听短文，回答下列小题。

Years ago, I celebrated my 40th birthday with friends in a two-floor restaurant. Many arrived ________ and waited outside the restaurant. As I was on the roadside, a homeless man came near to me and ________ money. I let him know I didn’t have any cash with me. With a quiet smile on his face, he moved on.

Just then a friend arrived and called out, “Happy Birthday!” Hearing this, the man turned and asked, “Hey, man, it’s your birthday?” “Yes,” I said. He walked ________, smiled and said, “Happy Birthday!” I was not completely ________ for what happened next. He took out a dollar from his dirty bag, and gave it to me, saying, “Here man, take this. Happy Birthday!” That’s ________! I expected he was making a joke!

His generosity (慷慨) deeply ________ me but accepting money from a homeless man was embarrassing (尴尬的) for me. I felt very uncomfortable. ________ I answered, “It’s very kind of you, but...” Looking directly into my eyes, he said, “God’s so good to me. Every night, I always end up with a place to sleep and enough food to eat. Please take this.” I held out my hand and said, “________”

This was one of my ________ life lessons—however poor we may feel, we always have something valuable to share with others. From then on I often helped people in need and treated everyone kindly and ________, spreading love and joy everywhere I went.

Gustave Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower as the entrance to the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. Today, it is a symbol of France. Take a closer look at the country’s “Iron Lady”.

It was Day 1 of our vacation on Cortes, a beautiful quiet island. “iPhone, iPhone, iPhone,” my son kept moaning. In front of him was a big window facing the blue ocean. And a cool gentle wind was coming in from the door. Clearly, he saw and felt none of it.

Back at home, I’d soon give up and hand the phone over to him after five minutes of listening to this kind of moaning.

But not here, before we left, I had told my 10-year-old son the rule — no e-mails, no Facebook, no video games, and no iPhone. We came here to get away from them all. Here we were on our first day and already, he couldn’t stand it.

________ I walked down the grass road to the beach and looked out to the sea. My 6-year-old daughter and my husband were drawing on pieces of wood. They were doing just fine.

On Day 2, we spent the whole morning digging for shells. This time, my son joined us. He collected shellfish and other sea treasures. When we got back to our little wood house, I gave my son a book, and put him on the lovely garden chair. It was almost dinner when he looked up.

The next few days passed in peace (和平).

On Day 6, my son was lying beside me on the beach, watching the sun going down. He was playing with the sand. And there was something shining in his eyes. I realized how time slowed down for both of us. It was exactly what I wanted. Finally, we were able to sit quietly without thinking about screens, phone calls and e-mails.

A week away from all the electronics (电子产品) and life is good.

A group of swans flew down to a beach where a crow was jumping around. The crow watched them with disdain.

“You have no flying skills at all!” he said to the swans. “All you can do is to move your wings. Can you turn over in the air? No, I don’t think you can do it! Let’s have a flying competition. I’ll show you what real flying is!”

One of the swans, a strong young male, took up the challenge. The crow flew up and began to show his skills. He flew in circles, performed other flying tricks, and then came down and looked proudly at the swan.

Now it was the swan’s turn. He flew up, and began flying over the sea. The crow flew after him, making all kinds of comments (评价) about his flying. They flew on and on till they couldn’t see the land and there was nothing but water on all sides. The crow was making fewer and fewer comments. He was now so tired that he found it hard to stay in the air, and had to struggle (挣扎) to keep himself from falling into the water.

The swan pretended not to notice, and said, “Why do you keep touching the water, brother? Is that another trick?”

“No,” said the crow. He knew he had lost the competition. “I’m in trouble because of my pride! If you don’t help me, I’ll lose my life...”

The swan took pity on him, and took him on his shoulders and flew back to the beach.

Iceland lies in the North Atlantic Ocean. It lies between 63°24’ and 66°33’ N and between 13°30’ and 24°2’ W. It is the second largest island in Europe. It is close to the Arctic Circle (北极圈) yet in fact only one of its northerly islands lies inside. The country has a total area of 103,000 square kilometers and a coastline of about 6,600 km. The island is 300 km wide from north to south, and 500 km across from west to east.

From 1262 to 1944 Iceland was ruled first by Norway and then by Denmark. Centuries of foreign rule, and such things as volcanoes (火山) and the weather, made life very difficult at times for the Icelanders, there was lots of hard work and little change. The situation began to improve during the nineteenth century. Then in 1944 Iceland became an independent republic (独立国家); since that time it has become a quite rich country where the people enjoy having cars, modern houses and lots of electrical equipment. If you look at the kind of products that Iceland sells to other countries today—fish, meat, wool and so on—it’s easy to see that both the sea and the land are important to Icelanders. This has been true in fact since the time of the first Icelanders—Vikings from Norway who arrived in AD 874.

Some things in the lives of the Icelanders have hardly changed—the Icelandic language, for example, 700 years ago the stories called Sagas were first written down, these can still be read in the old language without much difficulty by Icelandic speakers today.

The inside of the World

When I was a very little boy, I was always asking questions.

One day when I was walking with my nurse along the city street, I asked, “Jane, what’s under the street?” “Oh, just dirt(尘土),” she answered. “And what is under the dirt?” “Oh, more dirt,” she answered.

    56    . So I asked again, “Well, what’s under that?” “Oh, nothing-I don’t know-why are you always asking so many questions?” she asked.

I knew there must be something under that.     57    , I also heard that Chinese lived on the other side of the world, head down. I wanted to find out if that was true.

    58    , down, down, down, till I came through on the other side, and then I would know. I was a very little boy, you see. With a small shovel(铁锹), I started a hole in the back yard behind the grapevines(葡萄藤). No one knew what I was doing.     59    .

Then one evening my father asked, “What’s that hole in the back yard?”     60    . He didn’t laugh when I told him, but he asked me if I knew how far I would have to dig.

I didn’t dig through the world, but I did know how far it was.

86. 假如你是魏华，刚收到你的美国cousin—Mike的电子邮件，请认真阅读下面的邮件，并根据邮件内容回一封电子邮件。

I’m very glad to hear from you. Our hometown—Jiang Yin has changed a lot over the years.

I hope to meet you soon.

Yours,

Wei Hua