【推荐1】It was a village in India. The people were poor. However, they were not unhappy. After all, their forefathers had lived in the same way for centuries.

Then one day, some visitors from the city arrived. They told the villagers there were some people elsewhere who liked to eat frog’s(青蛙) legs. However, they did not have enough frogs of their own, and so they wanted to buy frogs from other places.

This seemed like money for nothing. There were millions of frogs in the fields around, and they were no use to the villagers. All they had to do was to catch them. Agreement was reached, and the children were sent into the fields to catch frogs. Every week a truck arrived to collect the catch and hand over the money. For the first time, the people were able to dream of a better future. But the dream didn’t last long.

The change was hardly noticed at first, but it seemed as if the crops were not doing so well. More worrying was that the children fell ill more often, and, there seemed to be more insects around lately.

The villagers decided that they couldn’t just wait to see the crops failing and the children getting weak. They would have to use the money earned to buy pesticides (杀虫剂)and medicines. Soon there was no money left.

Then the people realized what was happening. It was the frog. They hadn’t been useless. They had been doing an important job—eating insects. Now with so many frogs killed, the insects were increasing more rapidly. They were damaging the crops and spreading diseases.

Now, the people are still poor. But in the evenings they sit in the village square and listen to sounds of insects and frogs. These sounds of the night now have a much deeper meaning.

【推荐2】Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That dream nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill was in a car accident that put her in hospital for 51 days and left her paralyzed. For most people, that would have destroyed any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning. Far from being a barrier, her wheelchair encouraged her to think a lot of her life and she wanted to prove that she was still “normal”.

“Normal” for her meant dancing. With half of her body taken away, Hill had to move it with hands. It took a lot of learning and patience, but she still made it in her wheelchair with her non-disabled high school dance team.

After graduation from high school in California, Hill wanted to expand her dance network to include women like her. She met online the women who had suffered various back injuries but shared the same determination with her.

Hoping to reach more people in a larger city and break down the false belief of wheelchair users, Hill moved to Los Angeles in 2014, formed a team of dancers with disabilities and named it the Rollettes. As she always believes, dancing on wheels can be just as good as foot based dance.

In disabled dance competitions, all dancers from her team gave great performances and they were having fun. And the audience's cheers, whistles and applause suggested that the fun was spreading.

Hill has achieved what many of us never will: her childhood dream. But the Rollettes has helped her find something else just as satisfying. Every year she holds a dance camp, the Rollettes Experience for wheelchair users of all ages, to help them find their inner heroines. In 2019, over 173 women from ten countries attended the Rollettes Experience. For most of these women, it was the first time they had felt they belonged. Edna Serrano told a reporter that being part of the Rollettes team challenged her to be more independent. “It even gives me the courage to take up driving.” she said.

【推荐3】When Andrea Peterson landed her first teaching job，she faced the daunting task of creating a music program with almost no money for equipment or supplies in a climate where standard­based learning was the focus and music just provided a break for students and teachers.

For her drive and creativity in overcoming those challenges，she’s been named national teacher of the year.

Principal Waynes Kettler said he had worked with many outstanding teachers in his 22 years as an educator，but Peterson is “just that one step above anybody I’ve ever worked with before”．

Kettler and others at Monte Cristo Elementary School talk about the ways she has introduced the learning from other classrooms into her music program and her creativity in working around things such as the lack of money for new music.

When students were reading S．E.Hinton’s novel The Outsiders in their regular classroom，Peterson helped them write a 30­minute play with scenes from the book.Then they chose three Broadway tunes that focused on race，equality and social justice，the themes of the book.Peterson composed two other songs by herself after classroom discussions about the play and the book.

The honor means a lot to residents of Granite Falls.It’s inspiring to know that people from small towns can even win national honors.

As national teacher of the year，Peterson will spend the next year outside the classroom，as a national and international spokeswoman for education.

Not surprisingly，she is a big believer in the value of arts education.She said it’s essential for schools to offer classes such as art，music and physical education because for some kids one of those subjects is the only thing that motivates them to come back to school day after day.

【推荐1】I travel a lot in my work, and what I dislike about my job is eating alone. It always makes me feel lonely to see others laughing and talking. So, room service for several nights was a better choice for me.

After having room service three nights at a hotel in Houston, however, I needed to get out of my room. Although the restaurant opened at 6:30, I arrived at 6:25. The waiter at the front desk made a comment (评论) about my “being there really early”. I explained my dislike of eating alone in restaurants. He then seated me at a lovely table and asked me whether I would mind if he sat down with me for a while.

I was glad! He sat and talked with me about his career(职业) goals and the difficulty of being at work on nights, weekends and holidays. He said he hadn’t enough time to be with his family. After 15 minutes, he saw some customers at the front desk and excused himself. I noticed that before he went to the front desk, he stopped in the kitchen for a moment.

Then another waiter came out of the kitchen and had a wonderful chat with me. Before I left that night, some other waiters, even the cook, had come out of the kitchen and sat with me!

When I asked for my bill about one hour later, all the people who had sat down with me came over in a big group to my table, and presented (赠送) me with a red rose. And I cried! What had begun as a lonely night ended as a beautiful experience.

【推荐2】On May 21, 2022, Tom Turcich of New Jersey became the 10th person to walk around the world. Over seven years, he walked 48,000 kilometers across six continents and 38 countries, most of which with his dog Savannah.

Speaking to CNN, Turcich explained that after a friend died in an accident at age 17, he started to look at life differently and decided to go on a journey around the world. It took over eight years of saving and planning before Turcich finally left his home on April 2, 2015, just before his 26th birthday, on his way to Panama. He had a stroller to carry his hiking equipment: a sleeping bag, a laptop, a camera and a box of food.

About four months into the journey, Turcich adopted Savannah from an animal shelter in Texas. She joined him for the rest of the trip, becoming the first dog to walk around the world. The pair walked around 30 — 40 kilometers a day, spending most nights camping. Some parts could not be done on foot, however, such as when Turcich and Savannah took a boat from Uruguay to Antarctica. In late 2017, Turcich had to return home to recover from an illness he got while traveling through Ireland and the UK.

He and Savannah started walking again in May 2018, going through Europe, North Africa and Turkey before getting stuck in Azerbaijan for six months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were able to travel to Kyrgyzstan before taking a plane to Seattle. From there, he and Savannah walked back to New Jersey.

Turcich said the most difficult place to walk through was “deserted” Wyoming. Now that he’s back home, Turcich says he wants to stay in one place for a while, and write a book about his trip.

【推荐3】After I made it to the city center, I started to feel it might be easy for a foreigner to deal with the great size of Beijing. With growing confidence, I decided to take the subway to the hotel, not realizing that the network didn’t go that far. Impressed with the cleanliness of the station, I bought a ticket and boarded the first subway that came along.

After a few minutes I asked in English a young man seated next to me where I should get off closest to the Friendship Hotel. Wearing a smart business suit and tie, he would surely speak English, wouldn’t he? Unfortunately, he couldn’t understand me but seemed very friendly. I showed him the room card with all the information of the Friendship Hotel in Chinese characters. He looked at it, and then his eyes moved quickly to the carriage (车厢) subway map. Next, he raised three fingers of his right hand.

In Australia, raising fingers at someone is not usually nice, but this man wasn’t smiling. At the next station he showed me two fingers. Now in Australia, that’s really rude, but I got the message. When we stopped at the third station, he didn’t just point to the door, but got up, took me out of the train, and led me to the top of the stairs, and out onto the street. Then he stopped a taxi and told the driver where to take me.

All this came from a man who couldn’t speak my language, and I couldn’t speak his. I was now speechless, especially when he refused my offer of money. I felt a little embarrassed having even thought he would accept a tip.

This experience made it clear I had to learn some Chinese quickly or my adventures might start turning into misadventures.

【推荐1】I was checking out at the supermarket counter on Wednesday night, ready to pay for my bananas, when all of a sudden, fear came upon me. My wallet was gone. And I could only have left it one place: the G9 bus, from which I had gotten off minutes earlier and which was now speeding to some stops. The moment of realizing it was gone was followed by mental math. How much time and money would it cost to replace the credit cards, the driver’s license, the expensive lipstick ($55!).

Two hours after I was back at my house, I heard a knock on the door. My husband answered while I sat in the dining room on the phone with a credit card company. “Does Jennifer live here?” I heard someone say. In her hand was my wallet, without a penny missing. She left before I could offer my gratitude to her.

After I posted the story, I heard from her boyfriend, who identified the good citizen as Erin Ball, a 26-year-old girl working for a trade organization.

Once I figured out her, I called to thank her. She said she spotted my wallet and thought that it’s more dangerous to go to a stranger’s house than leaving the wallet with the driver, but she still decided to take the chance. “If I were in that situation, I would want someone to try to find me,” she said. Ball doesn’t find her actions particularly excellent. She added, “It’s not hard to do small things for people. ”

After Ball found my wallet, she decided to post a picture of my driver’s license online before going to my house, trying to see if anyone knew me. No sooner had she left my doorstep than I got emails from two neighbors who recognized my face, both offering to help me find my missing property.

Ball found my house on a bitterly cold night for which I was extremely grateful. Looking back, I’m not surprised someone had wanted to help a stranger. A warm current of honesty and harmony is running through this town.

【推荐3】I was stopped at a red light only a mile or so from my goal of my brother’s house. We were planning to drive down together to North Carolina to be with my father who was badly ill.

As I waited at the stoplight experiencing this forced slowdown, noticed Sharper’s Florist over to the left. It was the same place where I had experienced many things- floods of memories went through my mind as the light seemed a blessing. I noticed the wine store straight ahead where my father and I had been many times before, picking out the beer of the week. We both liked German beer.

The light finally became green and I made my left turn and drove through the poor section of our hometown. I remembered how each Thanksgiving my family would be together. I also remembered how my father would take some time out of each Thanksgiving to make sure there was no one hungry in the neighborhoods surrounding where we lived. I can remember as a young boy going with him to deliver some food. I was scared. I had never been into this part of town this deeply before.

My father seemed unfazed (泰然自若的) by this and went about his business. The people we went to help seemed to know him and gratefully accepted what he came to offer. My father seemed able to give away the food in a way that honored those he was giving to. This was not an arrogant act. He would stop at each place and talk a little, which I can remember totally pissing me off. I wanted to get the hell out of there. My father wanted to be sure everyone had food. If there were people he found who didn’t have food, he would take the time to go back and get more. That’s the kind of man he was.