Dear Jenny,

    How are you? I am visiting my cousin Howard in Australia. It is hot in Hong Kong but it is cold in Australia in June. When it is summer in Hong Kong, it is winter in Australia. It is snowing heavily now. I like snow a lot and it is a white world outside. I will play with my cousin in the snow this afternoon. We want to make a snowman. I think it is very interesting!

    I like my cousin's house. It is big and there is a beautiful garden. We can play ball games there. My cousin's neighbors are friendly, but they cannot speak Chinese. I talk with them in English. See you next month.

Yours,

Tony

Whenever I'm invited to somebody's house for the first time, I'll take a close look at their bookshelves. What they keep on their shelves, in my eyes, is a reflection(反映) of their personal tastes and interests. The books on a bookshelf tell the story of a life.

My own shelves are a kind of road map through my life, telling a chronological tale. First up come my favorite childhood reads, like Water ship Down and His Dark Materials. The collection then moves on to teenage things I read in school — Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale and A Clockwork Orange. Finally, we come out of full-time education and enter the real world, and this part is a reflection of my professional( 职业的) life, from the first exciting days of their work experience to the present.

If you pointed to any book on my shelves, I could name the year I got it, where I was working, and probably where I was living at the time.

▲  It is an easy way to get to know about his hopes, dreams and interests. And a big part of that story is how we arrange our books, and get on with them. It's such a personal thing, different from each other. Some want to be with their books in every room, others have them on shelves, behind glass or simply lining their floors. Each home has a story to tell through the way they live with their books.

It's often said that what we read says something about who we are. The way we fill our bookshelves might also send a message about ourselves. From the pile of books on your bedside table to your well-organized shelves, whether we notice it or not, our book collections are telling a story before a single page has been turned.

    It is Sunday afternoon. Mary goes shopping with her mother. Her mother wants to buy some food for supper. Mary wants to buy a T-shirt and some school things. They come to a shop.

     "What does your shop sell?" Mary asks. "A lot of things," the girl in the shop says. "You can buy food, drinks, clothes and school things in our shop."

    Mary and her mother go into the shop. There are many people in the shop. Mary finds a nice white T-shirt.

    "How much is the T-shirt?" Mary asks the girl in the shop.

    "It's eighty yuan."

    "That's too dear. Do you have a cheap one?"

    "What about the green one? It looks nice. And it's only thirty yuan."

    "OK, thanks a lot." "You are welcome."

    After that, Mary buys some school things too. Her mother buys a lot of food, like bread, cakes, meat and fish. They get home very late.

It is one of the most famous books in the world; yet it has no story and no interesting characters, no exciting beginning and no satisfying ending. And yet it keeps being printed-and it keeps growing!

It began in 1857 as just an idea of a group of people who thought the world needed one to show the history of English words from 1150 CE to the present. It wasn't until the late 1870s, however, when James Murray joined the project that it began to grow. He planned one of about 6,400 pages in four volumes(卷),completed in 10 years. He did most of his work in a small building where he and his workmates collected millions of pieces of paper, each one with a word and an example sentence written on it. Murray and his workmates worked hard, but after five years they had only reached the word ant! It was until 1928 that it was completed and came out. Unluckily, Murray did not live to see the completion of his life's work; he passed away in 1915. As soon as it came out, people started to update it. In 1933, it became 12 volumes. Between 1972 and 1986, four more volumes were added. In 2020 it was reprinted in 20 volumes. Three years later, all the volumes were put onto CD-ROM, and it can be bought online at present.

It not only is a record of where the English language has come from but also become an important part of the history of English-speaking cultures around the world.

The other day, my husband called me to the balcony(阳台). "Come, dear, look at that car!" 

"What's up?" I asked, looking down at the square in front of our apartment building. A driver was trying to park between two cars. 

"That must be a woman," my husband said.

"How do you know?"

"I've watched the car move back and forth twenty times. Men can't be so bad at driving!"

"What if the driver is a man?" I asked.

"I bet you 50 yuan that the driver is a woman!"

We stood on the balcony and watched the car. It felt a little silly. Five minutes later, the car was finally parked perfectly, and a man slowly got out.

"Fifty yuan please," I said to my husband as he silently walked away.

My husband is not alone in looking down on female drivers. On weekends, my friend Lily likes traveling around the city by bus. But she always hesitates to get on a bus if the driver is a woman. "I can't trust a female driver," she told me one day. "Women are not born to drive, you know."

"Sorry, but I don't know," I said. I go to work by bus every day, and I never think female drivers are any worse. In fact, they are often more careful than men. Research also shows that female drivers are 8.8 times less likely to cause accidents than male drivers.

There are not many female bus drivers, though. And in the history of Formula One(一级方程式赛车), only 0.26 percent of drivers have been women. Without role models, many girls may think they are not meant to be good drivers. But the ability to drive has nothing to do with gender. Women can drive well, too. It's time to stop making jokes about female drivers.

Deadly flooding has swept China s northern provinces this summer，causing many losses such as a number of people died and houses were destroyed（破坏） by floods. Like many other natural disasters，floods can happen with little or no warming. Finish floods move quickly and have strong currents（水流）. They are known to bring down trees and take down buildings. Besides，floods can cause power cuts （停电），traffic jam and other problems. But the food itself isn't the only problem to deal with. After the flood，it may have deadly results，as it may not be easy to send food and water to the area. 

So In the face of a flash food，how should we save ourselves？

*Don't use bridges that rapidly﹣moving water is crossing，as floodwater can cause bridges to break. 

*Listen to emergency broadcasts （应急广播） for more information. If told to move to another place，do so. 

*Stay inside the car if the car Is caught in the fast﹣moving water. Only get out if the water begins to food the car itself，and then move to the roof（项部） of the car. 

*Stay away from power lines （电线），as they are knocked down during the strong storms. Besides，here is something to keep in mind after a flood. 

*Do not use floodwater to wash food or drink it. 

*Return to your home only after the government has said it is safe to do so. 

*Use only bottled or clean water for drinking cooking are nothing.