I had a great winter vacation last year. I went to the mountains {#blank#}1{#/blank#} my family and we stayed with some friends. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (they) house was really big, with lots of trees around it. You could get lost very {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (easy).

    Last year, the weather was very bad. It was windy, wet and snowy. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}, the mountains were beautiful. I love climbing, so we climbed every day. I took quite a few {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (photo), usually of different animals.

    The countryside was very quiet, but across from the house there was {#blank#}6{#/blank#} farm. The farmer had many cows, and they were {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (loud) than cars! Every day we walked to the farm to get milk. It was so delicious!

    There was a village that I {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (ride) my bike to. It was very small. There wasn't anywhere to go shopping, but it was the best place {#blank#}9{#/blank#} (go) on vacation! I even met two women from Canada. We are now friends. In {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (fact), we are the same in many ways.

   I'm having a great time on my student exchange program in France. I was a bit nervous before I arrived here but there wasn't {#blank#}1{#/blank#}reason to be. My host family is really nice. The grandmother always helps me practice {#blank#}2{#/blank#}(speak) French. You can't believe how quickly my French{#blank#}3{#/blank#} (improve) because of that. I'm very comfortable speaking French now. My {#blank#}4{#/blank#}(big) challenge is learning how to behave at the dinner table. As you can imagine, things here are very different {#blank#}5{#/blank#}the way they are at home. For example, you're not supposed to put your bread on your plate. You should put it on the table! At first I {#blank#}6{#/blank#}(think) that was pretty strange, but now I'm used to it. I find that it's{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (polite) to say that you're full. If you don't want any{#blank#}8{#/blank#}(much)food, you should just say, "That was delicious." I also find it difficult to remember everything, {#blank#}9{#/blank#}I'm gradually getting used to it. I don't find French customs so strange anymore. I'll write again soon and tell you {#blank#}10{#/blank#}is happening my daily life. Hope you're having a good school year.

    "After walking through the mirror, many strange things happened to Alice. One day, she{#blank#}1{#/blank#} (meet) a unicorn(独角兽).'What－is－this? 'the unicorn asked its friend. 'That is a child,' {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (reply)the friend. 'Ah,' said the unicorn, I always thought they were fabulous monsters(传说中的怪兽)! Is it alive？'Alice then said, "Do you know,' I always thought unicorns, were fabulous monsters {#blank#}3{#/blank#}? I never saw one alive before!'"

    Fifty years before Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) wrote{#blank#}4{#/blank#} (he) stories about Alice, many people still believed in the myth (神话) of unicorns. But in the early nineteenth century, a French{#blank#}5{#/blank#} (science) named Baron Cuvier showed that unicorns were only a {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (product) of imagination.

    For hundreds of years before that, things were very different. Everybody{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (believe) that unicorns were real, but very few people saw them. Julius Caesar, who built the Roman Empire, ever said that the animal had the head of a deer, the {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (foot) of an elephant and a one-meter-long horn on its forehead. Marco Polo, who thought he saw a unicorn in India, agreed that it had elephants' feet and a horn, {#blank#}9{#/blank#} said it had a pig's head. He was almost certainly describing a rhinoceros(犀牛)! By the sixteenth century，when books about animals were {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (become)very popular, everyone agreed that the unicorn looked like a white horse with a horn.