Finally, it’s Friday! I can’t believe the first week is coming to an end. Things are going well, but there is always something new just around the corner.

At junior high, I took lots of notes during class. So in physics class on Monday, I did the same, but the teacher spoke so fast that I couldn’t take everything down. The teacher found I was struggling with note-taking and told me to stop and just listen. “Thinking is a more important ability than note-taking and memorising,” he said.

After class on Wednesday, I hurried to the school skateboarding club. I was running out of the classroom when I bumped into a girl literally. I said sorry to her and she smiled at me. At the club, I had my first fly at skateboarding and fell off the board a lot. Suddenly, a girl bumped into me—the same girl from the corridor! This time, both of us laughed. Her name is Sarah. We started to practise together and soon became friends.

I’m going to watch a film with Sarah tomorrow evening. I’m looking forward to it!

【推荐2】Teenagers who start the school early are likely to weigh slightly more than those who start later. That’s the finding of a new study of nearly 30, 000 Canadians between the ages of 10 and 18.

Getting too little sleep can put kids at risk for a number of problems. Sleepy teens are more likely to be overweight, to have trouble concentrating and to struggle in school. Genevieve Gariepy, who works at Mcgill University in Montreal, Canada, wanted to know how earlier school start times might be connected with weight.

“Overweight in teenagers is a big problem in North America, ” she says. The number of overweight kids has grown over the past 30 years. So Gariepy decided to home in on the impact (影响) of school start times.  

Her team collected start times for 362 Canadian schools. Then they asked students at those schools to give their height and weight. In all,   they collected data from nearly 30, 000 10 to 18-year-olds. Among 6th to 10th graders, those who started school earlier were likely to be slightly heavier for their height. Every 10-minute delay in school start time was connected, on average, with a lightly lower weight among students who were the same sex,   age and height. However,   the difference is slight. Healthy eating and getting enough exercise will play a bigger role in keeping a healthy weight.

Because the study compared kids who already started school at different times of day, it’s not clear that changing school start time would help heavier kids lose weight. To know for sure,   researchers would want to compare the same kids before and after changing to a later school start time.

Still, the study is a good start, says Cora Collette Bruener, a doctor at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington. The findings add to a growing pile of evidence that later school start time might be better for teen health,she says.

【推荐3】US student Vanessa Tahay stands out from the other teenagers in her school. Her skin is dark, her accent is thick, and if you ask her, she will tell you these are the things she is proudest of. Tahay is a poet, and at 18 she was considered among the best in Los Angeles.

When she is on the stage, audiences often go silent. They also laugh, shout and cry. But this doesn't come easily for someone who comes from a village that sits at the base of a huge mountain range in Central America. When she first appeared at school, she was teased by others for being short and different. She never spoke, so they called her “mouse”.

“How do I defend myself?” Tahay thought. “I don't know how.”

“Keep going,” her mother would tell her. “At some point, you'll learn.”

She spent hours after school and on weekends watching the same DVDs: English without Barriers.

Tahay's elder brother, Elmer, persuaded her to go to the after-school poetry club. In the last six years, her English teacher Laurie Kurnick has turned Cleveland Charter High School's poetry program into one of the most respected in the city. Her team draws from the likes of D.H. Laurence, Pat Mora and Kendrick Lamar to create poems about their own lives. The poems focus on many things —some funny, some painful.

The first time Tahay read the group's poems, chills went up her spine (脊柱). “I wish I could write like that,” she thought. “I want to say something.”

She wrote her first poem about her first year in America. She called it Invisible. The day her turn came to recite in front of the team, she broke down crying. She cried for 15 minutes. “I had so much held in,” Tahay said. “I couldn't even finish it.”

But she kept at it despite her less-than-perfect grammar, spelling and diction (措辞). Still, she wouldn't tell her friends about her poetry because she worried they would make fun of her.

But with time, her poems changed her. “They gave me pride,” Tahay said. “They told me that I'm worth something.”

“She had this innocence,” Kurnick said. “This willingness to be genuine and show you things you don't ever see.”

A．Funny and painful stories about their lives.	B．Their appreciation of natural beauty.
C．Their expectations of a better future.	D．Their admiration for the great poets.

【推荐1】I lay in the hospital bed with my six­year­old daughter, Elizabeth, holding her in my arms. “Mommy, will you stay with me the whole time?” she asked, looking up. “You know I can’t be in the operating room,” I said carefully, not wanting to frighten her. “But Daddy and I will be waiting right outside.” Elizabeth nodded, but her eyes looked troubled.

Elizabeth had broken her right leg in July. Seven months later, it still hadn’t healed (康复). In fact, it had gotten worse. She was here in the hospital for surgery (手术).

I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay and promise that this would be the last time she'd have to go through this. But what if something went wrong again? How could I comfort my daughter when I needed comfort myself?

There was a knock at the door. A nurse? I thought. Time to say goodbye already? But the woman who came in wasn't a nurse. “Hi,” the woman said. “I’m a volunteer here, and I’ve got something for Elizabeth.” She handed a bright­blue box to my daughter.

Elizabeth sat up and took the box. She opened it and started pulling out goodies one by one — candies, stickers, a lovely toy in the shape of a star. She hugged the star, perking_up for the first time since she entered the hospital. “Thank you,” she said. “I love them.” There was a big smile on her face. It had been so long since I saw that big smile.

The gift was a great comfort not only to my daughter, but also to me.

【推荐2】Having lived in California until 1970, my family has felt a number of earthquakes. We have been fortunate, however, to have suffered no bodily harm or property damage.

There is a website that lists all Californian earthquakes recorded from 1769 to the present. The site lists the dates and time as well as the magnitude (震级) and the exact location of any earthquake that measured more than 6.0. There are only a few earthquakes that stand out in my memory and, luckily, none is shown in the website. So, my personal experience with earthquakes might be considered insignificant.

There are three earthquakes that are difficult to forget. The first one was in 1955 and our oldest daughter was walking with me in our backyard in Redwood City in California. As the shaking became stronger, I held her to me with one arm as I held on to one of our fruit trees with the other. All three of us (my daughter, I and the tree) shook for two or three minutes that to us felt like hours.

The second one was in 1963. Our entire family was visiting Disneyland in Southern California. The earth started to shake just as we were beginning to walk from our hotel towards the famous landmark.

My third experience with an earthquake was a lonely one in California. It was in my sixties and I was alone in an old church. As the building started to shake, I quickly headed for the door to go outside. I remember I said a few prayers—something like “Help me get out of here in time, dear Heavenly Father.” Minutes later, I was safe outside.