On a hill 600 feet above the surrounding land, we watch the lines of rain move across the scene, the moon rise over the hills, and the stars appear in the sky. The views invite a long look from a comfortable chair in front of the wooden house.

    Every window in our wooden house has a view, and the forest and lakes seldom look the same as the hour before. Each look reminds us where we are.

    There is space for our three boys to play outside, to shoot arrows, collect tree seeds, build earth houses and climb trees.

    Our kids have learned the names of the trees, and with the names have come familiarity and appreciation. As they tell all who show even a passing interest, maple（枫树）makes the best fighting sticks and white pines are the best climbing trees.

    The air is clean and fresh. The water from the well has a pleasant taste, and it is perhaps the healthiest water our kids will ever drink. Though they have one glass a day of juice and the rest is water, they never say anything against that.

    The seasons change just outside the door. We watch the maples turn every shade of yellow and red in the fall and note the poplars'（杨树）putting out the first green leaves of spring. The rainbow smelt fills the local steam as the ice gradually disappears, and the wood frogs start to sing in pools after being frozen for the winter. A family of birds rules our skies and flies over the lake.

    Researchers in China and the United States have developed a new cataract(白内障)treatment with cells that has restored vision in babies in a trial and may eventually be used in adults.

    The treatment-by doctors and staff members at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Sichuan and Sun Yat-sen universities in China-was published in March 9 edition of the scientific journal Nature.

    A cataract is a clouding of the normally clear lens(晶体)of an eye. Typical cataract operation involves the removal of the cloudy lens and the insertion of an artificial one. The new operation has been tested in animals and during a small, human trial. It resulted in fewer complications(并发症)than the current harmful operation, and in regrown lenses with superior visual function in all 12 of the baby cataract patients who received the procedure.

    A congenital cataract-lens clouding that occurs at birth or shortly after- is important cause of blindness in children. In the new research, K and Zhang, head of ophthalmic genetics at US San Diego's Shiley Eye Institute, and his colleagues relied on the regrown potential of endogenous(同源的)stem cells.

    According to Zhang, endogenous stem cells are different from other stem cells that are typically grown in a laboratory, transplanted into a patient, and can have risks of immune（免疫的）rejection, infection or cancers. Zhang told CBS News, “We invented a new operation to make a very small opening at the side of a cataractous lens bag, remove the cataract inside, allow the opening to heal, and promote potential lens stem cells to regrow an entirely new lens with vision.”

    The human trial involved 12 babies under the age of 2 who were treated with the new method, while 25 babies received the standard operation care. The latter group experienced a higher incidence of post-operation danger, early- onset eye high blood pressure and increased lens clouding. The scientists reported fewer complications and faster healing among the 12 babies who has the new procedure.

    The origin of “holiday” is easy to see, coming from “holy day”, a day of particular religious significance, often celebrating the life of a saint (圣徒), during which no work was to be done. As far back as the 11th century, “holidays”, especially the major feast days, were times of “celebration and amusement”, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it.

    The number of holidays steadily increased during the Middle Ages, until a medieval Englishman would have had the luxury of 40 to 50 days a year off work, depending on where he lived, in addition to a free day on Sundays.

    During the Reformation, Henry VIII abolished most of the holidays partly because of the Protestant (新教徒的) suspicion of saints, but more practically, because, according to historian Eamon Duffy, “A large number of holidays were making the people poor by limiting agriculture.” The people took a different view and organized a protest march—the Pilgrimage of Grace—partly to protect their days off.

    Though at first the religious and festive senses of holiday were combined, the word gradually came to be used for any kind of relaxing break from work. As the word was drawing away from a religious society, the number of authorized holidays was reduced, until by 1834 most workers had only four official days off a year, in addition to Sundays. Many factory workers amplified this time by staying home on “Saint Monday” to recover from what they had gotten up to the day before.

    By the late 19th century, employers were compromising and offering half-day Saturdays, the beginning of the “weekend”, a term first used in 1879. In 1908, an innovative mill in New England gave its employees all of Saturday off, and the practice spread widely during the Great Depression as a way to keep employment up. It took 400 years, but finally workers could enjoy as many holidays as they had in the 15th century.

    Yesterday I cleared up my house and I mean really cleared up my house. The room that gave the most results was my husband's "office". There I found: one right-footed shoe, size 10 (he lost the other one somewhere), a set of Star Wars videos and two small china cats someone gave me last birthday. I collected these "finds" and took them downstairs and logged (登录）on to eBay: the answer to all our rubbish.

    What is eBay? It aims to provide a global trading platform where almost anyone can trade almost anything. The idea came from Pierre Omidyar. Born in Paris, Omidyar moved to Washington when he was still a child. At High School he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tufts University in 1988, he worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started eBay as a kind of hobby, originally offering the service free by word of mouth. By 1996 there was so much traffic on the site that he had to upgrade and he began collecting fees. Joined by a friend, Peter Skoll and in 1998 by his dynamic CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never looked back. Even in the great dot-com crashes of the late 1990s eBay went from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping sites on the Internet.

    If you think about it, it's a perfect Internet idea. All you have to do is take an e-photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you're in business; the world is your market place.

    Some of the more bizarre goods up for offer have been a piece of French bread, partially eaten by Justin Timberlake, advertising space on a man's head, and a pair of used false teeth.

    One week later I am proud of having a clean and tidy home and € 110 in cash. Someone even bought the shoe.

    "You know, the soft subjects," says the boy in maths. "The easy ones: the stupid girls at the bottom take them. Like dance. It shouldn't even be a subject." We're choosing subjects for our A-level taster day at school. I see the raised eyebrows (眉毛) when I explain two of my GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) choices are dance and drama(戏剧).

    I was told by advisers that dance and drama wouldn't help me to get a suitable career. My friends told me I'd get bored of dance and switch to science within the first month.

    But taking GCSE dance was the best decision I ever made. Dance gives me something to pour my head and heart into. It gives me a feeling of belonging, creativity, security and freedom.

    The education secretary Nicky Morgan has put emphasis on (强调) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), saying that students who focus on the arts risk their careers. Stopping young people from expressing themselves at such a young age is not doing them any favours. Perhaps Nicky Morgan has forgotten to open the door of having a drive to study that subject day in, day out. It shouldn't matter what that subject is.

    I don't doubt the influence that STEM subjects can have on the people that love them. But to force children into one field is cruel. As much as I try, I'm not good at and don't love physics, biology or maths. I don't want a career in these areas.

    There has been a decrease in the number of state schools offering arts subjects taught by specialist teachers. I can't even imagine how it feels to be told that you don't teach a "real subject" by an 8-year-old boy.

    To the teachers, the parents, the government I say: Let children make their own decisions. Let them live in the present. Let them have a real, unlimited education.

    Idioms are one of the hardest parts of learning a language. For those of you who don't know, an idiom is a phrase which has a meaning, but the meaning is not clear from the words themselves. If you translate an idiom word for word, it sometimes makes no sense at all. They are like puzzles and even native speakers can get confused when someone uses a phrase that they've never heard of.

With that in mind, here are five common English idioms that you can use in a variety of Situations.

⒈Get your act together (Meaning: you need to improve your behaviour/work)

    This might be something your teacher says to you if you score badly in an exam or if you misbehave in class. You can also use it to talk about people in general. For example, if your friend is being mean or nasty for no reason, then you can tell them that they need to get their act together.

⒉Pull yourself together (Meaning: calm down)

    This is a somewhat impolite way of telling someone that they are overreacting and that they need to relax. Only use this if you think the person you are speaking to is getting upset over something insignificant. If your friend tells you that their close relative has died, it is NOT the time to tell them to pull themselves together.

⒊I'm feeling under the weather (Meaning: I'm sick)

    Yes, it's longer and more difficult to say than 'I'm sick', but if your English teacher asks you why you haven't done your homework, he or she is more likely to forgive you if you say that you were feeling under the weather. You may not have done your English homework, but your teacher might be impressed that you know how to make eloquent excuses in a foreign language.

⒋It's a piece of cake (Meaning: it's easy)

    I don't know why this means what it does, but sometimes you just have to accept that English people use weird phrases.

⒌Break a leg (Meaning: good luck!)

    This is perhaps one of the most confusing yet well-known English idioms. If someone says this to you, do not take offence or think they are threatening you; they are just wishing you luck. It is most often used for people wishing success to actors and actresses before they perform on the stage, but it can be said in other situations, too.

    All in all, learning a new language can be challenging. It's definitely not a piece of cake, especially when there are so many confusing idioms. However, with enough hard work and interest, you will succeed in no time. Break a leg!