Thirteen can be a challenging age. Not only did I have to adapt to my changing body, I also had to deal with my parents' bitter divorce, a new family and the upsetting move from my country home to a crowed town.

    When we moved, my beloved companion (伙伴), a small brown horse, had to be sold. I was heartbroken and terribly lonely. I couldn't eat or sleep and cried all the time. Finally, realizing how much I missed my horse, my father bought me another horse, Cowboy.

Cowboy was without doubt the ugliest horse in the world. But I didn't care. I love him beyond all reasons.

    I joined a riding club. When Cowboy and I entered the events where the horse was judged by the appearance, we were quickly “shown the gate”. I knew nothing could turn Cowboy into a beauty. My only chance to compete would be in the timed speed events. I chose the jumping race.

    For the whole next month we practiced running and jumping for hours in the hot sun and then I would walk Cowboy home, totally exhausted.

    All of our hard work didn't make me feel confident by the time the show came. One girl named Becky rode a big brown horse in the race events. She always won the blue ribbons (丝带). I sat at the gate and sweated all out while I watched Becky and her horse charge through the court and finish in first place.

    My turn finally came. At the signal, we dashed (猛冲) towards the first fence, jumped over it without trouble and raced on to the next one. Cowboy then flew over the second, third and fourth fences like a bird and I turned him towards the finish line.

    No cheers filled the air. The end of our run was met with surprised silence. Cowboy and I had beaten Becky and her fancy horse by two seconds.

    I gained much more than a blue ribbon that day. At thirteen, I realized that no matter what the chances would be, I'd always be a winner if I wanted something badly enough and worked for it. I can be the owner of my fate.

    Friendships can be difficult-because often people aren't as honest and open as they should be. Sometimes, people end up getting hurt.

    Most problems with friendships come up because people are just too selfish to care about the things that their friends need. They care about their own needs much more, which makes it hard for friendships to work. However, being selfish is part of human nature. A person is put together in order to take care of himself and their own needs, not necessarily those needs of other people. Even though being selfish is something that all humans are born with, it is something that everyone should be against.

    The best thing to remember when you are a friend to anyone is that you need to treat your friends the same way as you'd like to be treated. This is wonderful advice for a friendship because it is really the only way to make sure that you are giving your friends everything you would want to be given in a friendship. Whenever you have a question about how you should treat a friend, it is easy to find an answer simply by asking yourself what you would like your friend to do for you, if he or she is in your shoes.

    Even if you're always thinking about how you'd like to be treated, and your friends are too, there are issuer(问题，忧虑) that come up from time to time in each friendship, and it is important to understand how to deal with these issues so that you can build stronger and healthier friendships. Issues like friends getting boyfriends or girlfriends and not spending enough time with their friends, or even friends finding new friends and leaving old friends behind are issues that will probably come up with one or more of your friendships. It is important to know how to deal with these issues so that you can keep your friends and make new ones. No one wants to have a broken friendship.

    The health of millions could be at risk because supplies of medicinal plants are being used up. These plants are used to make traditional medicine, including drugs to fight cancer. “The loss of medicinal plants is a quiet disaster,” says Sara Oldfield, secretary general of the NGO Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

    Most people worldwide rely on herbal (药草制的) medicines which are got mostly from wild plants. But some 15,000 of the 50,000 medicinal species are under threat of dying out, according to report from the international conservation group Plantlife. Shortages have been reported in China, India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda.

    Over-harvesting does the most harm, though pollution and competition from invasive species (入侵物种) and habitat destruction all contribute. Businessmen generally harvest medicinal plants, not caring about sustainability (可持续性),” the Plantlife report says, “damage is serious partly because they have no idea about it. but it is mainly because such collection is unorganized” Medicinal trees at risk include the Himalayan yew (紫衫) and the African cherry, which are used to treat some cancers.

    The solution, says the report's author, Alan Hamilton, is to encourage local people to protect these plants. Ten projects studied by Plantlife in India, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Uganda and Kenya showed this method can succeed. In Uganda, the project has kept a sustainable supply of low-cost cancer treatments, and in China a public-run medicinal plant project has been created for the first time.”

    “Improving health, earning an income and keeping cultural traditions are important in encouraging people to protect medicinal plants,” says Hamilton, “You have to pay attention to what people are interested in.”

    Ghillean Prance, the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, agrees that medicinal plants are in need of protection. “Not nearly enough is being done,” he told New Scientist. “We are destroying the very plants that are of most use to us.”

    Going green seems to be a fad(时尚) for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can't really say, but for the two of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.

    On April 22, 2011, we decided to go green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different green things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green things to do and this was no easy task.

    With the idea of going green every single day for a year, Our Green Year started. My wife and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little thing counts.

    Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyle. We now shop at organic(有机的) stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don't need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home-made fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something un-green might be punished.

    Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet.

    Have you ever looked out of the window of a passenger plane from 30,000 feet at the vast expanses of empty ocean and uninhabited land, and wondered how people can have any major effect on the Earth? I have. It is now becoming pretty clear that we are causing a great deal of damage to the natural environment. And the planes which rush us in comfort to destinations around the globe, contribute to one of the biggest environmental problems that we face today— global warming.

    As usual, people in the developing world are having to deal with problems created mainly by those of us in developed countries. Beatrice Schell, a spokeswoman for the European Federation for Transport and Environment says that, "One person flying in an airplane for one hour is responsible for the same greenhouse gas emissions（排放）as a typical Bangladeshi in a whole year." And every year jet aircraft produce almost as much carbon dioxide as the entire African continent does.

    There is a way of offsetting(抵消) the carbon dioxide we produce when we travel by plane. A company called Future Forests offers a service which can relieve the guilty consciences of air travelers. The Future Forest website calculates the amount of CO₂ you are responsible for producing on your flight, and for a small fee will plant a number of trees which will absorb this CO₂.

    Yesterday I returned to Japan from England, and was happy to pay Future Forests 25 pounds to plant the 3 trees which balance my share of the CO₂ produced by my return flight. Now the only thing making me lose sleep is jet lag.

In early February 2019, 51-year-old Rainer Schimpf and his team set out to film South Africa's famous Sardine Run off the coast of Port Elizabeth. The migration of billions of South African sardines, is a big draw for hunters, especially seabirds and dolphins. The two species work together to herd the large group of fish into smaller shoals (浅滩), which are then eaten by not just the birds and the dolphins, but also sharks and Bryde's whales.

In an attempt to find the best scene of the amazing natural phenomenon, which has been the subject of many films, Rainer got into the middle of a swirling ball of fish. Suddenly the sea churned (翻腾), and the experienced diver and his photographer Heinz Toperczer, who was filming from the boat, instantly realized something strange was going on.

Toperczer later said, "As Rainer moved towards the shoals, suddenly the water churned widely up, dolphins shot out of the water and then a whale appeared and caught him!"

Rainer, who was swallowed in darkness inside the whale's mouth, was trying to survive. "I held my breath because I thought he was going to dive down and release me much deeper in the ocean," the diver said.

Fortunately for Rainer, the whale quickly realized he was no sardine! "I felt huge pressure around my waist (腰部) which is when I guess the whale realized his mistake," he said. "As the whale turned sideways, he opened his mouth slightly to release me, and I was washed out, together with tons of water, of his mouth." Though the entire event lasted just 1. 8 seconds, it felt like a century to Rainer.

Still holding his underwater camera, the diver swam to his boat, where he was quickly rescued by the members of the team. The terrifying adventure did not worry Rainer for too long. After checking to ensure he had no injuries, the diver returned to the water. Fortunately, the rest of the adventure went peacefully.