I’m so pleased you can come surfing(冲浪) in August！ Paul, Rose and Kevin are coming too, so there will be five of us. We've decided to return to New Sands, because the surf board hire(租) is so cheap there. I'm starting to think about where to stay.

Kevin wants to hire a caravan. There are some nice ones with 3 bedrooms, showers, and cooking equipment. The problem is, none of the caravan parks takes short bookings in the summer. We have to stay for at least a week. It's a shame because there are several nice parks near the beach.

There's a good youth hostel(青年旅社) in New Sands. It's the cheapest choice, and there's a big kitchen where we can cook. The problem is, we live in dormitories and I don't really want to sleep with strangers.

There are a few guest houses in New Sands. They're not expensive, but we wouldn't be able to cook there. We'd have to eat out at restaurants. We'll have to book soon because many of them are already full.

The final choice is to rent a cottage. Few cottages offer mid-week breaks in summer, but I found one. It has three bedrooms — a double, a single and a twin, so two of us would have to share a bed！ There's a big kitchen diner with a microwave, washing machine and dishwasher. The problem is, it's 5 miles from the beach, so we'd have to hire a car, because there aren't any buses.

Let me know which choice you prefer.

Reading didn't really change my life until I saw it change the life of a child. Marcus was a quiet boy who lived with his mother in a shelter (收容所) for the poor. Because he was the weakest _______ in his class, he became one of my Reading Help students. Marcus knew letters but couldn't read at all. However, he worked very hard and made progress very _______. I often gave him books to take home every night so that he could read them with his mother.

One day, Marcus didn't bring his books back. He looked so _______ that he was about to cry.

When asked why, he told me that someone had taken his book bag during the night. I put my arm around his shoulders and _______ that I would give him more books to take home. "Maybe the person who took your books," I said, "will become a good reader just like you."

A few weeks later, I learned Marcus and his mother were being moved to a different shelter across town for safety. I began to _________ what his future would be if he couldn't finish the program. Marcus' mother was worried too, so she put him on public transportation every day and sent him all the way across town to _______ with me.

Marcus finally graduated from the program as a strong reader. We had a small celebration and I gave him a book to keep. That was the last time I saw Marcus. Although I may never see him again, I'm certain that learning to read changed his life forever. The _______ certainly changed mine. Since then, I've taught many struggling readers, from ages 5 to 75. Each student has increased my love for teaching reading. Each one reminds me what a/an _______ it is to be a teacher working with struggling readers, and how happy it is to see lives changed forever by the simple joy of reading.

This weekend a marathon ( 马拉松 ) took place in Salzburg. I admired the runners who ran 42.2 kilometers for over four hours. But I've never run for more than half an hour.

At university I play korfball. This is a team sport with eight people on each team. The aim is to shoot ( 投篮 ) the ball into the hoop. All players get a chance to attack ( 攻 ) and defend ( 守 ) during the game and it's very fast. When I started korfball, I wasn't very good at it. I could throw and catch but I wasn't very fast on my feet. Shooting was also difficult for me. However, I really enjoyed the sport and made friends in the club, so I went training twice a week. Two years later I am in the first team for my university and have played in many matches. This just shows if you train hard, you can succeed.

Running is difficult because you have to make yourself willing to keep going. I used to get really out of breath while running and I didn't feel good at all! Now I actually enjoy going for a run along the river in Salzburg, feeling my muscles ( 肌肉 ) working and breathing in the fresh air.

Challenging exercise is always worth doing. Hiking is fun because all the hard work—walking uphill comes at the beginning of the day, then at the top of the mountain you can enjoy the view. At the end of the day you feel like you've really achieved something.

I will never be a marathon runner, but I would like to try a 10-km run sometime, or perhaps even a half-marathon. How happy the runners were as they crossed the finishing line! I'd like to have that feeling—the months of training paying off as you achieve your goal.

Do you use emoji very often? It's said that emoji is the fastest growing language in history. Five billion emojis are sent every day just on some social media, such as Wechat and Facebook.

They're appearing in some surprising places too. One court ( 法庭 ) judge in England used a smiley face emoji in a document ( 文件, 文献 ) to make it easy to explain the court's decision to children. It's not surprising that there's a day to celebrate emojis, but what do you know about its organizers, the website Emojipedia?

The company Unicode actually creates the computer code that gives us emojis, but Emojipediais where you can learn exactly what each emoji means and how to use it. Most of us probably know and use the most popular emojis, like the classic smiley face, heart or the smiling face with tears of laughter. But if you want to grow your emoji vocabulary, you can use Emojipedia to find out new ways to speak emoji.

Unicode adds new emojis all the time. They might take time to be shown on all platforms and phones, but you will see them immediately on Emojipedia. An important improvement to the emoji list, which had 2, 823 emojis after its 2018 update, is to make the emojis more various. The code for each emoji is the same, but different platforms, like Wechat or Facebook, design their emojis in different ways. When Emojipedia was deciding on which day to hold World Emoji Day, only Apple was using a calendar emoji with a date on, 17 July. So, they decided to celebrate World Emoji Day on 17 July too.

If you want to send someone a message using emoji to celebrate World Emoji Day, Emojipedia has plenty to choose from, including six colors of raising hand emojis, five party emojis and two kinds of fireworks. You can even choose a world globe that shows the part of the world you live in. Whichever emojis you choose to celebrate, we wish you Happy World Emoji Day!

   A blog posted Dec 7, 2018 at 12:17 PM by Alanna Mallon Alanna Mallon is a Cambridge City Councilor.

Each year in November, I receive a lot of emails and texts from friends who want to volunteer with their families on Thanksgiving as a way to give back. I also field phone calls from organizations who want to donate ( 捐赠 ) to local programs that provide Thanksgiving meals.

However, as an official who still works in the nonprofit sector (非盈利部门), I also feel deeply anxious (焦急的) because I know the other 51 weeks of the year, these key programs that provide food to residents (居民) in need are eager for both volunteers and donations. Hunger is a year round problem, and each week volunteers are the necessary part to make sure that programs are able to serve the community.

At Food For Free, we depend on about 100 volunteers per week, and each of those volunteers is extremely important to providing fresh, healthy food to people in the Greater Boston area who need it. School children who take backpacks of food home on Fridays, community college students who depend on our Family Meals program to support their healthy growth, elderly and disabled residents who receive twice monthly deliveries of food to their doors through our Home Delivery program, they all depend on us making sure enough volunteers show up to do the work.

These volunteers don't show up in your social media system, they don't win prizes and no one writes about them in the local newspapers. But they are heroes. And you can be too. If everyone made a promise to volunteer once a month, or even once a quarter, I know that we could reduce some of the anxiety these organizations feel, as a more trust-worthy volunteer network allows them to focus on helping people, not filling volunteer positions.

Here is a list of a few organizations who are doing important work in Cambridge to make sure the food to be safe. Offer your time to an organization, they will be deeply grateful, and I am quite sure that you will feel pretty good about yourself too.

Food For Free: http://foodforfree.org/volunteer.

   假如你是李华，你的英国笔友 Jack 给你写邮件表达了想参加你校暑期为外国学生举办的汉语夏令营的愿望，希望你告知活动举办的具体时间地点，活动安排以及你的建议。

提示词语： Chinese classes, learn, attend, culture, prepare

提示问题： ● When and where will the Chinese Summer Camp be held?

● What activities will be held at the Chinese Summer Camp?

● What is your advice for Jack?

   中国传统文化源远流长，代代相传。近期各校都在开展学习中国传统文化活动。某网站正在开展以“弘扬中国传统文化”为题征文，请你用英文写一篇报道，介绍你校上周举办的“讲中国成语故事”活动并谈谈你的收获与感受。

提示词语： Chinese idioms, story, collect, share, learn from, acient

提示问题： ● What did you do during the activity of "Telling Chinese idioms story"?

● What did you learn from the activity?

● What do you think of it?