Today I went to Sam's school in the UK. It was really different from my school in China.

    Girls wore grey skirts and white shirts, boys wore grey trousers, and everyone wore the school tie.

    Some of Sam's lessons were a bit strange for me. We were reading Shakespeare in the English lesson, and there were quite some old words like “thou” and “thee” to mean “you”. In history we studied 20th Century China. It was strange hearing a foreign side of history—and hearing English people trying to say all our Chinese names!

    Classes were also a lot more relaxing than in China. Teachers were called “sir” or “miss”, everyone shouted answers and raised their hands in classes. It was more like a debate than a class. A bell rang at the end of each lesson and everyone jumped up to go to the next class.

    At break we bought potato chips and cookies in the dining room. Lunch was later than in China at 1 o'clock. We had big plates of pie with carrots. For dessert there was hot sweet rice called rice pudding.

    It was good that I'd had an excellent lunch, because at Sam's school, Monday afternoons are taken up with sports.

    I played my first game of netball—a bit like basketball, but with some differences. Fortunately(幸运的是), I'd had a quick look in the rule book before I tried to join in the game.

    Uncle Lee is coming to have dinner with us. Mom and I go shopping. We don't have any meat. We need to buy some. It's ten yuan a kilo before. But now two kilos are sixty yuan. I say, "Mom, let's buy some fish." Mom answers, "OK." Fish is Uncle Lee's favorite food. We buy one kilo and a half. We also buy some vegetables and some chicken, but we don't buy any hamburgers. Uncle Lee doesn't like them at all. Mom also wants to buy some apples for me. You know, I like bananas, oranges and peaches, but I like apples best. But we can't find any. We go home at a quarter to five in the afternoon.

    This is a story about a boy called Sparky. For Sparky， school was all but impossible. He failed every subject in the eighth grade. He got a zero in physics. It made him the worst physics student in the school's history. He didn't do much better in sports. Although he tried to join the school's golf team， he quickly lost the only important match.

    He didn't have friends， either. Other kids didn't care about him. If a classmate said “Hello” to Sparky outside of school， he would feel very surprised.

    Sparky was a loser(失败者） and everyone knew it. So he accepted it.

But one thing was important to Sparky—drawing. He was proud of his artwork. In senior high school， he sent some cartoons to the editors of the yearbook but he was refused. Sparky was hurt. But he didn't lose hope because he believed in his ability and he stuck to drawing. He decided to become a professional artist.

    He wrote a letter to the Walt Disney Studios after graduating from high school. The studio asked him to draw some cartoons on a certain subject. Sparky spent a lot of time on the cartoons. Finally， the reply came from Disney Studios: they aren't like cartoons.

    Was it time to stop drawing?

Sparky didn't think so. He started to put his own life in the cartoons. He created his childhood self—a little boy loser: Charlie Brown. He wasn't good at football.But Charlie Brown would soon become famous worldwide. Sparky， the boy who used to fail in school and who was refused again and again， was Charles Schulz. He created the Peanuts comic strip and the world-famous cartoon characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

    Some people have a very poor sense of direction. Unluckily，I am one of them. I have visited a place many times but I may still get lost there the next time.

    When I was a little girl，I never dared to ask strangers the way. And so I used to walk round in circles and hope that by chance I would get to the place I was going to.

    Now，I am  no longer too shy to ask people for directions, but I often receive helpless or even wrong information. So I try to avoid giving people wrong directions.  If anyone ever asks me the way somewhere，I would say, "Sorry,  I am a stranger here."

    Once on my way to work I was stopped by a man. He asked me if I could tell him the way to the Friendship Building. I gave him my usual reply. But just as I walked on only a few steps, I realized that he had asked the way to my office building. However, I had no time to turn back and look for him. I was rushing to meet with someone at my office and I didn't want to keep him waiting.

    When I just got to my office, the secretary showed in the man who had asked me for directions. Imagine how embarrassed I was and how surprised he was when we saw each other at the first sight!

    A man once visited a temple that was still being built. He saw a sculptor making a sculpture(雕塑).As he watched the man work on the sculpture, he noticed that there was a similar sculpture lying nearby.

    He felt very strange and asked the sculptor, "Why are you making two same sculptures? Do you need two to put in different places?"

    "No, "the man said without looking up, "We need only one, but the first one became damaged before I could finish it, so I'm making a new one."

    The visitor picked up the damaged sculpture and examined it. But he couldn't find anything wrong with it.

    "Where is the damage?" he asked.

    "There is a scratch(擦痕)on the sculpture's nose." the sculptor said while continuing his work.

    The man then asked, "Where are you going to place the sculpture?"

    The sculptor replied that it would be placed on a 20﹣foot﹣high platform(平台)."If the sculpture is up that high, who is going to notice that there is a scratch on the nose?" the man asked.

    The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the man and said, "I will know it".

    The sculptor chose to stick to a high standard of excellence in his work. Even if other people didn't notice it, it mattered to him that his work should be of the best quality. This is an attitude we should all work hard to keep.