relax —find a comfortable chair to sit on or have a lie-down(小睡), slow down your breathing and relax.

Comic strips(连环漫画) are popular cartoons found in newspapers and magazines around the world. If you can think up funny dialogues, you are well on your way to becoming a successful comic strip writer. If you're also good at drawing, it will be much better!

Develop your characters(角色). Develop your characters and practise drawing them in different situations. Make sure that each has its personality, so that it's easy to tell who is who.

Make a quick sketch(素描) of your strip. When you have decided what is going to happen, work out how many panels you will need, and exactly what will be described in each panel. Stop in where the text will go, and what the characters will be doing. Use a ruler and a pencil to draw the squares. Use the pencil to draw in your images. Draw the speech bubbles, characters and any background of the scenes. Correct until you are pleased with your drawings.

Add the text. Many cartoonists just do this with a pen, but you might want to start with a pencil until you feel confident in your lettering abilities(能力).Make sure your text is very easy to read.

Ink (给……上墨) over the final lines of your squares, text and images. Be careful not to use the wet ink. When the ink is completely dry, run an eraser over your comic to clean up the paper and remove any remaining pencil marks.

Our school is on Green Street. There is a supermarket {#blank#}1{#/blank#} to it. You can {#blank#}2{#/blank#} see a clean river in front of our school. Our school is beautiful. There are a few buildings(建筑物) in our school {#blank#}3{#/blank#} the best one is the library. It is big and bright. We all like {#blank#}4{#/blank#} books there. Around the library there are many {#blank#}5{#/blank#} and colorful flowers. Do you want to come to our school and have a {#blank#}6{#/blank#}? Go {#blank#}7{#/blank#} Huaihe Street and you can see a bridge on your left. Go across the bridge and {#blank#}8{#/blank#} turn left. You will see the Students' Supermarket. Our school is on its {#blank#}9{#/blank#}. You can't {#blank#}10{#/blank#} it. Welcome to our school!

Many people know LEGO（乐高）. It is from Denmark， and appeared in the 1950s. In about 1960， people began to make LEGO bricks（积木）using a kind of plastic called ABS. 

However， ABS plastic can't be recycled and it takes a very long time to break down（分解）. That's a big problem. 

There is serious plastic pollution around the world. To help save the earth， LEGO began to make new bricks in 2015. These bricks wouldn't pollute the earth so much. Three years later， the factory began making some LEGO parts， like trees， out of a kind of special plastic. The plastic is made from sugar cane（甘蔗）. 

LEGO is now trying to make bricks out of PET plastic. This kind of plastic can be found in things like bottles and clothing. People can make LEGO bricks out of recycled plastic bottles. The factory is working to find out a way to add color to the bricks—right now they're just white. 

The last Eurasian lynx (猞猁) in the British Isles lived a life of danger as it moved quickly to avoid campfires and vicious dogs, and hid in holes. Because of disappearing woodlands, being short of animals for food, and hunting, lynx started to disappear from these islands about 1, 500 years ago. But experts hope to one day bring the Eurasian lynx back to Scotland. 

Wildlife conservationists (环保主义者) in Switzerland, Germany, France, and other countries have taken Eurasian lynx from elsewhere in their areas and introduced them again to protected forests, allowing their populations to grow. Now they' re hoping to do the same thing in Scotland. Returning the cats would do more than just improve the numbers of this once- endangered animal. A win for the lynx is a win for the forest- and the planet. 

When the Eurasian lynx disappeared, so did the Scottish landscape. Without these cats and other animals hunting them, deer populations increased a lot. Those animals lived on the leaves of trees and bushes for food, and soon large areas of the Scottish forest disappeared since it couldn't grow fast enough to keep up with the deer's wish for food. Birds and rodents (啮齿动物) that depended on shelter (庇护所) in the lower level of forest plants became food for foxes, which lynx also hunt. 

Experts trying to restore the forests have to put up fences to keep deer from eating leaves of young trees. But with lynx hanging out in the woods, experts think these cats would keep the deer from harming the young trees, helping the forests make a comeback. 

And that would have even bigger influences. The Earth is losing woodlands as people cut down trees to make room for farming, and to sell the wood for products like furniture and toilet paper. In 2020 alone, the Earth lost as many trees as would cover an area larger than Michigan. 

So restoring forests in places like Scotland can help provide more space for wildlife and even fight climate change. That's because trees take in carbon dioxide, which takes in the sun's heat and warms our planet.