Tina was not like many of her friends. She didn't listen to pop music, but her friends liked rock and pop music. When Tina asked her friends to try classical music, they all looked at her strangely. "Classical music is for old people," they said. Tina was worried if something was wrong with her.

Tina decided to talk to her father. In the study(书房), asked her father, “Dad, am I strange?”"Of course not,”he answered. "Why do you ask that?”"Because I don't like the same things as my friends do. They want to listen to Mariah Carey's music. I like Yo Yo ma's.”" I can understand. Tina, it's all right to be your own person. You don't have to copy(模仿) what other people do. Everybody has different tastes.”After talking with her father, Tina felt better. She realized that doing different made her special. It was an important lesson for her to learn.

    A man in Pakistan is now working to help children get an education. When he was a child, he did not go to school because he was too poor.

    It is reported that Pakistan has 25 million children who do not go to school. That is the second­highest number in the world. Only Nigeria has more. Many Pakistani children must work to support their families.

    Mohammad Ayub was once one of those children. He is now a firefighter. He also manages a small school. VOA recently visited the school in the capital Islamabad.

    Ayub started with just one student in 1982. He saw a boy cleaning cars for days. He asked him, "Why don't you go to school?" The boy answered that his parents were dead and he had to work to help support his five brothers and three sisters.

    Ayub was also an orphan and he, too, had to work to help support his five brothers and three sisters. He said, "When my father died, everyone who came to the funeral said they were sorry, but no one helped." He sold newspapers and did other work to earn enough money to pay school fees for his brothers and sisters.

    Ayub wanted to help the young boy who washed cars, but he did not have enough money to pay the boy's school fees.

    Today, Ayub teaches many children at his school in a public park. Some of the children attend other schools in the morning, but come to Ayub in the afternoon to get help with their homework.

    Ayub has helped a large number of poor children since he began teaching. Many of them come from very poor areas near the park.

    Ayub said," I used to argue with kids who worked ' Why are you washing someone's dishes or their clothes? Why don't you study? ' "

    One of the children he advised to attend classes was Farhat Abbas. Ayub found him working with his friends about 12 years ago. "He followed us back home. He told our parents he wanted to teach us and asked them to send us to his school, "Abbas said.

    Today, Abbas is taking classes at a college and is helping Ayub.

    Many children are out of school, and those who do attend classes often get a poor education. Information gathered by an organization shows half of all Pakistani children in the 5th grade do not understand basic mathematics and cannot read a story in their language.

    A group in Islamabad reports Pakistan spends less on education than any other country in South Asia.

    It was a village in India. The people were poor. However, they were happy. After all, their forefathers (祖先) had lived in the same way for centuries (世纪).

    Then one day, some visitors from the city arrived. They told the villagers there were some people who liked to eat frogs' legs. However, they did not have enough frogs of their own, so they wanted to buy frogs from other places.

    This seemed like money for nothing. There were millions of frogs in the fields around, and they were no use to the villagers. All they had to do was to catch them. They reached an agreement and people sent their children into the fields to catch frogs. Every week a truck (卡车) arrived to collect the frogs and give them the money. For the first time, the people could dream of a better future, but the dream didn't last (持续) long.

    It was not easy to notice (觉察到) the change at first, but it seemed like the crops (庄稼) were not doing so well. It was more worrying that the children fell ill more often, and there seemed to be more insects (虫) around lately.

    The villagers decided that they couldn't just wait to see the crops failing and the children getting weak. They would have to use the money got to buy pesticides (杀虫剂) and medicines. Soon there was no money left.

    Then the people found out the problem. It was the frog. They were not useless. They had been doing an important job—eating insects. Now with so many frogs killed, the insects were increasing (增加) more quickly. They were eating the crops and spreading diseases (传播疾病).

    Now, the people are still poor. But in the evenings they sit in the village square and listen to sounds of insects and frogs. These sounds of the night now have a much deeper meaning.

    On Nov.18th,1908,three men went up in a balloon（气球）.They started early in London. The headman was Augusta Gaudron, and the other two men were Tannar and Maitland. They had a big balloon and they were ready for a long way.

    Soon they heard the sea. They were carrying the usual rope（绳子）,and it was hanging down from the basket of the balloon. At the end of the rope they had tied a metal box. This could hold water, or it could be empty. So they were able to change its weight. It was for use over the sea. They were also carrying some bags of sand.

    After the sun rose, the balloon went higher. It went up to 3,000 meters, and the air was very cold. The water in the balloon became ice. Snow fell past the men's basket, and they could see more snow on the ground. The men tried to throw out some more sand; but it was hard. They tried to break the icy sand with their knives, but it was not easy. The work was slow and they were still falling, so they had to drop some whole bags of sand. One of them fell on an icy lake and made a black hole in the ice.

    At last they pulled the box into the basket. It was still snowing, so they climbed to get away from the snow. They rose to 5,100 metres! Everything became icy. They were so cold that they decided to land. They came down in Poland heavily but safely. They had travelled 1, 797 kilometers from London!

    Miss Grey lived in a small house. She was old and did not like noise at all, so she was very pleased when her noisy neighbor moved out. A young man moved in and Miss Grey thought the man seemed to be quiet.

    But at three o'clock the next morning, the noise of a dog woke her up. She thought she had never heard a dog there before. It must be the young man's dog. So she telephoned the young man, said something bad about the dog and then hung up the telephone before he could answer. Nothing more happened until three o'clock the next morning. Then Miss Grey's telephone rang, and when she answered, a voice said, "You telephoned me twenty-four hours ago, now I ring you up to say that I don't have a dog."