I was 10 the year my cousin Marley's parents gave her a painful Christmas surprise: they were getting a divorce(离婚). My aunt went to California, but my uncle decided to get her back. There was one matter: where to put his young daughter. Luckily, my mother loved Marley, giving her more attention than her family ever did.

    On that Christmas Eve, my cousin arrived on our doorstep carrying an old blue suitcase. Before she stepped inside, Marley said, “It doesn't matter. When my parents come back, we'll have a bigger Christmas than this.”

    Late on the night Marley arrived, my mom came into my room, her arms filled with packages.I knew they were my Christmas presents. “I know how you love surprises but we have to decide which ones to give to Marley.”

    My mother carefully opened the gifts. Wow! I saw ice skates, red leather gloves and a dollhouse. The last present was the music box we'd asked the lady at the local store to take down and play for us over and over again.

    “Which ones?” my mother asked. “She can have the ice skates,” I said reluctantly(勉强地). “That's good,” my mother said. She began to tape the packages up again. Then she stopped and asked, “Are you sure about these?” At that moment, I realized she expected more from me than I had already given. So I gave her the music box, too, and ___________. The next morning, Marley's eyes were resolute(坚定的). She expected nothing and wanted us to know she didn't care. But when she saw her name on the biggest box, she couldn't hide her excitement. I thought my happiness would be cut in half. Instead it was doubled.

    Over the last 40 years, Marley and I have grown apart(分离的). But the love we felt for each other that day still remains. Today Marley says, “They were the best presents I ever got.

    I was feeling really down because my long-time friend had died. Then I started a six-week volunteering at a nursing home all day even Saturday. My duty was to serve the meal and clean up. One day I was told to go to Room 117 to make sure the patient was all right. I found a boy of eight sitting in bis bed watching a movie. I was shocked to see a child in this seemingly forgotten nursing home for the old. He was so small and weak that you had to look closely to find him. I grabbed his medical chart and found out :he had a terminal（绝症的) illness.

    We started to talk, and I found out that his family rarely visited, and all he did every day was watching TV I wanted to cry for him, and for my lost friend. As we talked, he had a smile on his face, and I asked him why and how he still managed to stay happy.

    He thought for a moment, and then said that too many people were dead even before they died. They walked around feeling that God had cursed(诅咒) them and they had nothing to live for.

    The boy said that he would not be like that. He woke 'every morning thankful to see another sunrise. He kept his window open so that he could smell the flowers and feel the heat of the sun. He also said that he had hope.

    "Too many people haven't seen much of that around here." He said, "Life is full of hope and we need to live life before it is gone."

    I don't know what happened to him. I guess he passed away, but his lesson lives on. I now wake up and live each day to the fullest. The key to life is not money or fame, but the lesson we learned from it.

    Can you write down a Chinese word being read to you? Sometimes it can be difficult when you find the word is not included in most dictionaries.

    Lu Jialei, 14, from Hangzhou Foreign Language School, won the CCTV Chinese Character (汉字) Spelling Contest on Oct 18^th, 2013. About 160 people competed. The host read a word to the contestant, explained its meaning and gave sample sentences. The contestant was required to write down the word.

    Winning the contest was a “surprise” to Lu. “I was not the smartest one,” she said. “But I paid attention to details.” To prepare for the contest, she and her teammates studied the Modern Chinese Dictionary for 10 days. There are more than 56,000 entries (词条) including characters, words and phrases in it. She also had a secret weapon. She studied how Chinese characters were formed.

    “When others paid attention to the plot of a story, she looked at how authors use words and sentences to express themselves,” said Su Yunsheng, Lu's Chinese teacher. Su is happy to see students like Lu find the beauty of Chinese language.

    “Besides using something Chinese and having Chinese traditional festivals, learning to write Chinese characters is also an important part of inheriting (传承) Chinese culture,” said Su.

    Gabriel Garcia Márquez ,who was awared the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982，passed away at the age of 86 on April 17，2014. The world paused to remember the cultural giant.

    Garcia Márquez was born in Colombia, but he spent most of his adult life in Mexico City. As one of the most famous writers, he was widely regarded as "a giant of 20th-century literature". Garcia Márquez wrote in a style called "magical realism" In such works, people live a daily life in a certain period of time in history. But meanwhile, magical things happen to them.

    Garcia Márquez is best known for his 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has sold about 50 million copies. It tells the tale of the small and isolated town of Macondo which was separated from the outside world –of its founding and its troubled history over a hundred years. The story is a metaphor for the development of Colombia since the 19century. As Colombian President Juan Manuel Santons said, Garcia Márquez wrote about "the very essence of the Latin American beings ".

It was Sunday afternoon. Maggie sat, putting her1 into the blue water of her family's new swimming pool. She had been expecting the pool for months.2 , she didn't feel so happy.

As soon as her mom asked what was wrong, Maggie replied, "Amelia is3 of the water. She doesn't know how to swim. I thought that 4 would be playing with me in the pool all summer. I5 Amelia. Nothing is as much fun without her."

"Why don't you invite her to6 ? Maybe we can help her feel 7 in the water. Remember how we taught your little brother to swim? Now, he swims like a dolphin." Maggie looked a little more8 . "You're right. I think I'll call Amelia right now." Later that afternoon, Amelia came with her dad. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" he asked. Amelia9 . "I think I'm ready to do this."

"I'm proud of you. I'll be back in a couple of 10 , okay?" said her dad. Amelia nodded again,11 she sat on the side of the pool.

All afternoon, Maggie and her mom worked with Amelia in the water. When Amelia's dad came to pick her up, everyone was surprised the time had gone so 12 .

"Watch this, Dad" shouted Amelia. "I can float on my back." She proudly showed him her new13 .

"This is amazing!" said Amelia's dad. "You two must be great teachers."

Maggie and her mom14 at each other. "I think Amelia was just ready to learn," said Maggie's mom. "She made up her15 to swim and did all the work herself"

"Can we come back tomorrow, Dad?" asked Amelia. Everyone laughed.

Mr. Green is my uncle. He is 37 years old now. He has a house with a big garden. He has some apple trees in his garden. He looks after（照顾） them. Now there are many apples on the trees and my uncle is very happy.

 One afternoon when he looks out of the window，he sees a boy in a red T-shirt in his apple tree. He opens the window and shouts， "Hey，what are you doing there？Come down and get away. Or I'll go to see your father. "

The boy is not afraid（害怕）of my uncle at all. "Dad，" he looks up and shouts， "Mr. Green wants to see you." My uncle smiles， "Ha，it's my son，Dave." What an interesting story it is! Share it with your family and friends.