Please look at my family photo.

    Those are my grandparents. These are my parents. My mother is Susan. She likes red. She likes apples for breakfast. And she often plays ping-pong. That is my brother. His name is Jack. He doesn't like red. He just likes white. He often has milk for breakfast and then plays soccer. Now this is me. My name is Tony. I like blue very much. My sweaters, my T-shirts, my pants, my shoes are all blue. For my breakfast, I like eggs. I don't like soccer. It's so boring. I just like tennis. It's so fun. This is my family. I love my family.

    It's December. It is snowy and the weather is really cold in the north of China. You can see many children playing with snow. Some of them are making snowmen. Some are skating on the river. It's so cold that the water in the river freezes (冻结). It's a white world. How beautiful!

    But in Australia, the weather is hot now. Many people go swimming in the sea. They are having a good time. Jim and his friends are playing soccer near the sea. They want to swim after playing soccer.

    Why can they swim in December? It is winter, isn't it? Yes, it is in China. But it isn't in Australia. That's because China and Australia have different seasons in a year.

    Mo Ya, Nobel Prize winner in literature (文学)in 2012, believes his success comes from a large amount of reading.

    Mo was born into a farming family in a village in Shandong Province. Mo left school at the age of 12 and started to work in the fields. Mo was tired after his daily hard work, but he was always hungry for books. However, there were very few books in the village, he never gave up. He read his elder brother's textbooks and even dictionaries.  He helped others with farm work in exchange for books.

    After Mo left his hometown and joined the army in 1976, he began to read widely, including works by Lu Xun and many other famous writers. He studied from these writers but did not copy them.  Instead, he developed his own style.

    Imagine a boy from a small village in East Africa. He has been looking after cows from a very early age. At twelve, he knows more about cows than most of us. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Has this boy ever had any education?

    Education is discovering about ourselves and about the people and things around us. All the people who care about us—our parents, brothers, sisters, friends—are our teachers. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} We start learning on the day we are born, not on the first day we go to school. Every day we have new experiences, like finding a bird's nest(巢), discovering a new street in our neighborhood and making friends with someone we didn't like before. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Encouragement from the people around us makes it possible for us to discover things as much as possible. As we grow up, we begin to find out what we are able to do. We may be good at cooking, or singing or playing football. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Just thinking about cooking doesn't tell us if we are good at it.

We learn so much just in our daily life. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Of course we can learn some things better at home than at school, like how to do the shopping, and how to help old or disabled people who can't do everything for themselves. At school, teachers help us to read and write. With their help, we begin to see things in different ways.

When was the last time you gave or received a hug（拥抱）？ Do your parents hug you before you go to school？ In Western countries, it is quite common to greet close friends or relatives with a hug.

You might hug your teammates after winning a basketball game. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Friends who haven't seen each other for a long time will usually hug each other when meeting.

{#blank#}2{#/blank#} After coming to China, I've noticed that the Chinese seem unwilling（不愿意）to hug.

My Chinese friends tell me that hugging is considered to be very intimate （亲密的） in their culture. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Chinese people don't usually hug in public. But people's attitudes towards hugging can also change.

I remember watching a video story about a "hugging party" that was held in shanghai.. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} The Chinese who took part in the party looked uncomfortable. However, after the party, several of them changed their minds. They found that hugging didn't have to be embarrassing and could actually be quite nice.So next time you see your parents, give them a hug and see how it makes you feel.