Mike is 13 years old, and he is interested in collecting stamps. He began to collect stamps when he was 8 years old. He spends all his pocket money on stamps. Sometimes his parents send him stamps when he does well in his study. Therefore, Mike collects a lot of stamps. He often shows his stamps to his friends and his neighbours (邻居). He usually goes to his mail box (信箱) to get letters after school. He wants the stamps from them. One day, Mike went to the mail box to get letters. But there were no letters in his box. He found a letter in the box next to his. The letter is to Mrs Green. There was a beautiful stamp on the letter. So he got off the stamp carefully and hurried home. After he went home, he was afraid that Mrs Green would know he got her stamp. On the morning of the next day, Mike put the stamp back to Mrs Green's box and then went to school. When he came back from school, he met Mrs Green. She smiled to Mike. Mike smiled, too.

    Once there was a man traveling in a faraway village. As he was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped. He found that these huge elephants were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains(锁链), no cages. It was clear that the elephants could, at any time, break away from their ropes but for some reason, they did not.

    He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and didn't try to get away." Well,' the trainer said," when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they still believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can hold them, so they never try to break free."

    How could it be? These animals could at any time break free from their ropes. But because they were always stuck right where they were, they believed they couldn't.

    Just like the elephants, how many of us go through life believing that we cannot do something, just because we failed at it once before?

           We should never give up the struggle(斗争) in life.

Gui Haichao is a university teacher, mainly studying space at Beihang University.  His dream of flying to space has now come true. 

On May 30th morning, the Shenzhou-16 went into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre (酒泉卫星发射基地) in northwest China. 

In 2018, China began to select the astronauts.  Unlike past choices, this time, astronaut s were chosen in three kinds: space pilots, space engineers, and payload specialist (载荷专家).  Gui becomes the first payload specialist to enter space.  During the Shenzhou-16 task, he will manage the payload for space science experiments. 

Gui grew up in a common family in Yunnan Province.  His interest in space began at the age of 17 when he turned on the school radio and heard the news of Yang Liwei's space travel in 2003.

Over the past few years, Gui has been trained to use difficult equipment (设备) and do experiments in space.  However, the training way was a big problem for him.  "I felt very sick after the space training," he said.  "So I added more exercises, learned from other astronauts, and tried some of the training methods used by pilots.  Finally, my physical ability slowly improved. "

As a sports lover, Gui found happiness in training activities.  And because he had the habit of doing sports, he was able to keep up with this difficult training.  His spirit of not being afraid of difficulties in realizing his dream made him successful.  Although he wore glasses, he was able to become an astronaut. 

Jim Smith is a middle school student. And he lives in New York, the USA. He is very busy during a week. He stays at school from Monday to Friday. He usually gets up at 6:30 in the morning. Then he brushes his teeth. School begins at 7:40 a.m.. He has five classes in the morning and two classes in the afternoon. He often exercises, because he thinks it is good for his health. He runs on Tuesday and Thursday after school at about 5:00 p.m.. He takes a shower at 6:00 p.m.. He does his homework from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.. He watches TV for an hour. Then he goes to bed at 10:00 p.m.. He isn't free on weekends. He takes a piano lesson on Saturday morning. In the afternoon, he plays soccer with his friends. 

Plunk! I dropped another pecan(山核桃) into my basket. Then a gentle autumn wind blew some more off the tree. I ran to pick them up. Whew! Pecan picking was hard. My basket was only half full.

I was visiting my grandpa's farm in Kansas, and Grandpa sent me into the woods to pick up pecans for us to enjoy later. I wasn't about to let him down.

Then something caught my eye: a squirrel picked up a pecan, climbed up a tree and disappeared into a large hole. A moment later, the squirrel climbed down to the ground to pick up another pecan. Once again, the squirrel took the pecan back to his secret hiding place inside the hollow(洞) of the tree.

Not so secret any more, I thought. I ran over to the tree and found the hollow was filled with sweet pecans. They were right there for the taking. This was my chance. Handful by handful, I took all the pecans from the hollow. Now the basket was full!

I was so proud of myself. I couldn't wait to show Grandpa all of the pecans I'd collected.

"Look, Grandpa," I shouted, "look at all of the pecans I found!" Grandpa took a look at my basket. "Well, well, how did you find so many, Jimmy?" 1 told him how I'd followed the squirrel and taken the pecans from his hiding place. Grandpa congratulated me on finding out something about the squirrel's secrets. Then he did something that surprised me. He handed the basket back to me and put his arm gently around my shoulders.

"That squirrel worked very hard to collect his winter food," he said, "Now that all of his pecans are gone, don't you think that little squirrel will be very hungry when it gets cold?"

"I didn't think about that." I said.

"I know," Grandpa said, "But a good man should never take advantage of someone else's hard work, even the squirrel's."

Suddenly I felt as hollow as that old tree. The image(形象) of that hungry squirrel wouldn't leave my mind.

There was only one thing I could do.