My name is Lu Fang. I'm a Chinese girl. I am 15 years old. I am in No. 4 Middle School in Beijing. I am in Class 1, Grade 8. Liu Huan is my favorite singer(歌手). And I like You and me very much. My telephone number is 010-55703610. My favorite color is purple. Mr. Lee is my English teacher. He is young. And he is very strong. I like him very much.

    My uncle has a very beautiful umbrella. He's had it for years. As he is very careful with it, so it still looks as good as new.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}He shook his head. "Then how did you get it?" I asked. "Well," he answered, "there's a strange true story about the umbrella. About ten years ago, I was walking along a quiet London street one evening when it suddenly rained. I had no raincoat or umbrella.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} And the people in the streets were fewer and fewer. As I was on my way to a party, I was afraid to get wet. So I stood in a doorway and waited for the rain to stop.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#} What was worse, there even wasn't a person around, and still it rained and rained. At last a young man came to the place where I was standing.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} As I hoped he would allow me to walk to the next corner with him, where I could get a taxi, I stepped out of the dark doorway where I had been standing.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} As I suddenly appeared before him, the young man was so shocked that he dropped the umbrella. He ran away and disappeared into the darkness. I picked up the umbrella and continued my walk. I knew it would be hard in this big city to find the owner, so I've kept it ever since."

    Our new neighbours are the Browns. They have two children, a boy and a girl. The boy is Jack and the girl is Alice. Jack is 11, and he is one year older than me. Alice and my sister Nancy are 8 years old.

    At weekends, Nancy and I like to go to play with Alice and Jack. Both Jack and I really enjoy playing computer games. Sometimes the girls join us, but the games they enjoy are different from the ones we like.

    There is a big park near our house. Sometimes, when the weather is fine, the four of us will go for bike rides there. We often stop at the huge playground to have some fun. Jack and I like to play basketball, but the girls prefer to sing and dance.

    Our families often have dinner together. On some days, they come over to our house and on other days, we go over to theirs. Mr Brown and his wife cook really well.

    Nancy and I are very glad to have the Browns next door. It's great to have friends living so near.

    Mr. King goes to a dinner party. He is wearing old clothes. He comes into the room. But people in the room don't look at him. They don't ask him to sit at the table.

    Mr. King goes home and puts on his good clothes. He goes back to the party. Everyone in the room stands up and smiles at him. They give him very good food to eat.

    Mr. King takes off his coat, and puts it in the food and says, "Eat, coat!"

    The other people ask, "What are you doing?"

    He answers, "I'm asking my coat to eat the food. When I wear my old clothes, you don't look at me or ask me to sit down. But now you give me very good food. Now I see, you give the food to my clothes, not to me!"

Only half of the class handed in their homework one day. The teacher got an idea while he was giving his students a lesson about weight. He walked around the classroom while holding a glass of water up in the air. He asked his students, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

The students started to shout out their answers. 

"The weight of this glass isn't hard to find out, " the teacher said. "The problem is how long I'm holding it. If I hold it for two minutes, it doesn't feel like much of a problem. If I hold it for an hour, it might feel heavier as my arm begins to tire. If I hold it for a day or a week, my arm will hurt. It'll feel painful. I will be unable to think about anything but the pain that I'm in. In all of these situations, the actual weight of the glass will be the same. But the longer I hold onto it, the heavier it feels to me and the harder it is to hold it. "

"Your homework is like this glass of water, by the way, " the teacher said. The class then understood.