A funny thing happened to my sister Tina last month. She lives in Japan and teaches English. In Japan, people don't usually wear their outdoor shoes in the house or in school, and a lot of buildings have places for shoes. So her school has a special place for shoes. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}
Tina teaches English in the evening. One Friday, she went to school, and she put her shoes in the shoe box as usual. Then she had an interesting spoken English class with her students. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} But to her surprise, her shoes weren't in the box. There was only one pair of those there, and they weren't her shoes! She had to get home in a hurry. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}
On Monday, at her next English class, her shoes were in a shopping bag on her desk! There was a note that said, “I'm so sorry. I took your shoes by mistake!” {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Somebody felt a lot of shame!

B

    A driver stopped his car on a street side to have a rest. As he lay down in the seat and closed his eyes, a person came up and knocked at the window to ask the time. The driver opened his eyes and looked at his watch. “It's five past eight.” he said. Then he went to sleep again. But soon he was waken up again because a second person was knocking at the window. “Excuse me, what time is it now?” He asked. The driver looked at his watch again, and told him it was half past eight.

    In this way, the driver thought he couldn't have a good rest, so he wrote a short note and stuck(贴) it on the window for all to see. It said, “I don't know the time.” Again, he lay down in the seat for his sleep. A few minutes later, a third person came and began to knock at the window, “Hey, sir.” He said, “It's a quarter to nine.”

    It was 8:30 and I was lying in the sun, listening to my CD.

    Then my mum came out. She wanted me to go out with her. She told me about this place called Give Kids the World. It's a special place for families to spend a vacation when a child had a life-threatening（致命的）illness. There were several jobs she did there, like gift giving and ice-cream serving. Mum said I would enjoy it, but I thought this was a boring job.

    Mum told me we were going to take a toy and an ice-cream to every child in the village. We got to the first house and I knocked on the door and shouted, "Gift Giving", and a woman answered it. Sitting in the middle of the bedroom was a boy in a wheel chair. I gave him the gifts, and his face lighted up with happiness. I walked out and thought," That must be boring, unable to jump around."

    As I came into the second house with gifts, it seemed a little strange that the child didn't see me. His mum said something was much wrong with his eyes, so I needed to go and stand in front of him.  When I did that, he became very excited and made a sign for "thanks", though his legs couldn't move at all.

    When we went back home, Mum told me these kids might not live to see tomorrow. Suddenly, I understood I should be more thankful that I don't have these illnesses. I no longer wanted to be at home listening to my CDs. I would rather be doing this, maybe making a difference in these kids' lives.

A 17-year-old Chinese girl, from Inner Mongolia, has broken several school records in long-distance running lately. And she owes (归功于) her excellent performance to her father: He not only accompanies (陪伴) his daughter on her runs every morning, but he has also built a simple "gym" for her.

Zheng Guohua, a student in high school starts her run on the street with her father at four o'clock every morning. Her father, Zheng Long, always rides a motorcycle to accompany her.

Besides running, the father has also worked out a stricter training plan for his daughter, and built a simple "gym" by himself. Zheng Long made good use of something old that he collected during his spare time to set up the gym. It took him half a month to build the gym so his daughter could exercise better.

Every time during the school sports meeting, he attends his daughter's competitions, which gives her a feeling of pride. Zheng Guohua said, "My classmates envy (羡慕) me for having such a loving and caring father. They all want to have a father like mine."

In Zheng Guohua's eyes, her father is not only a serious coach with a loud voice during training, but also a good friend to accompany her along the way. Zheng Guohua said that there were times when she wanted to give up training, however, she encouraged herself with her father's words: "Only by paying the price of Superman can we get the harvest (收获) of Superman." In the end, she overcame the difficulties because she always thought people should make their efforts to realize their own dreams, although there were some difficulties in life.

He was an old man who fished alone in a boat and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish, the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.

It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his boat empty and he always went down to help him carry fishing tools.

The old man was thin with deep wrinkles（皱纹） in the back of his neck. His hands had the deep scars（伤疤） from dealing with heavy fish. But none of these scars were fresh.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and full of confidence.

"Santiago", the boy said to him as they climbed from the bank where the boat was pulled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."

"No," the old man said. "You' re with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without a fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me willingly."

"It was papa who made me leave. I am a boy and I must do what he told me to."

"I know. I quite understand that."

"He hasn't much faith （信念）."

"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the fishing tools home?"

"Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen."

They sat on the Terrace. Many fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Some other older fishermen looked at him and were sad. But they didn't show it and they spoke politely about the sea, the weather and of what they had seen.