Cheating happens a lot in our city. It can be hard to know who is really in 1 and who is trying to take advantage of other people's   2.

    Recently, I was finishing my work at home3 the dog barked letting me know that 4 was at the gate. I rushed to see who it was and there I saw a 5 weak woman in her late fifties.

    I said to her, “May I ask what you6?”

    She 7, “Hello, my name is Parvathy. My husband and I live nearby. We earn our living8working at construction sites. A few days ago my9 fell off the stairs while 10 a heavy load. He is 11hurt and hasn't been able to 12for the past five days, so we have no food. Now he is at home in bed with a high fever. Please help me! I need to take my husband to a doctor!”

    “Oh!” I said. “Please13here.” I went into the room. I felt really bad about her 14but ...Was she telling me the15or trying to cheat me out of my money?

    Finally, I 16 to help her. But first I said a simple prayer, “Dear Lord, you know17 I earn my pennies, so please make sure that my hard earned money helps those who 18 need it.”

I went out with a fifty note and19 it to her. The moment she got the money she broke down in tears. She took my hand and said, “Thank you so much!”

    I was so 20, and turned back to my work smiling.

    Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were the first people to climb the West Face of the Siula Grande in the Andes mountains. They reached the top1 but on their way back conditions were very 2.

    Joe fell and broke his leg. They both knew that if Simon 3 alone, he would probably get back4. But Simon decided to risk his5and try to lower Joe down the mountain on a rope（绳）.

    As they went down, the weather got worse. Then another troubled 6.They couldn't see or hear each other and, by mistake, Simon lowered his friend over the edge of a precipice（峭壁）. It was impossible for Joe to climb back or for Simon to pull him up. Joe's 7 was pulling Simon slowly towards the precipice.8, after more than an hour in the dark and the icy cold, Simon had to9. In tears, he cut the rope. Joe10into a large crevasse（裂缝）in the ice below. He had no food or water and he was in terrible pain. He couldn't walk, but he11 to get out of the crevasse and started to move towards their camp, nearly ten kilometers12.

    Simon had returned to the camp at the foot of the mountain. He thought that Joe must be13, but he didn't want to leave 14. Three days later, in the middle of the night, he heard Joe's voice. He couldn't 15 it. Joe was there, a few meters from their tent, still alive.

    She died at the age of 15 in one of the history's greatest sad stories,1her thoughts live on to this day through the diary in which she recorded her2.Though she was touched by despair（绝望）and terror, the message of3in her words has encouraged many. Anne Frank, the most famous4child of World WarⅡ, is indeed a symbol of the Holocaust（大屠杀）.Her secret writings, which later came out5“The Diary of Anne Frank”,6of two years in the life of a young Jewish girl hiding in Nazi-controlled Amsterdam. To mark the 75^th anniversary of her7,on June 12 this year(2004),www.annefrank.org is to8some rare photographs of the girl taken when she was 12.

    Born in 1929,Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was9to go into hiding to10being arrested（逮捕）by the Nazis. She and her family, along with four 11,spent 25 months in a few small rooms above her father's office in Amsterdam. The family was12founded by the Nazis, and forced to go to a concentration camps（集中营）.In March 1945,nine months after she was arrested and shortly13the camp was liberated（解放）,Anne Frank was killed.

Her diary, first coming out in 1947, has become one of the world's most 14read books. It has been translated into 67 languages. The following is the most 15part of Anne's diary.

    “It's16for me to build my enjoyable life on a foundation of chaos（混乱）,suffering and death. I see the world being slowly changed into a wilderness.I17the approaching thunder that, one day, will kill us too.I feel the18of millions.And yet,when I look up at the sky,I feel that everything will change for the19,that this cruelty shall end and that peace will20once more.”

—July 15, 1944

    My friend and I were at a restaurant in Berkeley for an evening fast food. All of a sudden we decided to do a small act of 1 —to use the smile card to. 2 someone's day.

    Being at a restaurant, we intended to pay for someone else anonymously(匿名)and see what 3. We got all excited with the 4 and set about doing that.

    We looked around for which table we should pay for, and then 5 a table—it seemed like an immigrant family with a few children, 6 their meals at that time. I could sense a family 7 in them and that they were having a nice time together. We called on our waitress to 8 the idea to her.

    As soon as we told her we wanted to pay for another table and showed her the 9, she got super thrilled! We told her about it and made sure she knew we wanted to be anonymous, which made us further 10. After a while, she came back and told us the waitress for that table was 11 to tears when hearing about our idea.

    Soon after, we left, feeling delighted and grateful to get all opportunity to 12 smiles. It is hard to explain how it felt in the moment, but it 13 felt special, not because I was “helping” someone, but because I felt 14 to people I didn't even know—the waitresses and the family. It also, in some form, melted me to see how people 15 to generosity, which has become so 16 in today's commercial lifestyle. I felt something inside me 17.  

    I don't know what happened next, how the family felt and 18 or how the waitresses 19 the situation, but I am sure it brought a few 20 to a few people including myself.

    While I was waiting to enter university, I saw in a newspaper a teaching job 1 at a school about ten miles from where I lived. Being very short of 2 and wanting to do something 3 I applied (申请), 4 as I did so, that without a degree and with no 5 of teaching my chances of getting the job were 6.

    However, three days later, a letter arrived, calling me to Croydon for a meeting with the headmaster. It proved to be a 7 journey: a train to Croydon station, a ten-minute bus ride and then a walk of at 8 a quarter of a mile. As a result I arrived there, feeling too hot to be nervous. It was clearly the 9 himself that 10 the door. He was short and round.

    "The school," he said, "is made up of one 11 of twenty-four boys between seven and thirteen." I should have to teach all the subjects except art, 12 he taught himself. I should have to divide the class into 13 groups and teach them in turn at three different 14, and I was 15 at the thought of teaching maths—a subject at which I wasn't very 16 at school. Worse perhaps was the idea of 17 to teach them on Saturday afternoon because most of my friends would be 18 themselves at that time.

    Before I had time to ask about my salary, he got up to his 19. "Now" he said, you'd better meet my wife. She is the one who really 20 this school.

For about three years now, I have been writing poetry. It was not until my junior year in high school that I developed an interest, love and skill for writing poetry. 

Back in elementary school, I loved to write stories. I would write stories on post-it notes and anywhere I could. Yet when I had to write a limerick(五行打油诗) for an assignment, I could not wrap my head around poetry. I had a very hard time figuring out how to rhyme words and have the words make sense. I eventually tossed the paper with the attempted limerick in the trash. I did not try my hand at poetry again until several years later. 

Many years later in my freshman year of high school, my English teacher gave my class a poetry project as an assignment. I still remember my limerick assignment and was afraid of doing the poetry project. For the project, we had to analyse a poem and write a response to it. I chose to respond to Robert Frost's poem Fire and Ice. I also wrote my own poem first. I became really excited when writing the poem. 

Two years later, I started writing poetry as a hobby and for fun. To learn how good or bad my poems were, I handed them in to some magazines and contests. I won the second place in the North Carolina Poetry Society's Sherry Pruitt Award Contest, and had my two poems published as high quality poems. I have continued to write poetry, and have even self-published three collections of poetry in both print and e-book formats, which can be found in my store on Lulu. 

Now, I love writing poetry, but I don't hate writing short stories. I just find it more difficult and not my style of writing, even though I still write short stories occasionally.