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!

Coolest Hotels in the World

Ariau Amazon Towers

    The Ariau Amazon Towers hotel lets you sleep in a tree house. Eight towers make up this hotel that offers over 300 rooms. If you really want to get into the spirit, book the Tarzan Suite which is large enough for a big family. You'll be thirty feet up in the air and can travel between the towers through their wooden walkways.

    Prices: starting at $300 one night for each person for a regular room and going all the way up to $3000 for the Tarzan Suite.

    For more information, visit the website: http://www.ariautowers.com

The Ice Hotel

    Every winter in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, a special kind of hotel called the lee Hotel is built. Each year, world-famous artists are invited to design and produce works of art from the ice, many of which can be found in the rooms. You'll have your choice between hot or cold rooms but you will be well advised to stay at least one night in a cold room for a true experience.

    Prices: starting at $318 one night for each person for either a cold room or a warm one. For more information, visit the website: http://www.icehotel.com

Propeller Island

    Propeller Island City Lodge is a very special hotel that was designed by a German artist. Each room provides you with the possibility of living in a work of art. Every single piece of furniture in the thirty rooms of the hotel has been hand-made and each room is completely different. You'll be able to choose a room based on your own personal tastes.

    Prices: starting at just $91 a night, and an additional person for only 20 extra dollars. For more information, visit the website: http://www.propeller-island.com

    For information about other cool hotels in the world, visit the website: http://www.bahamabeachclub.com

    Mr. White was born in a small village. His parents worked hard on their farm but they couldn't get enough food for the family. Of course, he couldn't be sent to school and his uncle who worked in a school taught him at home. And he learned a lot before he left there. When he was sixteen, he found work in a factory. As an abled worker, the boss liked him and seven years later the boss married his daughter to him and with his help, Mr White had his own factory after another seven years passed.

    Mrs. White liked her husband very much. So she was always afraid he loved the other women. She often asked him a lot of questions. He wouldn't make her angry and was more careful.

    One evening Mr. White was very busy and he told his secretary to help him. When they finished the work, it was ten in the evening. He had to see her home. That night his wife felt unwell and told him to take her to a hospital. He helped her to get on the car and started. But soon after that he found there was a shoe in the car. He had a look at his wife. The woman seemed to be asleep. He picked it up gently and threw it out of the window.

    Soon they got to the hospital. As he was going to help her to get off, suddenly the woman called out, “Where's my shoe?”

    Guide to Stockholm University Library

    Our library offers different types of studying places and provides a good studying environment.

    Zones

    The library is divided into different zones. The upper floor is a quiet zone with over a thousand places for silent reading, and places where you can sit and work with your own computer. The reading places consist mostly of tables and chairs. The ground floor is the zone where you can talk. Here you can find sofas and armchairs for group work.

    Computers

    You can use your own computer to connect to the wi-fi specially prepared for notebook computers, you can also use library computers, which contain the most commonly used applications, such as Microsoft Office. They are situated in the area known as the Experimental Field on the ground floor.

    Group-study places

    If you want to discuss freely without disturbing others, you can book a study room or sit at a table on the ground floor. Some study rooms are for 2-3 people and others can hold up to 6-8 people. All rooms are marked on the library maps.

    There are 40 group-study rooms that must be booked via the website. To book, you need an active University account and a valid University card. You can use a room three hours per day, nine hours at most per week.

    Storage of Study Material

    The library has lockers for students to store course literature. When you have obtained at least 40 credits(学分), you may rent a locker and pay 400 SEK for a year's rental period.

    Rules to be Followed

    Mobile phone conversations are not permitted anywhere in the library. Keep your phone on silent as if you were in a lecture and exit the library if you need to receive calls.

    Please note that food and fruit are forbidden in the library, but you are allowed to have drinks and sweets with you.

    "Make way, good people, make way, in the King's name! "cried he. "Open a text; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child, may have a fair sight of her brave clothing, from this time till an hour past noon. A blessing on the moral Colony of the Massachusetts, where immorality is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet （鲜红色的；罪孽深重的）letter in the market-place!

    A lane was at once opened through the crowd. Led by the beadle （狱吏），and attended by an irregular procession of serious-looking men and unkind-looking women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the shameful letter on her breast.

    It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be considered to be a rather long journey; for, though her manner was proud, she perhaps underwent an extreme pain from every footstep of those who thronged to see her, as if her heart had been thrown into the street for them all to step upon. In our nature, however, there is a condition that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present suffering, but chiefly by the pain that rankles （使痛心）after it. With almost a calm manner, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her suffering, and came to a sort of scaffold （刑台），at the western end of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

    Dyeing eggs has long been an Easter tradition, but it's the dyeing of baby chicks that is upsetting in some states.

    The dye, which is often ordinary food coloring, is either injected into eggs being hatched or sprayed onto newly hatched chicks. Although hatchery owners say the practice is harmless, critics argue that spraying the birds with color is stressful and that dyeing the animals transforms them into something attractive that can be thrown away when their colorful feathers disappear.

    “These are living creature and dyeing them sends out a message saying that they are more of a new and unusual object than a living animal,” said Dr. Marc Copper, senior scientific manager for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Dyed chicks — and sometimes rabbits — have been a traditional part of the Easter holiday in some parts of the world, but the practice has gone largely underground in the U.S. because many people view it as cruel.

    Today, about half of U.S. states ban the dyeing of animals, but last month the Florida Legislature passed a bill to remove the state's 45-year-old ban. The drive to end the law wasn't related to Easter chicks; it was done at the request of a dog groomer(美容师) who wanted to enter pet beauty contests.

    Florida governor Rick Scott must agree to remove the ban, which would be lifted July 1, but the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida(ARFF) has asked him not to remove the ban. In addition to allowing animals dyeing, the law would also lift a ban on selling baby animals as pets, and the organization fears that next year the state could see hundreds of dyed baby chicks on the market.

As long as the dye is not poisonous, experts say the birds' health isn't affected, and there are scientific reasons to dye animals. Wildlife researchers often inject eggs with dye to track birds in the wild, and teachers have dyed chicks for educational purposes. However, animal advocates are quick to point out that dyeing baby chicks for Easter isn't educational — it's done simply to earn profits.