The holidays are a time to give. These organizations are looking for volunteers and donations (捐赠). Read on to learn more about them. Then, find out how you can help.

    American Red Cross

    This holiday season, your donation can make a difference at home and abroad. The American Red Cross is making it easy to help people who have experienced natural disasters (灾害), members of the U.S. armed forces, and children all over the world. With just one click (点击), you can give the gift of caring.

    National Military Family Association

    Each year hundreds of Americans serve both at home and abroad to keep our country safe. This holiday season, we can help serve them. Through donations, National Military Family Association helps to provide military members and their families with scholarships, family retreats, camp programs for kids, and more.

    Network for Good

    This website allows its users to donate to organizations and discover volunteer chances. After natural disasters, the Network for Good provides a system of help and support for those in need. The website also offers tips to kids who want to give. Visit the website to find out how you can help make someone's holiday season shine bright.

    Make-A-Wish Foundation

    Sometimes all it takes is one wish made come true to make someone smile. The work of Make-A-Wish Foundation is to make the wishes come true. Through support and donations, the foundation has made dreams come true for hundreds of thousands of children with serious illnesses.

    If you want to help others, don't wait for a better time. Help now! Your help will be valued highly.

    Just 10 years ago, I sat across the desk from a doctor. “Yes,” he said, “there is something wrong with the left, upper lung. You are suffering a severe cancer. You'll have to give up work at once. Later on, we'll see.”

    Feeling like a man who is in mid­career has suddenly been placed under sentence of death, I left the doctor's office, walked over to the park, and sat down on a chair. I needed to think. In the next 3 days, I cleared up my affairs, then I went home, got into bed, and set my watch to tick off not the minutes, but the months. Two years later, I left my bed and began the long climb back. It was another year before I made it.

    I speak of this experience because these years that passed so slowly taught me what to value and what to believe. I realize now that each day, to me, is a precious thing. I've learned to appreciate those little things I never thought I had the time to notice before: the play of light on running water, the music of the wind.

    Frequently, I sit back and say to myself, “Let me make note of this moment I'm living right now, because in it I'm well, happy and hard at work doing what I like best to do. It won't always be like this, so while it is, I'll make the most of it—and afterwards, I remember—and be grateful. I contribute all these to that long time spent on the fight with cancer.”

    The trouble with school is that you can't choose the people you get to see every day. If you're unlucky enough to be stuck with classmates who don't really “get” you, you've just got to try to make the best of it.

    But that doesn't mean you need to “fit in”, or at least in the way that people think. If you try to transform yourself into a clone of everyone else, it won't help you make friends. It'll just make you feel like a fake.

    You also shouldn't shut down or refuse to be friends with everyone who doesn't like you. If you do that, you'll just make yourself miserable. Instead, you've got to work on being comfortable and confident with whom you are while ignoring（忽略）all the haters. Keep on speaking up, asking questions and getting to know people better. If you send out positive energy, then people will generally send some back to you. A couple of them will stay the same, and you're allowed to forget about them.

    If you feel like you've doing all that but still not getting anywhere, then don't give up. Just expand your circle. Get a part-time job at a cool-looking place, join an after-school art class or youth group—do whatever it takes to find a couple of like-minded people to connect with. Even if you don't find anyone right away, you'll still be getting some more social experiences under your belt, and that's always a good thing.

    A fun book called Uncool, by Erin Elisabeth Conley, has some tips for folks like you who want to stay positive at school while being true to your personality:

    Throw caution to the wind.

    Don't tolerate others' mistakes.

    Have patience with people who are different from you.

    Don't change just because someone else thinks you should.

    Know that even though you may be a misfit, there's always some place where you will be welcomed in the world.

    A few days ago my wife sent me out to buy something. When I came home, I handed her a paper bag and said, "Here are the apples you wanted." She looked in the bag, and then she looked at me. "I told you," she said slowly, "to buy some eggs."

    I felt worried about my absent-mindedness (心不在焉，健忘) , so I went to see a doctor. He was a very kind man. "I have seen many people like you. It's nothing to worry about," he said. "If you know you are absent-minded, you are all right. But if you do not know you're absent-minded, you may be really in trouble."

    "Many famous people were absent-minded," the doctor told me. "Thomas Edison was standing in line one day to pay his taxes. When he arrived at the window, he found that he had forgotten his own name. He had to ask the man who was behind him to tell him who he was."

    I felt much better and got up to leave. "Thank you, doctor," I said. "How much do I have to pay you?"

    "Ten dollars for the check-up," the doctor said.

    "But doctor, I did not have a check-up!"

    For a moment the doctor looked puzzled. Then he said, "Oh, yes, it was the patient before you who had a check-up. How absent-minded I am!"

    There are campus museums all over China that offer various collections and make for eye-opening visits.

    Beijing Air and Space Museum at Beihang University

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday and Saturday, 9:00 am -12:00 pm

    Highlights: Included among the more than 300 historic aircraft and space artifacts are one of the two Northrop P - 61 Black Widows in the world and China's first light airliner, Beijing 1.

    Fudan University Museum

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Highlights: A unique collection of native artifacts from the Gaoshan aborigines in Taiwan. Some of them, such as pearl vests, are rarely seen even in Taiwan.

    China Ichthyic Culture Museum at Shanghai Ocean University

    Admission: 10 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm

    Highlights: In this collection of more than 40,000 specimens of about 3,000 ocean-dwelling species, the most eye-catching one is an 18. 4-meter-long sperm whale skeleton.

    Yifu Museum of China University of Geosciences

    Admission: 40 yuan; half price for students

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am - 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm; weekends and holidays, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm

    Highlights: It houses a collection of more than 30,000 mineral and rock specimens, more than 2,000 of which are rare ones like the museum's well-known dinosaur fossils.

    China Academy Museum at Hunan University

    Admission: 50 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 8: 00 am - 6: 30 pm in summer and 8: 30 am - 6:00 pm in winter

    Highlights: China's only museum to feature the history of academies and cultural education in the country.

    One day an old woman was traveling alone in the mountains. Suddenly she saw something shining in the stream. When she came close, she found it was a precious stone. She put the stone into her bag and went on with her trip.

    The next day the old woman met a young man, who was also a traveler in the mountains. The young man looked very hungry, so the old woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked carefully, "The stone is beautiful. Would you like to give it to me?"

    "Sure. Why not?" the woman said, and handed the stone to him.

    The young man left happily with the stone. He knew it was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman.

    "I've been thinking," he said. "I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back and hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within your bag."

    The woman opened her bag. It was almost empty. She looked at the young man and smiled, "I have nothing special in my bag, but I do have something precious — the joy of giving!"

    The young man felt ashamed and left silently.