The world is full of amazing things. Today, I'm going to talk about something amazing.

    We have lots of things to do every day, so many of us will be tired after a busy day. They all choose sleeping to have a rest. But do you know that sleeping can consume（消耗） many calories. The energy consumed is even more than watching TV. If you want to have a good health, I think you can't sleep too much.

    Do you like animals? There are a lot of surprising things they can do. Goldfish are a lovely kind of fish. Most goldfish have quite a short life — only 6 to 7 years. Once, the goldfish called Freb had a very long life. It lived up to 41 years. It was the oldest goldfish in the world. Now if people take good care of the goldfish, they can live more than 10 years. Animals are our friends. We should know more about them and give them a good home. Do you have any interesting stories about amazing things? If so, tell us. Let's share them together.

    One day a big red hen is playing with her chickens in the garden. After some time, she wants to eat something and she takes out her chickens to look for food.

    When they are eating, she finds a grain of wheat(一粒小麦). So she asks her chickens to plant it in the back garden. But no one wants to do it. The big red hen has to do it herself.

    After a few months, they get a lot of wheat. She says to her chickens, “Who will take the wheat to the store to get some flour(面粉)?” But they don't want to do it. So she takes the wheat to the store and brings the flour home.

    After she gets home, she says,“ Who will make some bread with the flour? ”They all say they are very busy, so they can't do it.

    When she makes the bread, she says to her chickens,“ Who wants to eat the bread?”

    “I will,” they say. “No, you can't. You don't want to do anything before I make the bread. You must know ‘No pains, no gains（不劳无获）'.”She doesn't give any bread to her chickens and she eats the bread herself.

    “Reading makes a full man,” novels written by famous writers help us to know more about our history, culture and many other things.

    Jane Austen was one of the most well-known women writers of the world. She was born in England in 1775. Jane liked reading and writing. She wrote a number of famous novels in her life. Among them, Pride and Prejudice written in 1779 was the most popular.

    Ernest Hemingway, an outstanding American writer and reporter, was born in 1899. His life experience had a great influence on his writing style. Hemingway lived in France and Italy between the 1920s and 1950s. Most of his books such as The Sun Also Rises were written at that time. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954 mainly because of the novel The Old Man and the Sea.

    As my husband, Doug, stood on the busy New York city street trying to stop a taxi, I tried to protect my daughter from the cold December wind and rain. I put my head down to kiss her tiny face.

    Frustrated and1, my husband gave up his try to flag down a taxi. I knew the feeling. Just after her first birthday, we2that our daughter Katie had a rare(罕见的) brain illness. Since that moment, Doug and I felt like runners in a marathon race where the finish line kept disappearing. We knew Katie was running out of3. It had taken months before we finally 4 a name for the illness, but only a few doctors in the world knew 5 to treat it. Now, as we finally found a brilliant doctor to save our girl, we were in a strange6in the cold rain.

    Just at the moment, a middle-aged woman pulled over and said, "Pardon me? May I offer you a ride?"

    7we could say anything, she continued, "It's really no trouble for8. Just get in."

    It was then that I noticed her thick Irish accent(口音), which9 me up like hot soup. We 10said, "Thanks! Roosevelt Hospital, please, "as we got in her car for the ride.

    "Are you going11the baby?" she asked us.

    I nodded my head, holding back my tears.

    At the hospital, we12 her a dozen times for the ride, as the woman hugged me. I noticed her face was wet with tears. She promised to pray for（为……祈祷）us before she left.

    After three more visits to New York and two more13operations，Katie is cured. But the14of the Irish Angel still rang as a reminder of a tiny ray of light that appeared in our15days. We would pray for her just as she did for us.

Zhang Lingxin is {#blank#}1{#/blank#} 66-year -old woman in Shanghai. About three years ago, she {#blank#}2{#/blank#}to learn how to play the piano at a school. Now, she can play two classical piano songs.

Zhang was a music {#blank#}3{#/blank#} when she was a little girl. Learning to play the piano was her childhood dream. But pianos were very {#blank#}4{#/blank#} at that time and very few families had one. "Now, I have the chance to play the piano, and I feel that my childhood dream has finally {#blank#}5{#/blank#} true," says Zhang.

Zhang only {#blank#}6{#/blank#} 200 yuan a term for the piano class. Most of the {#blank#}7{#/blank#} are aged between 60 and 80 in the school. Zhang says that it is common for elderly people to {#blank#}8{#/blank#} what the teacher taught in class. They need to practice {#blank#}9{#/blank#} so that they don't fall behind. "As soon as I get home, I practice what the teacher taught again and again. It feels so good when I can play a piece {#blank#}10{#/blank#}stopping," she says.

About twenty years ago, Shanghai became China's first city where schools offered piano lessons to the elderly. {#blank#}11{#/blank#} then, about 100,000 elderly people have attended these classes.