Exploit your parking space

    An unused parking space or garage can make money. If you live near a city center or an airport, you could make anything up to￡200 or￡300 a week. Put an advertisement for free on Letpark or Atmyhousepark

Rent a room

    Spare room? Not only will a lodger（房客）earn you an income, but also, thank to the government-backed "rent a room" program, you won't have to pay any tax on the first￡4500 you make per year. Try advertising your room on Roomspare or Roommateeasy.

Make money during special events

    Don't want a full-time lodger? Then rent on a short-term basis. If you live in the capital, renting a room out during the Olympics or other big events could bring in money. Grashpadder can advertise your space.

Live on set

    Renting your home out as a "film set" could earn you hundreds of pounds a day, depending on the film production company and how long your home is needed. A quick search on the Internet will bring up dozens of online companies that allow you to register your home for free—but you will be charged if your home gets picked.

Use your roof

    You need the right kind of roof, but some energy companies pay the cost of fixing solar equipment (around￡14,000),and let you use the energy produced for nothing. In return, they get paid for unused energy fed back into the National Grid. However, you have to sign a 25-year agreement with the supplier, which could prevent you from changing the roof.

根据短文内容，请将单词填写在题号对应的横线上。

    When I was about 12, I had an enemy, a girl who liked to point out my shortcomings(缺点). Week by week her list grew: I was very thin, I wasn't a good student, I talked too much, I was too proud, and so on. I tried to hear all this as long as I could. At last, I became very angry. I ran to my father with tears in my eyes.

    He listened to me quietly, then he asked.“Are the things she says true or not? Janet, didn't you ever wonder what you're really like? Well, you now have that girl's opinion. Go and make a list of everything she said and mark the points that are true. Pay no attention to the other things she said.”

    I did as he told me. To my great surprise, I discovered that about half the things were true. Some of them I couldn't change (like being very thin), but a good number I could—and suddenly I wanted to change. For the first time I go to fairly clear picture of myself.

    I brought the list back to Daddy. He refused to take it.“That's just for you，” he said.“You know better than anyone else the truth about yourself. But you have to learn to listen, not just close your ears in anger and feeling hurt. When something said about you is true, you'll find it will be of help to you. Our world is full of people who think they know your duty. Don't shut your ears. Listen to them all, but hear the truth and do what you know is the right thing to do.”Daddy's advice has returned to me at many important moments. In my life, I've never had a better piece of advice.

    John J. Lennon, who's currently serving a 28-year life sentence for drug dealing and a murder he committed in 2001. He is one of 23 out of 2,300 inmates(监犯)participating in an education program, and he advocates greater access to education in prison through TV. Currently, he says the TV is used as “an inability tool; it's a tool to keep us entertained cells.” But he suggests that prison TVs should stream online courses instead of movies.

    “If inmates had the chance to watch an online course then they might say, ‘Hey, look what's on Channel 3; it's an interesting lecture from a professor of philosophy.' Believe it or not, people will tune in, and after the lecture they're going to go on their gates, hang on their bars, and they're going to talk about it.”

    Education, he says, also makes prison a safer place. “If I'm working on a paper banging away(砰砰响个不停)on my typewriter, I have other things on my mind. I'm not fighting in the prison yard.” Most prison administrators support that view. “They understand it makes prison a safer place if you have a group of guys with their eyes on the prize who are trying to change themselves.”

    John J. Lennon arrived at Attica in 2004 with a 9th grade education, but in May will graduate with a two-year associate degree. Attica creative writing workshops have changed his life.

    “I came into prison looking up to gangsters(匪徒), now I look up to scholars and intellectuals like Doran Larson, Tim Golden, all these Pulitzer-winning journalists. Education has changed the lens(镜头)through which I view the world. I don't look up to gangsters anymore. I think it's a horrible lifestyle.”

    Hamilton College professor Doran Larson has been teaching creative writing workshops at Attica since 2006. He says the demand for education from inmates is enormous and that it's “almost impossible to create a program large enough to satisfy the desire which pushes against the public perception(认识)that such people inside aren't interested in education.”

    Thoughts on prison education have changed over the years. Until 1973, there was a period of rehabilitation(改造)in American prisons. Even after that year, college degree programs were available for inmates nationwide until 1994, when the country's movement to get tough on crime made prisoners not qualified for Pell fund aid. “We have moved to a punishment mentality(心态),” Larson says. No one cared about these people “as long as they are kept from the outside.”

    Larson argues that inmates want to become productive members of society. The prison population is “a huge untapped resource, both commercial and intellectual. And right now there is far from enough being done to tap into skills which can get them off the public dole(失业救济金)and turn them into taxpayers.”

    They may be teenagers, but 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa have grand ambitions(雄心) — to launch Africa's first private satellite (卫星) into space. They are part of a team of high school girls from Cape Town, South Africa, who have designed and built equipment for a satellite that will orbit over the earth's poles scanning Africa's surface.

    Once in space, the satellite will collect information on agriculture, and food security within the continent. Using the data/we can try to determine and predict (预测) the problems Africa will be facing in the future”, explains Bull, a student at Pelican Park High School.“Where our food is growing, where we can plant more trees and vegetation and also how we can monitor remote areas,” she says. “We have a lot of forest fires and floods but we don't always get out there in time.'' Information received twice a day will go towards disaster prevention.

    It's part of a project by South Africa's Meta Economic Development Organization (MEDO) working with Morehead State University in the US.

The girls (14 in total) are being trained by satellite engineers from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, in an effort to encourage more African women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

    Scheduled to launch in May 2017, if successful, it will make MEDO the first private company in Africa to build a satellite and send it into orbit.

    Mngqengqiswa comes from a single parent household. Her mother is a domestic worker. By becoming a space engineer or astronaut, the teenager hopes to make her mother proud. “Discovering space and seeing the Earth's atmosphere, it's not something many black Africans have been able to do, or get the opportunity to look at I want to see and experience these things for myself,” says Mngqengqiswa.

    Her team mate Bull agrees, “I want to show to fellow girls that we don't need to sit around or limit ourselves. Any career is possible-even aerospace.”

    Welcome to LoongBridge Volunteer Summer Camps! Click HERE to join us!

    Type/Focus: Arts, Community Service, Study Abroad, Teen Travel

    Description: For this year, we have 3 kinds of programs for young students (aged 8-20) all over the world.

    Volunteer & Culture Camp (3 weeks): June 29—July 20

    One-day visit to children Charity（慈善）Villages to give some help, understand their lives, and learn from these children who never give up though they have family misfortunes.

    Language & Arts Cam (3 weeks): June 25—July 15

    Chinese language study through high-quality classroom education, one-on-one partnership with local Chinese students, real-life conversation etc.

    Chinese traditional arts learning including Chinese painting, erhu and paper-cutting.

    Learning-China Camp (2-3 weeks): July 4-July 20/July 15-August 5.

    Chinese history learning from visiting museums and ancient capitals of China: Beijing, Xi'an, Luoyang.

    Learning about today's China to know its rapid development and new challenges through activities, factory tours, city walks, etc.

    Understanding the lifestyles of Chinese people in different ages from talks, home visits, shopping experience, etc.

    Phone: 010-45652571

    Email: info@loongbridge.com

    Allen Cook and his daughter Melissa were renovating(整修) her house, when they found a beautiful, heart-warming love story. "The envelope in the ceiling was old and yellow. It had never been opened, It was unbelievable when my son-in-low started reading it. In the letter she was talking about the baby she was going to have," Allen Cook said.

    The story began in May 4, 1945, the typed letter was written by a woman named Virginia to her husband, Rolf Christoffersen. At the time, he was a sailor in the Norwegian navy. The envelope was marked "return to sender" and never found its way to her husband. Allen's daughter used the Internet to find the phone number of someone named Rolf Christoffersen and gave him a call, leading her to his son in Santa Barbara, California.

    "Someone called me at my office. They just googled my name because I have the same name as my father. Melissa asked me where I grew up and I told her. She told me she had the letter," Christoffersen's son, 66 now, said. The younger Christoffersen wasn't yet born when his mother Virginia wrote the letter, but he said her words were very special to him. His mother, who died six years ago, wrote about her love for her husband.

    "I love you Rolf, as I love the warm sun, and that is what you are for my life, the sun about which everything else revolves around me," she wrote. Seventy-two years later, her words were finally heard by her husband. Christoffersen immediately called his father, who is now 96. And read the letter to him over the phone. "I was so surprised after all these years. I was very emotional," the elder Christoffersen said.

    The long-lost letter was finally received just before Mother's Day; it was another tangible connection to Virginia Christoffersen. "It's Mother's Day and reading her words reminded me just what a wonderful person she was and how much she loved us" her son said, through tears.