At the age of 16，Julia left school and worked at a restaurant. For many years, she was only interested in making money. Then one day she had a serious car accident which changed her life.“I had a terrible car accident in August 1996.It took me 10 months to recover （康复) from the accident. During that time，I realized I wanted to find a more meaningful reason for being here in this world，”said Julia.

    As soon as she recovered，Julia gave up working at the restaurant and traveled to California. One day she found a big company wanted to cut down part of a forest. In the forest there were lots of redwood trees. One of the trees was more than 1,000 years old.

Then Julia learned a group called Our Earth was trying to save the redwood forest from the company. They decided to find someone to live in a redwood tree and hoped this would stop the company from cutting the trees down. Julia volunteered.

    Julia lived in the tree for over two years without ever going down. It was cold and wet in a redwood tree. There were even very serious winter storms while Julia was in the tree.

Finally the company decided to protect the tree Julia lived in. They agreed never to cut down the big redwood tree or the trees around it. When Julia put her feet on the earth，she began to cry. But she continued to do other things to protect the environment.

    Marco Polo was born in Italy in 1254. When he was 17, he travelled across Europe and Asia with his father, who wanted to do trade with the Chinese. Finally they arrived in Beijing. They were guests at the Emperor^ Palace. Although Marco Polo was young, he was very clever and could speak some foreign languages. The Emperor was impressed by him. He asked Marco Polo to serve in his court (宫廷) and sent him to do many important tasks across the country.

    Marco Polo was amazed by the beautiful China. He was impressed by Beijing and the Emperor's Palace, especially the Summer Palace which he described as "The greatest palace that ever was..." The walls were covered with gold and silver and the hall was so large that it could easily seat 6,000 people for dinner.

    There were inventions and developments in China which were not used in Europe at that time. He was puzzled (困惑的) by the black stones people used to bum to produce heat. The black stones were coal, but Marco Polo had never seen coal before!

In 1295, after 17 years of service to the Emperor, Marco Polo returned to Italy. He was then a very wealthy man. A writer wrote down the stories that Marco Polo told him in a book called The Travels of Marco Polo.

    Although people enjoyed reading the book, many of them thought that Marco Polo's stories about China were too fantastic to be true. But Marco Polo always stood by his tales. Just before he died in 1324, Marco Polo was asked the question, "Were they all true?" And this was his answer, "I have only told half of what I saw!"

I am Mandy and I live in the city with my parents and my little sister. The city life is boring sometimes. I love going to my grandmother's village(村庄). 

It is so much fun living in the village. I like collecting leaves (收集树叶) there. I usually do it on my way to the only shop in the village. They have many different shapes. Some are like a heart and some are like a hand. . . I can make a lot of things with leaves. One fun thing is making leaf pictures. 

This is how I make a leaf picture. I take a leaf out and I also need paper, glue (胶水), a brush(刷子) and paints (绘画颜料). First, I glue the leaf onto the paper and wait for an hour. Then, I paint over the leaf and the paper and let the paints get dry(变干). Next, I take the leaf off the paper. There it is—a beautiful leaf picture on the paper!

I sometimes make birthday cards or other things with the leaf pictures. My friends like them very much. I tell them，"They are not just gifts from me. They're gifts from my grandmother's village！"

The students in my school play handball a lot. During the first break and second break, many students get out of the 1 to play handball on the playground. Usually there are four students playing in each2 while the other students stand in line waiting for 3 turns. Lots of them can play handball so well that they are 4 out (出局) during the whole 30-minute break. But I am a kid who has very 5 coordination(协调性). When it is my 6 , I get very excited. However, most of the time my excitement can only 7 for about 10 seconds and then I'm out. I have to 8 for about 10 minutes to have another turn. I am very 9 . 

One day, my friend asked me to go out of the 10 line and said, "Tony, I will teach you 11 to play handball. Once you learn how to do it, you can have12 . " For the whole week, he13 me all the skills(技巧) and I could play quite long without missing the 14 . Now I am in the long line 15 . 

On the bottom of most plastic packaging(包装), there's a small triangle(三角) with a letter or number written inside. These little symbols are not easy to be noticed, but are really important. They tel you what kind of plastic it is and whether it can be recycled (回收) or not.