My school stood in a big square playground in southeastern South Dakota. One teacher taught all grades, first through eighth. Most grades had only two or three students.

    Our school day started with the flag pledge(宣誓). Then the teacher called one grade at a time to the recitation bench beside her desk. She'd check our work, explain the new lesson, and dismiss us to go back to our own desks and do our new work, all in less than ten minutes per grade.

    At noon we ate lunches we had brought. Our lunches consisted of homemade sandwiches and if we were lucky, dessert. My favorite dessert was a fresh pear, and a piece of Mom's delicious sour cream chocolate cake.

    The annual Christmas program was the most exciting part of the year. We hurried through our lessons during December to allow time to practise poems, songs, and plays.

    A few days before the performance, the school board members borrowed equipment from the town and set up a stage across one side of the classroom. We hung bed sheets for curtains.

    On the evening of the performance, petrol lanterns hanging along the walls cast a warm, though not very bright, light over the gathering crowd. We could hardly contain our excitement as we looked from behind the curtains to wave at our parents.

    On a spring Sunday in a new term, just before the last day of the school term, everyone in the neighborhood gathered for a picnic. Our moms set fried chicken, bowls of salads, and desserts on the teacher's desk and the library table. After the dinner, we played games. One of the school board members brought big buckets of ice cream in the afternoon to top off the picnic. How we looked forward to that treat!

    I was just nineteen years old when I started my first teaching position in a country school with thirteen students. I felt excited, nervous and happy as I prepared my lunch bucket the first morning of the term. I can't remember what kind of sandwiches I packed, but I do remember I put in a fresh pear and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert!

    A farmer grew some vegetables in his garden. One day his wife was ill and he had no money. He had to sell some cabbages and carrots in the market. The next morning he took two baskets of vegetables to town, but it was raining hard that afternoon and there were few people in the street. When his vegetables were sold out, it was dark. He bought some medicine and hurried to his village.

    On his way home he saw a person lying on the ground. He placed his baskets on the ground and was going to help the person to get up. At that time he found it was a dead man and there was much blood on his body. He was so afraid that he ran away quickly, without taking his baskets.

    The next afternoon the farmer was sent to the police station. Having shown the baskets, an officer asked, “Are these yours? ” “Yes, sir. ” The farmer answered timidly（胆怯地）. “Have you killed the man?” “No, no, sir.” The farmer said in a hurry. “When did you see the dead man?” “About seven last evening. ” “Did you see who killed the man?” “No, sir. ” The officer brought out a knife and asked, “Have you seen it yet?” “No, sir. ” The officer became angry and told the policemen to beat him up and sent him into prison.

    That evening the officer went on trying. Pointing to the knife, he asked again, “Have you seen it yet?” “ yes, sir.” The officer was happy and asked, “When and where?” “I saw it here this afternoon, sir.”

A

    Daban town is famous for girls and windmills, while Loulan is a myth (神话) in the desert. Two thousand years ago, beside the beautiful Luobu Lake, there lay Loulan ancient city of the Silk Road. Businessmen from every country gathered there with lots of dancing parities. Everything shows that people in Loulan lived a rich life then.

    However, two thousand years later, this rich land suddenly disappeared from the map of China. It became an area covered with sand and dead tree trunks.

    Loulan was first "discovered" by a Swedish man named Sven Hedin in 1900, and people from America, Britain, Japan and Sweden all set foot here. Then in the 1930s, a Chinese named Huang Wenbi came to Loulan for the first time. He visited and studied this area and found many relics that were beautifully and carefully made.

    It is recorded that the ancient city of Loulan was the capital of the Loulan Kingdom during the Han and Jin Dynasties, and covered an area of some 10, 000 square kilometres. Inside the city, there are the ruins of government offices, temples and other old buildings. Outside the city there are some dried-up rivers and much farmland. In the past century many things have been dug up there including Han Dynasty coins, mirrors and many others of Greek and Roman times. All these things show that a lot of business between the East and the West once took place there.

    Lying on the northwest of the Lop Nur area, the Loulan Kingdom is now a lifeless area with endless ＂forests＂ of mounds (小丘) which aren't easily seen in other parts of the world. Its mystery has been attracting many people from many countries.

    Resorts of every kind have sprung up to cater to the Englishman need to spend a part of the year, however briefly, by the seaside. No town in Britain is more than eighty miles from the sea and there are seaside resorts all round the coast. On a summer Sunday most of the roads that lead to the sea axe congested (拥挤) with cars full of people eager to get a breath of sea air. In the evening when everyone is full of food, ice-cream and lollypops, there is the long slow drive home on roads crowded with returning cars.

    Brighton

    Brighton is one of the best-known south coast resorts and is very popular for day trip excursions. It is only fifty miles from London and can be reached by fast train in an hour. At the weekend the pebbled beaches are thronged with people sunbathing or picking their way to the water's edge for a dip.

    Bournemouth

    Located a hundred miles from London, the beaches are wide and sandy. White houses line the cliff tops and narrow valleys, densely wooded with pine trees, reach down to the shore. The area near to the town of Torquay on the Devon coast is sometimes called Britains Riviera and the climate is so mild that palm trees grow along the sea front.

    Blackpool

    On the north-west coast, a popular resort for the people in the industrial north, Blackpool is a gay, noisy town, famous for its amusement facilities and the magical lights. At night people travel from miles around to see the extravaganza of lights decorating the sea front.

    Southend

    On the east coast at the mouth of the Thames, Southend is, like Brighton, one of the favorite resorts of Londoners. The pier here is the longest in Britain and offers a great variety of differing entertainments.

    Physical education, or PE, isn't required for all high school students. In some schools, it isn't offered for some different reasons. But should high school students have physical education? The answer is certainly "yes".

    Today many people don't do sports. But as is known to all, doing sports is very important for an adult. Teaching teens the importance of a healthy lifestyle and making fitness plans now can help teens put exercise in the first place as an adult.

    High school isn't that easy. Many students are under a lot of stress. Stress can be harmful to a student's studies and life. Doing sports can help them deal with stress better, helping them live a happier life at school.

    The American Heart Association says that 10 million kids and teens suffer from obesity (肥胖症). Teens should get 60 minutes of physical activity per day to control their weight and to help their bones get stronger. The increase in activities that don't get teens to move around, such as video games and computer activities, means many teens don't get their required exercise. PE classes act as a public health measure to encourage physical activities and help teens have healthy weights.

    Not doing sports increases teens' risk of developing many diseases. An active lifestyle offers a good way of protection from these health problems. As much as 75 percent of health-care spending goes toward treating medical conditions that can be hindered by lifestyle changes, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

    According to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN), students who performed five hours of physical activity each week improved their academic (学业的) performance. Students from programs with no physical activity, who used the extra time for classroom study, did not perform better on tests than those who gave up some study time in support of physical education.

Of the tens of thousands of ships on the ocean bottom, only a handful, less than I percent, contain negotiable treasure, such as gold and jewels. Most give us a different priceless treasure — history. A sunken ship lies in trust, preserved in the airless environment of the sea and those in deep water are especially well protected. A sunken ship, therefore, can be a rare window through which a moment in time is glimpsed.

The wreck of HMS Endurance, which has finally been located deep beneath the icy seas of Antarctica after being lost 110 years ago, was arguably the most valuable shipwreck ever sought. That's because its discovery adds another thrilling new chapter to an already fascinating tale of perseverance and survival that has echoed down the decades and still inspires today.

Incredibly well preserved at a depth of almost two miles, the ship is little changed from the day in November 1914 when it finally sank beneath the ice. Endurance became embedded in ice while crossing Antarctica's Weddell Sea. The video shot by underwater search vehicles shows painted timbers, an undamaged guardrail (护栏), with the name "Endurance" written above the five-pointed symbol of a polar star.

"I tell you, you would have to be made of stone not to feel a bit soft at the sight of that star and the name above," Mensun Bound, the mission's marine archaeologist, told the: BBC. "You can see a porthole (舷窗) that is in Shackleton's cabin. At that moment, you really do feel the breath of the great man upon the back of your neck." Shackleton's leadership was crucial to getting his men out alive. The reason why Shackleton is still applauded as a great man becomes obvious when you consider what he achieved in the face of disasters and hardships during his 1914-16 expedition. The practicality and humanity he showed in the face of severe situations was arguably praised.