It was a lovely spring afternoon. My classmates and I were playing happily on the playground when I let out a cry, “Ow! Ow! Something in my shoe is biting me.”

Everyone was shocked by the cry. They took me into a classroom and were about to take off my_______. “Which foot is it?” One asked “let us have a look.”

Suddenly, I remembered the holes in _______ socks. My family was very poor during those years. I wore welfare socks, which cost only a little, but those _______ welfare socks didn’t last long. They soon had _______ at the bottom.

I refused to take off my shoe. I _______ stand others seeing the holes in my sock. I tried to hold back my tears. Yet, each time the thing _______ my shoe bit me, tears raced down my face.

My teacher, Miss Diane, hurried into the _______, “What’s wrong? ” She asked.

“Something is biting her right foot, _______ she doesn’t let us take off her shoe,” One of my classmates answered.

Miss Diane lived next door to me. She _______ everything about my family. She put both hands on my shaking shoulders and __________ into my painful and hopeless eyes.

“Oh, yes, it must be a sock-eating ant,” She said, as if she had __________ seen the thing inside the shoe. “I had a bite from one of those ants. By the time I got my shoe off, it had __________ almost the whole bottom off my sock.” My classmates nodded while they were listening to the teacher __________, although they all looked a little puzzled.

Miss Diane took off my right shoe and sock and shook them over the dustbin. Two red ants __________ it.

“Just what I thought. The ants have eaten part of her sock.” When she stroked an alcohol cotton ball on the bites, she added, “You are such a __________ girl to take so many bites.”

The alcohol felt cool on the bites and a little girl’s pride was saved by the “sock-eating ant ” story.

In the UK, bus journeys are very common. Buses are often convenient（便利的）for the people who live or work in the city center. Passengers can avoid heavy traffic and not have to pay for the parking. However, taking the bus is just a necessary but boring part of life: they get on the bus, pay for it and sit or find a place to stand when it is crowded. Everyone seems sad and bored.

In Latin America, however, bus trips can be wonderful. For a start, films are showed on the buses between cities for passengers to have fun along the journeys. Local buses do not show films, but drivers usually turn on the radio and it can be great for passengers to listen to songs and get relaxed.

Even better than films and music are the sights and sounds on the buses. Local buses always go to parts of the town that passengers would not visit by themselves. There passengers can see shops that they have never heard about. And they can also see other cultures of the town from the windows of the buses.

Besides, passengers’ luggage is also interesting. It is common to see a happy dog’s head getting out of somebody’s bag or a lovely chicken “speaking cheerfully” under somebody’s arm.

Once on a bus in Peru, a farmer even tied a sheep to the top of the bus. It was quite surprising.