These days, more and more people begin to pay more attention to their health. They want to take up different kinds of sports to keep healthy. What sports should they do then?

    Tennis

    Thomas opened up a tennis room recently. To his surprise, there were much more people than he expected(预想) coming on the first day. Because no more room was available(可利用的), he had to rent(租借) another bigger room from his neighbour, but it still couldn't meet the need. "I am pleased to see so many people like playing tennis. It is a very good sport for health," said Thomas.

    Football

    Donna works in a bookstore. She often goes to play football in the middle school near the bookstore. "Although the students are having their summer holidays, to my surprise, the playground is crowded with people," said Donna.   

    Of course, there are some other sports that people can do to keep healthy. But it's certain(确定的) that people who often exercise can work better.

    The morning was cold and clear. A yellow bus came around the corner and stopped near a wood (树林). A coach asked the students to get off the bus. Girls began to gather by the starting line. One of them is a young, little girl. She had prepared for this running race for the whole summer. She looked around at the other girls, noticing how she was different.

    There was a break in the silence, and everyone started to run. After about twenty-five minutes, every runner finished the race except the girl. She was still running for the next forty minutes. As she came near the finishing line, she saw her parents, classmates and the coach. They shouted her name and told her not to stop until the end. The sweat (汗水) was flowing down her face.

    She kept on running until she crossed the line. I was that girl, and that was the first time I had finished a cross-country race (越野赛跑). Finishing this race made me realize that I could do anything with my own strength. After that, I took more hard work to practice running. I was not a natural-born runner, but I want to become one. I continued to struggle (努力) with every run. Now I run much faster than before and become more and more confident. I am so thankful for running because it has helped make me who I am today.

    Madisyn Babcock from US is a high school student. She used to have thick blond hair and looked very beautiful. But at the age of 17, she suffered from a serious disease that causes people to lose hair. She had to face the challenges.

    Her senior photo shoot (高中毕业照) was coming, but Babcock didn't pity herself. She still wanted to nook beautiful in her pictures. She and her mother came up with a genius(天才的) idea--to paint some flowers all over her head. Her mother, an American artist, painted the flowers for Babcock.

    US photographer, Chelsea Taylor, took pictures of Babcock. "She has used this as an opportunity to show other girls how to love themselves and own their beauty--even if it isn't conventional," Taylor said. When life throws you a curve ball, it's important to have people that care about you by your side. So I think Babcock is also very happy and lucky!

    Mary was afraid of the dark. She thought there were terrible monsters（怪物） in the dark. One day her aunt Valerie came to visit. Valerie was a brave woman. Mary wanted to be like her. So Mary asked her aunt, "Are you afraid of the dark?"

    "A lot of times" answered her aunt. "When I was small, I was afraid of staying in the dark."

    Hearing this, Mary felt better.

    "I know a secret not to be afraid of the dark. Some blind children told it to me."

    "Can you tell me?" asked Mary.

    "Of course! The secret is to change your eyes. Because blind children can't see, and their hands are their eyes. At night, if anything makes you afraid, close your eyes, get out of bed, and try to see what it is. But use your hands as eyes..."

    That night when Mary felt afraid of something in the bedroom, she closed the eyes of her face and opened the eyes of her hands. She went to touch it with her hands...

    The next morning, Mary ran into the kitchen.

There was a big smile on her face. "The monster is so lovely," she cried. "It's my toy dog!"

    Today I am going along with Rowan Dougall, a postman in Queensland in the far north of Australia, on his daily delivery（投递 trip. Every day, Rowan sets off with his post bags in the tail of his little plane--not much bigger than a large family car, and flies across one of the wildest places on Earth, Australia's Cape North, to reach the very faraway inland areas called the Outback.

    We fly just 300 metres above dangerous crocodiles(鳄鱼) and snakes. This is one of the longest and most expensive postman trips in the world.  However, a 50-cent stamp not only gets a letter posted to a neighbouring town, it will get it hand-delivered by flying postman to the furthest areas of the Outback. To help with the costs, the plane takes three or four paying local people or tourists, and I am one of them. In the back of the plane, there is a pile of post--envelopes of all sizes, newspapers, and a few parcels(包裹). Somehow I expected this post to look special, maybe to include some hats or cowboy boots, but this looks no more exciting than the post delivered to me in England. I look at some of the names and addresses, wondering about the people who are waiting for these letters and parcels.

    Rowan's route is 2,000 km long, with 15 stops, and I get a chance to meet Sandy, who has just received an order of clothes from a store. "I look forward to this weekly delivery," she says, "but I do miss actually going shopping myself." Rowan is checking the time. There are another ten stops to make before dusk(黄昏). Time to leap back on the plane and up into the air.

    As he walked out of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, he looked like a normal repairman. But what he carried was very unusual. Under his jacket, Vincenzo Perugia was carrying Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world. And he was stealing it!

It sounds difficult to believe, but it's a true story. On August 20, 1911, Perugia went into the museum and hid. He waited 15 hours until the next morning. On the day of the crime, the museum was closed for repairs. Perugia walked out into the museum wearing the same kind of clothes as the other repairmen. No one paid attention to him as he walked out the door.

    Police looked all over the world—Russia, Japan, and Brazil. They even interviewed Perugia, but they let him go! Police continued to look for the painting. Two years passed before Perugia brought Mona Lisa to a man in Florence, Italy, who dealt in art. Florence is the city where Leonardo da Vinci painted Mona Lisa. Unfortunately for Perugia, the art dealer called the police, who arrested(逮捕) him.

    Perugia said he wanted to return Mona Lisa to its "real" home. The police believed he wanted to sell copies of the painting and keep the original for himself. To this day, nobody really knows why he did it.