Americans and Chinese have quite different views about how to treat friends.

    Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon. They don't feel hurt. If the same two people meet again, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand. Friendships between us develop more slowly but may become lifelong feelings, extending(扩展) deeply into both families.

    There is another difficult point for us to understand. Although Americans treat friends warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don't show their politeness to them if they are asked to spend a lot of time staying with friends. But in China, we are usually generous(慷慨) with our time. We, as hosts, will appear at an airport even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days of from our work to act as guides to our friends. It is opposite in America. Americans can't manage the time to do so much with a visitor outside their daily plans. They will probably expect the visitors to get to the hotels by themselves and expect the visitors to phone them there. Once the visitors arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real.

    For Americans, it is often considered more friends to invite friends to their homes than to restaurants, except for business matters. Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. So accept their hospitality(款待) at home and enjoy your visit in America!

    As we all know there are all kinds of clubs in US middle schools, such as music club, sports club, chess club, swimming club. But do you know homework club? It is a popular club in many US middle schools. More and more students spend(花费) their afternoons at homework clubs. The US middle school students need a quiet place to study. But games, computers and TVs are all around kids at home. So the homework club is just for them to do their homework. The club is quiet and it's good for students to study. Some teachers are there, too. They can answer students' questions and help with their homework.

    After the students finish their homework, they can go home. Then they can play games or watch TV happily.

    A Chinese song could be heard in a classroom in Sana, the capital of Yemen(也门), where around 20 Chinese-learning schoolchildren were singing

    "I love to learn the Chinese language because it is very nice, important and I want to travel to China to complete my studies there," Karim al-Areqi, a student of the private Languages Model School in Sanaa, told Xinhua.

    Teacher Mohammed al-Ansi, who learnt the language in China and received a university degree, stressed(强调）the importance of learning the Chinese language. "It is the language of the future and it is necessary for all people to get advantages from the great development in China," he said.

    Like many other private elementary and secondary schools in Yemen, the Chinese language is a basic part of the Languages Model School's courses, where the students study Chinese as actively as math and science subjects. "In teaching the Chinese language, I succeeded in educating students in a simple way that fits everyone," al-Ansi said proudly, stressing that teaching Chinese has changed his life without doubt.

    Al-Ansi expects that Yemen and China will work together to set up centers and schools for teaching the Chinese language in Yemen so that many young Yemenis can learn. "I hope that a branch of the Confucius (孔子学院),could be built in Yemen to teach the language and spread the Chinese culture to many years who are interested in learning the Chinese culture and language," he said. see that learning a foreign language may open a way of hope to a new life, such as getting ,more money and paving(铺平)the way to a bright future in the country that has experienced war for almost five years,