On a cold winter afternoon, Susan was walking home from a supermarket. She was feeling a little tired, as she was carrying her shopping bags. They were so heavy that she decided to have a rest in the park. She walked towards the gate of the park. She noticed a poor man walking out of a restaurant in front of her. The man was holding a paper bag. He walked to a rubbish bin and started looking through it.

Susan suddenly felt sad. She knew this man would take all that he could get, so she went up to him and gave him some fruit. The man looked up in surprise and took what she gave him. A big smile appeared on his face and she felt very happy. Then he said, “Wow! First someone gave me this sandwich, then the orange juice, and now some delicious fruit. This is my daughter's lucky day. Thank you, girl.” Then he went away, singing a song.

    Just then, Susan understood what the saying “Giving is getting” really meant. Everyone in the world needs help: everyone can offer help and everyone will be helped by showing kindness. Giving sometimes doesn't cost much, but it means a lot to the people who you help. The man's happiness at that moment comes into Susan's mind every time she has the chance to help others.

    My friend's grandfather came to America from a farm in Thailand. After arriving in New York, he went into a cafeteria in Manhattan to get something to eat. He sat down at an empty table and waited for someone to take his order. Of course nobody did. Finally, a woman with a big plate full of food came up to him. She sat down opposite him and told him how a cafeteria worked.

    "Start out at that end," she said, "Just go along the line and choose what you want. At the other end they'll tell you how much you have to pay."

    "I soon learned that's how everything works in America," the grandfather told my friend later," Life's a cafeteria here. You can get anything you want as long as you want to pay the price. You can even get success but you'll never get it if you wait for someone to bring it to you. You have to get up and get it yourself."

    He uses his stage name, Rain, when he works as a singer and dancer. His real name is JungJi-hoon and he is also a f{#blank#}1{#/blank#} actor.

    He showed his interest in dancing ever since he was in the 6th grade. As a teenager, he was part of the boy band (乐队) group c{#blank#}2{#/blank#} "fan club". Years later, Park Jin-young (Korean singer) took Rain under his wing and trained him for years in dancing and singing. During those training years Rain was not at home much and didn't have enough money, so at times he had to train w{#blank#}3{#/blank#} meals.

    Finally in 2002 the song Bad Guy made him famous. Following the s{#blank#}4{#/blank#} of the first album (专辑), he came back with a new set of music in his 2nd album. In 2004, he acted in a successful play called Full House which was welcomed in other Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan. His performance in Full House has won him the Best Actor Award at the KBS Acting Awards. It is hard to describe his dancing with simple words b{#blank#}5{#/blank#} it is a mixture of so many different elements. He has created a whole new style of his own. In Beijing he won the Best Korean Singer Award. Since his success in 2002, the 26-year-old boy has become one of the most popular Korean artists in Asia.

Singer Park Jin-young once said to his friends, "I was always wondering whether Rain understood w{#blank#}6{#/blank#} I said because he never said anything when I scolded (责备) him. One day I entered his room, and was surprised to discover a wall covered with notes. Every note was filled with my words and advice. " Rain had written down every single piece of a{#blank#}7{#/blank#} his older friend had given him and he had been doing his best to correct his mistakes and improve his skills.

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835, in the state of Missouri. When he was four, his family moved to the town of Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was a port on the Missippi River, and Clemens loved to watch the big steamboats going up and down the river. He said that all the boys in his school had one ambition in life: to work on a steamboat!

    His father died when he was just 12 years old, and Clemens then went to work for a printer to help support his family. He travelled around, and worked in many different cities. But when he was 22, he achieved his ambition—he got a job working on a steamboat. He sailed up and down the wide Missippi River until the American Civil War began.

    He then moved around America, and tried several jobs. He was a soldier, and a silver miner. Then he started working as a writer for a newspaper. It was at that time that he decided to use a pen name for his stories, and he chose the name "Mark Twain".

    The name is interesting. It comes from his days on the steamboats. He used to throw a piece of rope into the river. There was a heavy weight on the end of the rope, and the rope had some marks on it. He used the rope to find how deep the river was. Then he shouted out, "Mark One" or "Mark Twain", meaning "Mark Two". Each mark was about two metres, so when he shouted "Mark Twain", it meant that the river was deep enough for the big boat.

    In 1865 Clemens wrote a story about a jumping frog. The story and the writer became famous. In 1867 he toured Europe. He married when he returned, and lived for most of the rest of his in Harfort, Connecticut. He wrote many books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he wrote in 1876. He also gave many lectures, and became a very famous and popular man.

    Once two of his friends decided to write to him, but they had lost his address. So on the envelope they just wrote "Mark Twain, God knows where". Several weeks later, they received a replay from the writer. It just said, "He does!"

    Samuel Clemens died in 1910. He is considered to be one of America's most important writers.

    Emily and Alex were happy when their family moved to a house with a very big garden. They could climb up trees, grow flowers and even play badminton. They liked to watch the birds flying among the trees in the garden. They even started to put food out to attract（吸引） more birds.

    Everything was fine for a few days until one afternoon there was a strange bumping noise on a window. Emily went outside and found a small bird dead on the grass. Its neck seemed to be broken.

    "It must have flown into the window," Alex said when his sister Emily called him to have a look. "Ah, yes, look here. You can see the mark where it hit the window. There are a couple of tiny feathers stuck(粘贴) on the window."

    "Poor thing!" Emily said.

    During the next month, another five birds died in the same way. "Why would they fly to the windows?" they wondered. Finally they found out the truth. When the birds were flying, they couldn't see into the rooms. All they saw was the reflection(反射) of the garden. They thought that they were flying into trees because they saw trees reflected by the window.

    "Something has to be done to save the birds." the parents decided.

    At first, he family tried keeping curtains（窗帘）across the windows, but this made the room dark. Then they bought some strong black paper and cut out the shape of a hawk. They made six hawks—one for each window. They stuck the hawks to the windows. They looked pretty and did not keep out much light. When the birds saw the hawks, they would fly away.

    After that, there were no more dead birds. The family were much happier.