As you grow rapidly through your teenage years, you will experience a lot of changes. The changes may seem difficult. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Don't panic! You will deal successfully with them! You are a young adult now!

    With more responsibility, you will find more freedom to make your own choices. This is a time to be well informed about making choices. In this way you can make healthy balanced decisions. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}You may already know your career path or you may have no idea at all what you want to do. Both situations are fine! Work hard and the right opportunity will present itself to you.

    Young adulthood means greater freedom and more choices. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}But try not to shut your family out of your life. You should learn to think of others even though you are old enough to look after yourself.

    It is also perfectly natural at this time for you to spend more time with your friends than your family. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} A true friend will stand by you no matter what happens.

    This period is a part of the life cycle. There are some people who will be with you throughout life's journey. There will be some people with whom you part and go separate way. Leaving school can be hard. The reality is that you may not even see all of your classmates again.

    You are a young adult. It is your life. No one can live it for you. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} So making the right choices will be important to you. Life is for living. Enjoy your life wisely!

A. Choose your friends wisely

B. They will help shape the future

C. They may seem to happen quickly

D. You will probably want to be independent

E. You may appreciate what you have in your own life

F. The choices that you make from now on will be your choices

G. Your family has been with you since you came into this world

    I came to study in the United States a year ago. Yet I did not know the real American society until I was injured in a car accident because after the accident I had to see a doctor and go to court.   

    After the accident, my roommate called a doctor for me. I was very grateful and determined to repay him one day. But the next day, he asked me to pay him $200 for what he had done. I was astonished. He had good reason to charge me, he said. And if I wanted to collect money from the person who was responsible for my injury, I'd have to have a good lawyer. And only a good doctor can help me get a good lawyer. Now that he had helped me find a good doctor, it was only fair that I should pay him.  

    But every day I went to see the doctor, I had to wait about 50 minutes. He would see two or three patients at the same time, and often stop treating one so as to see another. Yet he charged me $115 each time. The final examination report consisted of ten lines, and it cost me $215.    

    My lawyer was all smiles the first time we met. But after that he avoided seeing me at all. He knew very well the other party was responsible for the accident, yet he hardly did anything. He simply waited to collect his money. He was so irresponsible that I decided to dismiss him. And he made me pay him $770.    

    Now I had to act as my own lawyer. Due to my inexperience, I told the insurance company the date I was leaving America. Knowing that, they played for time and I left without getting a cent.

    At first, muffled (听不太清的)conversations made researchers at a San Diego aquarium puzzled, but when a diver thought he was being told to get “out” of the water they realized the conversations were coming from a white whale.

    Noc was about one year old when he was caught off the Pacific coast of Canada. He was kept in an open-ocean pen (围栏) at the US National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, California. After seven years at the Foundation, he began, automatically, to make unusual sounds, a report in the latest issue of the journal, Current Biology, said.

    “We thought of the whale' s vocalizations(发出的声音) as an attempt to imitate humans. Whale vocalizations often sounded as if two people were talking just out of the range of our understanding,” the authors said. “ 'These conversations' were heard several times before we finally realized the whale was the source.” The researchers realized it was Noc when a diver surfaced and asked, “Who told me to get out?” It was then that they realized the word “out”, which was repeated several times, had come from Noc. Later, his speech-like sounds were recorded in the air and underwater.

    Noc started making the sounds after seven years in the open-ocean pen, and continued making them for another four years. He died five years ago. Researchers have now analyzed the sound recordings. It was the first time that sound recordings had shown how such sounds imitated speech and were different from the usual calls of the species.

    The speech-like sounds were lower than normal whale sounds and much closer to those of the human voice. Also, whales talk to each other by blowing air through their noses, rather than using a larynx(喉), as people do.

    “We don't claim that our whale was a good imitator compared to such well-known imitators as parrots,” the researchers said. “However, the behavior we observed is an example of vocal learning by the white whale. It seems that Noc's close association with humans played a role in how often and how well he employed his human voice.”

    A layover (临时滞留) or flight delay can be extremely fun in these international airports.

Munich Airport, Germany

    Aviation (航空) lovers passing through Munich can take a behind－the－scenes tour to learn how the airport operates. Visitors can also tour three historic aircraft and a retired rescue helicopter, climb up to a 28－metre high observation platform for an up－close view of take－offs and landings, and watch films on aviation in the airport's 60－seat cinema. Travelers can also kill layover time at an 18－hole mini－golf course, or even stop in for a teeth cleaning at the airport dental office.

Changi Airport, Singapore

    After a long flight to Singapore, travelers can relax in a Balinese－style swimming pool, work out at the airport gym, or enjoy a drink and live musical performances at the airport's Music Bar. The airport also boasts a tranquil butterfly garden, and a “fragrant garden” which is home to 15 species of plants and trees. Free movies at one of two airport cinemas also keep passengers entertained.

    Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, the Netherlands

    Schiphol is Europe's fifth－largest airport. Here passengers can view the works of Dutch masters free of charge, and try their luck at airport's casino (赌场). You can even have your wedding ceremony at Schiphol—couples can choose from four different wedding packages, including a 1930－style ceremony held on a Dakota military aircraft.

    San Francisco International Airport, California

    The airport's 24－hour AirTrain not only moves passengers between terminal, but also provides a fun view of the runways. There are three aquariums (水族馆) to explore, along with interactive play areas, an aviation museum, and a library. If that's not enough to keep the little ones busy, travelers can rent portable DVD players and movies for use in the airport.

    One day a little boy, annoyed by his father's decision for him to become a grocer, decides that he will never grow up. Grocery is a dull job and staying a child is his protest against it. This strange little boy-man, never separated from a tin drum he is always banging, is our hero of the table. It covers three crucial decades of 20th century history. Little Oscar Matzerath will experience love, war and imprisonment in a story that paints an unforgettable picture of Central Europe between 1923 and 1954.

    This is an overview of the story of The Tin Drum, the most famous work by the German Nobel-winning author Günter Grass, who passed away on April 13 at the age of 87. The Tin Drum also established Grass as one of the leading authors of Germany. It also set a high bar of comparison for all of his following works. Just as his best-known fiction is both the story of an individual and of an age, so it is that Grass' life cannot be understood without referring to the history of Germany. He was called "Germany's conscience", because he reminded Germans of a past during the Second World War (1933-1945) that many would have rather forgotten.

    This sometimes made him unpopular. Many Germans did not agree in 1989 when he said that East Germany and West Germany should remain separate, as a united country would be too strong and threaten the world's peace. And Grass was called a hypocrite when he revealed in his memoir

    Peeling the Onion (2006) that he had been a teenage member of the Waffen-SS, the Nazi (纳粹) Party's fighting force. The man who had blamed the actions of others had a less-than-perfect record himself.

    Grass was a man of the pen and the page and also a man with a gift for speaking to the public.

    His writing was noisy and annoying, but one had to listen to it, a little like the sound of the drum banged by his most famous literary creation.

    Why does most of the world travel on the right side today? Theories differ but there's no doubt Napoleon was a major influence. The French have used the right since at least the late 18^th century. Some say that before the French Revolution, noblemen drove their carriages on the left, forcing the peasants to the right. Regardless of the origin, Napoleon brought right-hand traffic to the nations he conquered, including Russia, Switzerland and Germany. Hitler, in turn, ordered right-hand traffic in Czechoslovakia and Austria in the 1930s. Nations that escaped right-hand control, like Great Britain, followed their left-hand tradition.

    The U.S. has not always been a nation of right-hand drivers; earlier in its history, carriage and horse traffic travelled on the left, as it did in England. But by the late 1700s, people driving large wagons pulled by several pairs of horses began promoting a shift (改变) to the right. A driver would sit on the rear (后面的) left horse in order to wave his whip (鞭子) with his right hand; to see opposite traffic clearly, they travelled on the right.

    One of the final moves to firmly standardize traffic directions in the U.S. occurred in the 20^th century, when Henry Ford decided to mass-produce his cars with controls on the left (one reason, stated in 1908: the convenience for passengers exiting directly onto the edge, especially… if there is a lady to be considered). Once these rules were set, many countries eventually adjusted to the right-hand standard, including Canada in the 1920s, Sweden in 1967 and Burma in 1970. The U.K. and former colonies such as Australia and India are among the Western world's few remaining holdouts (坚持不变者). Several Asian nations, including Japan, use the left as well—though many places use both right-hand-drive and left-hand-drive cars.