We often find that weekends and holidays feel so short while classes and work feel so long. Actually, though, we know that this is not true. But we still wonder where that strange feeling comes from.

    In fact, this is one of the ways that we're tricked by time, according to the website. All that S interesting. The website lists several wrong impressions (印象) we often have about time. Let's have a look.

    First of all, emotions affect (影响) our time-keeping abilities. Negative emotions (消极情绪). especially anxiety and boredom, make time seem longer because they make us concentrate (集中) more on the passage of time. However, when we are enjoying ourselves, we pay more attention to what we are doing and are likely to lose track of (失去对……的意识) time.

    Here is another example. In 2007, a group of scientists carried out a test. In the test, people fell 50 meters into a safety net and were then asked about their experience. Although the experience took shorter than 3 seconds, the people thought it was much longer than it actually was.

    This is because of the way our bodies reply to danger, according to the scientists. Our bodies produce a chemical called adrenaline (肾上腺素) when we are faced with danger. It allows us to concentrate better so that we can stay alive. As a result, we are able to remember far more details (细节) over a short period of time, which makes it seem like time is going more slowly.

    Another situation when we make mistakes about time is when we take afternoon naps (午觉). Have you ever had trouble telling what time it is after a long nap? That's because the best amount of time for a nap is 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, you enter a new stage of sleep called slow-wave sleep. If you wake up mid-way in this stage, it will take a while before you can correctly perceive (感知) time again.

    Yes, time can be mysterious (神秘的) and there is no way to control it. So, perhaps the best thing to do is to make good use of every minute.

    Grace is my pen friend. She is a 13-year-old English girl. What's her school life like? Now let's get to know something about the school life in England.

    •Study

    Most students take the school bus to school. Some go to school by train. When they arrive at their classrooms, they put their homework in a box. Then one student will take it to the teachers' office.

    •Lunch

    Students often have lunch at school. The lunch time is usually from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. They can have free school lunch. They don't have to pay for it.

    •Uniforms

    Students often wear uniforms at school. On their uniforms, you can see the school logo(校徽). They think uniforms are important. When they go on a school trip, they all look the same. So students may not get lost. What's more, students don't need to worry about what to wear every day. Their parents don't have to buy expensive clothes for them, either.

How to keep on your exercise plan during winter? Here I'll give you some suggestions.

To stay active during the winter, you should first make it as easy as possible to do your exercise. Second, make something different before you {#blank#}1{#/blank#}doing exercise. The following advice will give you some ideas for making winter exercise more comfortable and more enjoyable.

Put your sports clothes in the dryer. If you want to exercise outside, you might keep the clothes in the dryer for a few minutes before that. It's often harder to {#blank#}2{#/blank#}when it's cold outside. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}clothes fresh from the dryer is just one way to get your body warm.

Take a hot shower. If it's really cold outside, you might even try a quick shower to get yourself warm before you do exercise.

Walk indoors. Walking is a good way to {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. To get out of cold weather of winter, you can simply walk indoors, probably in the living area of your room. Walking indoors makes you {#blank#}5{#/blank#}and gives a warm temperature to do it.

    Many students think that learning a new language is very difficult. But if your brain (大脑) is only the same size as a bird's, you will know how difficult it is to learn English. That is what some birds can do.

Many birds can copy (模仿) the sounds of language. A type of African parrot is very good at doing this. This kind of parrot has grey feathers and people say they are clever.

Every December in London, the National Cage and Aviary Bird Show tries to find the best "talking" bird in the world. One bird named Prudle stood out (突出) among the " talking birds"  by winning this prize every year from 1965 to 1977. In 1958, somebody took Prudle from his nest in Uganda, and then sold it to a woman named Iris Frost. She then took care of him at her home in Seaford, England. Before he died in 1994, aged 35, Prudle knew almost 800 words in English. Prudle was also the oldest bird in the world that lived in a cage.

Another parrot named Puck was tested in 1993. It turned out that Puck knew even more words than Prudle. Puck knew more than 1,700 English words. In the 2003 Guinness Book of World Records, Puck was listed as knowing more words than any other bird in the world.

My friend Jack is a taxi driver. He has done this job for ten years. It's a nice job most of the time. He can meet a lot of people every day. He usually goes home after two o' clock in the morning. There are some very strange things, which often happen at night.

 One day, Jack was taking a young lady back home from a party at three o' clock in the morning. She had her little dog with her. When they got to her house, she found that she had lost her key. So Jack waited in the taxi with the dog while she climbed into her house through the window. Jack waited for about half an hour outside, but the young lady didn't show up. So he decided to find out what was going on. He tied the dog to a tree and started to climb in through the window.

 At that moment some policemen came. They thought Jack was a thief who wanted to get into the house to steal things. Luckily, the young lady came downstairs. She went to sleep and forgot about her friend and the dog.

Young people often feel unhappy when they are with their parents. They say that their parents don't{#blank#}1{#/blank#} them. They often think their parents are strict with them.

Parents often find {#blank#}2{#/blank#} difficult to win their children's trust and they seem to forget how they felt when they were young.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} example, young people like to do things without much thinking. Older people are worried about things more easily, they need to {#blank#}4{#/blank#} things from many ways. So most of them plan things {#blank#}5{#/blank#} and don't like their plans to be changed.

Young people often make their parents angry by clothes they want to {#blank#}6{#/blank#}, the music they enjoy and something else, they don't really want to make trouble. They feel that in this{#blank#}7{#/blank#} they can be away from the old people's world. They want to make a new culture of their own. But if their parents don't like their {#blank#}8{#/blank#} or clothes, the young people will feel very unhappy.

Sometimes instead of going out with their parents, they {#blank#}9{#/blank#} want to stay at home alone and do what they like.

{#blank#}10{#/blank#} you plan to manage an independent life, you'd better win your parents' trust and try to get them to understand you. If your parents see that you have a high sense of responsibility (责任感) , they will certainly give you chances to do what you want to do.