Proudly reading my words, I glanced around the room, only to find my classmates bearing big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Confused, I glanced toward my stone-faced teacher. Having no choice, I slowly raised the report I had slaved over, hoping to hide myself. “What could be causing everyone to act this way?”

    Quickly, I flashed back to the day Miss Lancelot gave me the task. This was the first real talk I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. Since my idea of history came from an ancient teacher in my home country, I had never heard of that name before. As I searched the name of this fellow, it became evident that there were two people bearing the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice; flip (掷) a coin. Heads—the commander, and tails—the peanuts guy. Ah! Tails, my report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, standing before this unfriendly mass, I was totally lost. Oh well, I lowered the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, “My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American Revolution.” The whole world became quite! How could I know that she meant that George Washington?

    Obviously, my grade was awful. Heartbroken but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to Miss Lancelot, but she insisted: No re-dos; no new grade. I felt that the punishment was not justified, and I believed I deserved a second chance. Consequently, I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, that chance unfolded as I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office with my grandfather, now having an entirely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the embarrassing moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster informed me of my option to skip the sixth grade. Justice is sweet!

    The morning had been a disaster. My tooth was aching, and I'd been in an argument with a friend. Her words still hurt: “The trouble with you is that you won't put yourself in my place. Can't you see things from my point of view?” I shook my head stubbornly—and felt the ache in my tooth. I'd thought I could hold out till my dentist came back from holiday, but the pain was really unbearable. I started calling the dentists in the phone book, but no one could see me immediately. Finally, at about lunchtime, I got lucky.

    “If you come by right now,” the receptionist said, “the dentist will fit you in.”

    I took my purse and keys and rushed to my car. But suddenly I began to doubt about the dentist. What kind of dentist would be so eager to treat someone at such short time? Why wasn't he as busy as the others?

    In the dentist's office, I sat down and looked around. I saw nothing but the bare walls and I became even more worried. The assistant noticed my nervousness and placed her warm hand over my ice-cold one.

    When I told her my fears, she laughed and said, “Don't worry. The dentist is very good.”

    “How long do I have to wait for him?” I asked impatiently.

    “Come on, he is coming. Just lie down and relax. And enjoy the artwork,” the assistant said.

    “The artwork?” I was puzzled.

    The chair went back, suddenly I smiled. There was a beautiful picture, right where I could enjoy it: on the ceiling. How considerate the dentist was! At that moment, I began to understand what my friend meant by her words.

    What a relief！

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    The kindly “Chinese Fortune Grandpa” wearing Han Chinese clothing and holding a fortune bag debuted （亮相） at the Imperial Ancestral Shrine in Beijing on the day after Christmas. The final image of the Chinese gift-giver was selected through a global design competition against “Santa Claus”, according to a report by Guangming Daily.

    Many Chinese cities have been filled with Christmas neon lights, Christmas songs, Christmas trees, and the images of “Santa Claus”in recent days. As a matter of fact, foreign festivals are becoming more popular than certain traditional Chinese festivals among the Chinese people, particularly the youth. “Certain traditional festivals have died out because people have forgotten their spiritual meanings, ”said noted writer Feng Jicai. More and more Chinese people are beginning to exchange gifts on Valentine's Day and Christmas. However, many of them know nothing about Chinese New Year pictures or sugarcoated figurines（小糖人）, and have never heard suona music. Certain folk customs on the Dragon Boat Festival, Tomb Sweeping Day, and other traditional festivals have gradually disappeared. Under such circumstances, even the “Chinese Fortune Grandpa” is unlikely to defeat “Santa Claus”.

    However, it is not a bad thing to some extent. It constantly reminds people to restore the “true face” of traditional festivals. China has listed traditional Tomb Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival as legal holidays, which brings more paid leaves to the public, and helps to awake the public awareness of traditional festivals.

    In modern society, festival is a carrier of culture and its meaning largely depends on their understandings and usages by people. Compared with foreign festivals, traditional Chinese festivals are not inferior （次于） in cultural meanings, but lack of fashion sought by modern people. If people do not appreciate the historical culture contained by traditional festivals, and only take pleasure-seeking as the most important, the significance of traditional festivals will fade away and the inheritance （继承） of fine traditional culture will be cut off.

    Rosie Dutton, a teacher from Relax Kids in Tamworth, UK, used two apples to show her students the often unseen but harmful effects of school bullying(校园欺凌). She posted the lesson on Facebook, where it's been shared more than 160,000 times.

    Rosie Dutton explained that during one of her classes she presented the children with two red apples. What the kids didn't know was that before the lesson, she had repeatedly dropped one of the apples on the floor. And yet, on the outside at least, both apples looked perfect.

    “I picked up the apple I'd dropped on the floor and started to tell the children how I disliked this apple,” Dutton wrote. “I told them that because I didn't like it, I didn't want them to like it either, so they should call it names too.”Some of the children looked at her as if she were “crazy”, but the students passed the apple around the circle, calling it names.

    Continuing the exercise, the teacher then passed the second apple around the circle. This apple, however, was showered with words like: “Your skin is beautiful,” and “ what a beautiful colour you have.”

    Dutton then showed the students both apples once again, stressing that “there was no change, and both apples still looked the same.”

    Finally, Dutton cut both apples open. The apple that the class treated kindly looked fresh inside. But the other apple—the one they'd treated poorly —was bruised（瘀伤的) beneath its skin.

    “I think there was a light bulb moment for the children immediately,” Dutton said. “When people are bullied, especially children, they feel horrible inside and sometimes don't show or tell others how they are feeling. If we hadn't have cut that apple open, we would never have known how much pain we had caused it.”

    Dutton explained how important it is to teach children to stand up for one another, and to stop any form of bullying.

    “Let's create a generation of kind caring children,” the teacher wrote. “The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.”

    I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight(货运) yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can slightly 1 the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It would be wonderful to see again, but 2 can do strange things to people.

    It 3 to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn't been 4. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so 5, otherwise. I don't mean that I would prefer to go without my 6. I simply mean that the loss of them made me 7 the more what I had left.

    Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of 8 to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more 9 his own private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. The hardest 10 I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was 11, If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have 12 and become a chair rocker on the front porch(门廊) for the rest of my life.

    It took me years to discover and 13 this believe. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was 14 at me and I was hurt. "I can't use this," I said. "15 it with you," he urged me, "and roll it around." The words stuck in my head. "Roll it around!" By rolling the ball I could hear 16 it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought 17: playing baseball. At Philadelphia's Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of 18. We called it ground ball.

    All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my 19. It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of 20. I would fail sometimes anyway but on average I made progress.

    In 2012 my wife and I decided to open our bookstore in spite of unfavorable situations. The challenges facing small bookstores were-and remain-significant. Apart from the obvious rise in online selling, the increase in the popularity of e-books has negatively affected independent providers.

    The question is why a new, small-scale（小规模的）provide would voluntarily enter such a challenging market? From a personal view, our reasoning was sound: we wanted to share our love of great books and reading for pleasure with as many like-minded people as possible.

    Having done our homework, one thing became clear. In order for us to succeed, we would have to offer something that none of our larger competitors already provided. And so we started the Willoughby Book Club. We set up our website in the summer of 2012, and we haven't looked back.

    The idea of service is simple. We offer a range of book subscription gift packages, available in three-month, six-month and 12-month options. Our customers choose a package, tell us a little about the person they're buying it for, and we use this information to send the receiver a hand-picked, gift-wrapped book once a month. We also recently decided to give one new book to Book Aid International for every gift subscription sold. These books are sent out to sub-Saharan Africa, supporting the educational work there. Within four months of starting out, we won the Young Bookseller of the Year Award at the 2013 Bookseller awards.

    Our brief journey from new booksellers to award receivers has been challenging and rewarding. The biggest thing we've learned is that, despite the pressures facing independent providers, there is a place for them in the UK market. It's just a question of finding it.

    It was many years ago. I was a young dad sitting on the couch reading a fairy tale to my little girl. She sat next to me with her head on my arm as I told the tale. When it came to the end I finished with those famous words: "And they lived happily ever after." As I looked over to her with her wavy(鬈曲的), brown hair and big, innocent eyes I could see the smile on her face and I never wanted it to end. Then it dawned on me that the ending of the book was what I wanted for her. I wanted her to "live happily ever after".

    Still, deep in my heart I knew that this couldn't always be so. I knew that there would be times when her heart was broken. I knew there would be times when she cried in grief and I couldn't comfort her. I knew there would be times when all she felt was fear, sadness, sorrow, and despair. As I stroked her hair and smiled at her I hoped that those times would be brief and that she would have joy in her life more often than not. Living happily ever after, though, seemed out of the question.

    It takes me a lot of years to realize that it is possible to live happily ever after. You just have to do it "one day at a time". Happiness you see isn't some reward that you get at the end of your journey. Happiness isn't something that depends on what life you own. Happiness is something you create in your life choice by choice and day by day.

    The truth is happiness comes when you love. Love is a gift from God. It is love that mends broken hearts. It is love that heals grief. It is love that gives us joy. Choose to "live happily ever after, one day at a time".

    How far would you go for your kids education? That's a question many parents are asking in the wake of the college cheating scandal(丑闻)involving 38 wealthy parents around the country, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Here's how far I went. In the fall of 2017 my husband and I lost our jobs. We had to tell our daughter, Casey, that we couldn't afford to send her back to school for her junior year at Fordham University. We decided the best choice for our family would be for Casey to sit out a year. We promised that we would get her back the following year. Casey decided to spend the year volunteering in South Africa On Sept 30, 2017, we put our oldest child on a plane halfway around the world. Casey worked as a tutor teaching kids math, English and music in Johannesburg. We did get Casey back in school in time. When she returned to the campus, she studied harder. She isn't what she used to be. Each day is marked by gratitude because she knows what it is like not to be able to get an education.

    I wonder why the college cheating scandal happened and I think it boils down to this: Parents want to create a comfort zone for their kids. Of course, we want the best for our kids but sometimes we forget that real growth doesn't happen in times of comfort; those valuable lessons come when we are forced to think in ways we otherwise wouldn't have.

    While I did less for my child than these wealthy parents did in terms of means, in other ways I did more. I taught her that disappointment is a part of life and we should face it bravely rather than avoid it. My husband and I showed Casey that her strength is in her struggle. That's how far I went for my kid s education. And I dare say she is wiser and better off for it.

    My mother has a dining table which sits right in the middle of her dining room. It was once buried beneath piles of papers—magazines, articles, copies of schedules for vacations she took back in the 1990s, and baby pictures of grand children who are now paying off their college loans.

    My brother Ross and I recently flew to New York to visit my mother. "Mom, why don't we go through all that stuff?" Ross said. "No. Don't touch it!" My mother said. The next afternoon, when she couldn't find a bill she needed, Ross suggested it might be put somewhere in the dining room and that we find it together. "Besides," he said, "all those papers are clearly stressing you out." However, my mother just said, "Are you boys hungry?" And then she seemed to have lost herself in deep thought.

    On our last night there, my mother walked up to us with a small pile of unopened mails, which she had collected at the western edge of the dining table, and said, "Help me go through these." "Sure," I said. When we had succeeded in separating wheat from chaff (谷壳), I asked, "Would you want to deal with another little pile of papers?"

    My mother led the way  walking into the dining room the way an animal manager might be while entering a cage with tigers in it. Ross and I came in behind her and suddenly he reached for a pile of the papers on one side of the table. "No!" my mother said sharply. "Let's start at the other end. That's where the older stuff is." Finally, we threw 95 percent of the stuff into paper shopping bags. Then I asked what she wanted us to do with them, she surprised us all by saying, "Put them in the incinerator (垃圾焚化炉)."

    When I returned home, inspired by the visit to my mother, I sorted out my own accumulated(累积的) piles of papers, sold or gave away half of my possessions, and moved into a smaller house. It seems that my life has been cheaper and easier since then. And it proves that a small change does make a big difference.

    When I was a boy, my parents and I traveled from New York City to the Pennsylvania countryside for a weeklong taste of rural life. We stayed in a guesthouse on a farm, joining the daily routines and eating meals with the farmer and his family. We got up early to see the cows as they were milked. I even tried my hand at milking one, and then joined the farmer as he released the cows into the field afterward.

    Decades later I still have vivid memories of that trip which made me realize the value of a vacation, of seeing new things, meeting new people and sharing memorable experiences with family members. To this day, I still consider that family trip when I plan to take time off with my wife and kids. Vacations are a time for resting and connecting. As a bank manager, I spend much of my workday encouraging my customers to save their money. One of the reasons I give is that we should all have enough for a family vacation every year. In our busy lives, family is what we should be saving our money and time for.

    For my family, our vacation starts when we begin planning the trip. We talk about destinations and our budget (预算) ahead of time. Among the things we discuss: Can we save money by renting a house instead of spending six nights in a hotel? Would it be better to buy groceries and cook for ourselves rather than eat out every night? Involving (使参与) the kids in planning the vacation makes sure that they have a great vacation too. I prefer to visit historical sites and museums while they love to fish and swim. So I build in some relaxation time for us all so that the vacation can work for everyone.

    Each year, setting aside vacation time to spend together is especially important to us. A relaxing environment opens the doors to all kinds of conversations—deep, silly or meaningful. There's no pleasure from the usual everyday tasks. What matters is that everyone is having a great time.

    I must have always known reading was very important because the first memories I have as a child deal with books. There was not one night that I don't remember mom reading me a storybook by my bedside. I was extremely inspired by the elegant way the words sounded.

    I always wanted to know what my mom was reading. Hearing mom say, "I can't believe what's printed in the newspaper this morning," made me want to grab it out of her hands and read it myself. I wanted to be like my mom and know all of the things she knew. So I carried around a book, and each night, just to be like her, I would pretend to be reading.

    This is how everyone learned to read. We would start off with sentences, then paragraphs, and then stories. It seemed an unending journey, but even as a six-year-old girl I realized that knowing how to read could open many doors. When mom said," The C-A-N-D-Y is hidden on the top shelf," I knew where the candy was. My progress in reading raised my curiosity, and I wanted to know everything. I often found myself telling my mom to drive more slowly, so that I could read all of the road signs we passed.

    Most of my reading through primary, middle and high school was factual reading. I read for knowledge, and to make A's on my tests. Occasionally, I would read a novel that was assigned, but I didn't enjoy this type of reading. I liked facts, things that are concrete. I thought anything abstract left too much room for argument.

    Yet, now that I'm growing and the world I once knew as being so simple is becoming more complex, I find myself needing a way to escape. By opening a novel, I can leave behind my burdens and enter into a wonderful and mysterious world where I am now a new character. In these worlds I can become anyone. I don't have to write down what happened or what technique the author was using when he or she wrote this. I just read to relax.

    We're taught to read because it's necessary for much of human understanding. Reading is a vital part of my life. Reading satisfies my desire to keep learning. And I've found that the possibilities that lie within books are limitless.

At just 40 years old, hip-hop star Kasseem Dean, more popularly known as Swizz Beatz, has amassed (积累) a track record, lifestyle and nearly $ 70 million net worth that would inspire most of us to retire early. So why does Dean continue to both work extremely hard and try projects that come with the risk of rejection (拒绝)?

During our interview for Uncommon Drive, a video series for USA & Main that seeks to find out the motivations and magic of world-class business people, Dean provided a memorable answer: "You only have so much time — once it's gone you don't get it back. Don't focus on money; focus on building something greater than yourself. If you're not making history, you're wasting your time on Earth."

When you look at his answer, you will learn two important lessons. The first is in "making history". Doing so requires awareness. You must fully understand what has and has not been achieved in the market you've entered. Dean makes every effort with the goal of creating something important that has not been done before and will be remembered for its impact beyond his years.

The second part of his statement is just as powerful. In this interview, he never once said he is "trying" to make history. Instead, he has told himself that no matter what difficulty there is, it's just going to happen. "I'm going to make history." Dean said.

After talking to Dean for nearly 45 minutes, it was clear to me that he has removed all ego from a statement that might otherwise be misread as false pride. I believe it's a brilliant wisdom — rather than focus on all the reasons why a project can't be realized, he has convinced himself of the possibility.

At a bright new building in Landover, Maryland, students are getting a crash course(速成课), in which they are learning how to spend, save and look after their money responsibly.

Tuesday marked the grand opening of the newest Junior Achievement Finance Park， where eighth-graders from Prince George's County schools will use tablet computers to practice personal finance skills they have learned in class. An international study last year clearly showed that more than 1 in 6 U. S. teens is unable to make simple choices about how to spend their money.

The center, a mini city of stores, was created by Prince George's County schools, Capital One Bank and Junior Achievement of Greater Washington. In fact the first Washington-area Finance Park opened in Fairfax County, Virginia, five years ago. Altogether there are 17 finance parks nationwide, and one is planned to open in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Before coming to a finance park, students have lessons on how to save and invest, how to read a bank statement and how to make sense of debit (借记) and credit cards. They put their skills to the test when they walk inside. Students are given a career, salary, debt and family situation, and then they are required to have to put together a monthly budget (预算).

Budgeting can be tricky. Students need to figure out how much to spend on groceries, rent, transportation and even entertainment. They shop with virtual (虚拟的）money，making a change in their budgets according to different situations they may go into.

When asked about the practice, LaChelle King，a teacher at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, said the center was exciting and surprising for her students. One of the kids said," Now I know why my mom gets mad at me when I ask her to buy me things!"

From the very beginning of school we make books and reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation. When children are little we make them read aloud, before the teacher and other children, so that we can be sure they "know" all the words they are reading. This means that when they don't know a word, they are going to make a mistake, right in front of everyone. After having taught fifth-grade classes for four years, I decided to try at all costs to rid them of their fear and dislike of books, and to get them to read oftener and more adventurously.

One day soon after school had started, I said to them, "Now I'm going to say something about reading that you have probably never heard a teacher say before. I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that's enough for me. Also I'm not going to ask you what words mean. "

The children sat stunned and silent. Was this a teacher talking? One girl, who had just come to us from a school where she had had a very hard time, looked at me steadily for a long time after I had finished. Then, still looking at me, she said slowly and seriously, "Mr Holt, do you really mean that?" I said just as seriously, "I mean every word of it. "

During the spring she really astonished me. One day, she was reading at her desk. From a glimpse of the illustrations I thought I knew what the book was. I said to myself, "It can't be. " and went to take a closer look. Sure enough, she was reading Moby Dick, in edition with woodcuts. I said, "Don't you find parts of it rather heavy going?" She answered, "Oh, sure, but I just skip over those parts and go on to the next good part. "

This is exactly what reading should be and in school so seldom is, an exciting, joyous adventure. Find something, dive into it, take the good parts, skip the bad parts, get what you can out of it, go on to something else. How different is our mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of "understanding" that can be dug out of a book!

Over the years, you've probably known a good number of people-some for only a short period and others for a much longer time. If you spend a moment thinking back on the people who have meant the very most to you, selflessness will be the same thing they share. There might have been a person who really believed in you. Someone taught you something important. Someone cared for you in his or her own way. Someone has simply always remained your friend.

Many years ago, I traveled through the beautiful, history-rich country of Greece. With only a small backpack, I stayed at youth hotels, visiting city after city. One day, a shoulder strap on my backpack broke. I didn't speak any Greek and the owner didn't speak any English. I went to the front desk of my hotel and tried to ask him if there might be a shop nearby where I could have it repaired. He was clearly very busy. But he asked someone to watch over the front desk and then signed to me to follow him. We walked together for a few blocks, arriving at a little shoe repair shop. Within ten minutes, my backpack was repaired, and then the hotel owner insisted on paying for it!

I was shocked by this powerful, unexpected kindness. More than any other thing, it's what I recall most often when I think about my trip to Greece. Sometimes, you may not have even realized how much your selflessness toward someone has mattered. As the saying goes, "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world."

A city in Korea, which has the world's largest number of people using smartphones, has placed flashing lights and laser beams at a road crossing to warn" smartphone zombies" to look up and drivers to slow down, in the hope of preventing accidents.

The designers of the system were motivated by growing worry that more pedestrians glued to their phones will become victims in a country that already has some of the highest road death and injury rates among developed countries. State-run Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) believes its system of flashing lights at zebra crossings can warn both pedestrians and drivers.

In addition to red, yellow and blue LED lights on the pavement," smombies" —smartphone zombies—will be warned by laser beam projected from power poles and a warning sent to the phones by an app that they are about to step into traffic.

"Increasing number of smombie accidents have occurred in pedestrian crossings, so these zombie lights are essential to prevent these pedestrian accidents," said KICT senior researcher Kim Jong-hoon. Drivers are warned by the flashing lights, which have shown to be effective 83. 4 percent of the time in the institute's tests involving about 1, 000 vehicles.

In 2017, more than 1, 600 pedestrians were killed in auto related accidents, which is about 40 percent of total traffic deaths, according to data from the Traffic Accident Analysis System. For now, the smombie warning system is placed only in Ilsan, a suburban city about 30 km northwest of the capital, Seoul, but is expected to go nationwide, according to the institute.

Kim Dan-hee, a 23-year-old resident of Ilsan, welcomed the system, saying she was often too absorbed in her phone to remember to look at traffic." This flashing light makes me feel safe as it makes me look around again, and I hope that we can have more of these in town," she said.

Believe it or not, a foodie friend of mine asked me whether I'd seen the TV series Chef's Table. Of course, I hadn't seen it because I'm not that into food. But I do get hungry for adventure sometimes, so I decided to watch the show.

This is when I was introduced to the chef Francis Mallmann. He makes choices; he doesn't plan. When he was young, he looked for instructors and experiences, not books or paths. He honored his roots but enjoyed the world and sought things and places he didn't know. He doesn't cling to one lifestyle and he doesn't bend to expectations.

This made me wonder: Aren't we supposed to assess risks, have a plan and then make our move? I grew up thinking I had to have a plan and have long-term stability in front of me. When I saw Mallmann doing what made him happy, everything changed.

I thought to myself, "That's how we're supposed to live." Being true to myself, I have already reconciled (和解)with the shame of being inspired by a TV show. Mallmann is inspired by nature, food and language. Me? My life-changing moment came from watching Netflix with my dollar store reading glasses on. No wonder I felt slightly unfulfilled.

After watching Mallmann, I felt as if I'd stood up from a cozy fireplace and the blanket of my life just fell to the ground.

I submitted my leave of absence application to my employer less than a month later. I'm now full of excitement. I'm leaving my job and a good salary, and I'm going to do things that feed my soul.

Michael Kernis and Brian Goldman, psychologists at Clayton State University in Georgia, studied the benefits of authenticity (真实性)and being true to yourself. Some of the benefits of following your inner voice include enjoying a strong sense of purpose in life, greater confidence, healthier relationships and strong skills to deal with change or difficulty.

So, if you're out there living an interesting life and you meet Mallmann, throw one of his burnt potatoes at him for me. And then tell him I say thank you. I might soon be hungrier and poorer than I was before, but at least I'll be staying true to who I am. I have Mallmann to thank for that.

As I work in the garden, I take my time and the garden is teaching me about working with the earth. I recognize that there will be both successes and failures and there are many variables that affect them both.

The quality of the seeds planted has a bearing on how well the plants will grow. But the weather affects that most. It can be too hot, too cold, or exactly right, and usually fluctuates (起伏) between all three. Weeds seem to grow well in the garden and need to be taken care of and pulled to ensure they do not destroy the fruits, vegetables, and flowers we have so lovingly planted.

I take time to stand back and rest, and to observe the plants and how they are growing. Each plant is unique and develops in the way that is best for them. Some have large broad leaves to protect their fruit from the harsh rays of the sun, while other plants are more open, their fruit needing the light to grow and ripen.

Getting my hands dirty, feeling the sweat on my brow, and the strength and flexibility of my body as I dig, bend and work under the warm summer sun, reminds me I am alive in ways I would not have remembered sitting on the couch.

It is very inspiring to move things around, to transplant, and to disturb the natural order of how plants grow. The garden teaches me that it is important to know when to disturb things and when to let them be. The garden's life cycle follows a pattern that is repeated according to laws of nature, birth, and growth, and then dies and it teaches us to accept this fact.

Perhaps life is like the garden, successes and failures, time to be active and time to rest, to let go of what is no longer needed, to cultivate (培养) what helps us to grow into our light and power, and to embrace life from beginning to end. 

When we moved into our home in Maui, Hawaii, 16 years ago, one good thing about this house was the huge avocado (牛油果) tree growing in the backyard.

This tree gave the most delicious avocados I have ever tasted. I lived on these avocados when nursing my first child. Fresh avocado was the very first food for my kids. This tree was so huge that it cast a massive shadow over our backyard. It was truly our magical tree.

Until one day, someone from the Health Department came to tell us that our avocado tree was too large and needed trimming (修剪). In New York, you get in trouble if you don't clear the snow off your sidewalk. Here, it's when your trees are too high. So along came the trimmer, leaving just the trunk and a few branches. I was sad. The kids were all sad. Some friends who knew it would say," "It's going to grow back. Your next avocados will be crazy!" Yeah, whatever. The tree is gone, so stop doing that. It just didn't work.

But a few days later, I noticed some unusual butterflies flying around the yard. And then, the sun came in the kitchen, creating this pleasant warmth once blocked by the huge tree. After about a month, I started to notice some tiny green shoots coming out of the cut branches, which eventually turned into full-on bright green leaves.

I started to feel like all was going to be fine, kind of like life. Little do we know what seems really difficult is actually life's way of making us stronger. It's life's way of bringing in the butterflies, the sunshine, and the delightful flowers. We all know that saying, "It will be OK in the end. If it's not, it's not the end."

When we do not understand each other's language，we can talk with the help of body language.

A Frenchman was once traveling in England. He couldn't speak English at all. One day he went into a restaurant and sat down at a table. When the waiter came，he opened his mouth, put his fingers in it and took them out again. He wanted to say, "Bring me something to eat." The waiter soon brought him a cup of tea. The man moved his head from side to side. The waiter understood him and took the tea away. In a moment he came again with a cup of coffee and put it on the table. The man again refused his offer. He shook his head whenever the waiter brought him something to drink, because drinks are not food. When the man was going away, another man came in. This man saw the waiter, and he put his hands on his stomach. That was enough. In a few minutes there was a large plate of meat and vegetables on the table in front of him.

So you see, we can understand the language of signs as well as we can understand the language of words.