Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881. His father was a painter and art teacher who gave his son the first lesson in drawing. He won a prize— Science and Charity”for his first important painting when he was only fifteen. He studied in several cities in Spain. But there was no one to teach him all that he wanted to know. When he was nineteen, he visited Paris.

    Paris was then the center of the world for artists. Everything that was new and exciting in the world of paintings seemed to happen there. When he was twenty-three, Picasso moved there to live and lived in France for the rest of his life.

 When he was over ninety, this great painter still lived his life like a young man. He was still looking for new ideas and new ways to use his artistic materials.

    When he died in 1973, he was ninety-one years old.

    Mr and Mrs Brown are from America. They are now teaching English in Beijing .Their son Jack is with them. Jack speaks English. They want him to learn some Chinese. Jack is in Grade Three in a Chinese school .He likes to play with(玩耍) Chinese children every day. He listens to Chinese, speaks Chinese, reads books in Chinese and writes in Chinese. He is good at his Chinese.

    When our son Bradley was ten, the new bicycle he had received earlier that year was stolen. Owning a bicycle was a big deal to our children when they were little. They spent hours and hours, day after day, on their bicycles, riding up and down the footpath, and at the front of the house. We also rode together as a family a lot. Bicycling was a great way to get the kids out of the house and into the fresh air without spending any money.

    Bradley had discovered that his bicycle had been stolen from our backyard in Campbelltown, South Australia, when he and his sister went outside for a morning ride. He couldn't believe that someone would do this.

    He got a large piece of cardboard, painted a sign begging for the bicycle to be returned, and tied the sign to the letterbox. The following morning, when I went out to collect the mail, I found a white envelope with the magical words, "Buy yourself a new bicycle". There was a $100 banknote inside.

    We were very touched that someone had the heart to do this, We've never been able to thank the person but we suspect(猜想) that it may have been one of our wonderful neighbors. Bradley painted a big"______!"on the sign and we left it outside for a couple of weeks afterwards, hoping the kind stranger would drive down our street.

    A delighted Bradley was able to buy a new bicycle. As the years went on, the bicycles became bigger and more expensive but remained just as important for those family bicycle rides. Now Bradley is 25. Sometimes I miss the days when receiving a bicycle was the best thing in the world to them.

    All these years later we are still thankful for the stranger's kindness. We were a young family with three little children and it meant a lot to us. We still talk about it and, even now, wonder who the kind stranger was.

    Some people have a very poor sense of direction. Unluckily, I am one of them. I have visited a place many times but I may still get lost there the next time.

    When I was a little girl, I never dared to ask strangers the way. And so I used to walk around in circles and hope that by chance I would get to the place I was going to.

    Now, I am no longer too shy to ask people for directions, but I often receive useless or ever wrong information. So I try to avoid giving people wrong directions. It anyone asks me the way somewhere, I would say, "Sorry, I am a stranger here."

    Once on my way to work I was stopped by a man. He asked me if I could tell him the way to the Friendship Building. I gave him my usual reply. But just as I walked on only a few steps, I realized that he had asked the way to my office building. However, I had no time to turn back and look for him. I hurried to meet someone at my office and I didn't want to keep him waiting.

    When I just got to my office, the secretary showed in the man who had asked me for directions. Imagine how awkward I was and how surprised he was when we saw each other at the first sight!