I work as the reception (接待) manager at my hotel. A booking came in a few weeks ago with a note attached that the guest would be travelling with her ___father. They wanted to make the trip to Ireland as soon as possible. When ___ this note, I knew I would be the one to check them in. I decided to learn some basic____language.

I greeted the guest in my usual way, asking for the surname on the booking. Once I heard the name I____immediately who was standing in front of me. I had been learning for over two weeks how to say “Welcome to Ireland. My sign language is ____, but if you need anything during your stay just let me know and we will help you.”

I smiled at the father and daughter in front of me，turning to the father who I greeted in sign language and began the bit I had learned for him. The father smiled and was so____. Seeing his reaction was enough for me. It was so worth the last few weeks of learning basic sign language.

On check-out I ____wasn’t working, but they had left a gift for me with a note saying “Thank you very much for what you did on check-in. My father has been in amazing form since you checked us in and insisted we get you a _____ before we left. You have no idea how much this_____ to my father and me and we can’t thank you enough. You’ve made his trip very special with one simple gesture.”

They wrote a letter to the general manager, asking to give me a raise, which I really ____. I cried for 5 minutes when I came to work today to find this gift in my locker.

How to clean the keyboard

Turn off your laptop before you do any cleaning. Even though you won’t be putting water directly onto your laptop, you should turn off the power to make sure nothing gets damaged if a little moisture does get inside.

Turn the laptop upside down and gently tap or shake it. This will remove big pieces of dirt, crumps (碎屑) or other debris (碎片) that’s hiding in your keyboard. Tip:   It may help to spread a towel under the laptop before you shake it, to make cleanup easier.

Spay between the keys with compressed air to remove dust. The air of the force will blow the dust that’s trapped between and under the keys.

Remove dirt with a cotton ball and alcohol (酒精). Alcohol evaporates (蒸发)quickly, making it a safe alternative to using water on your laptop. Alcohol is especially good at removing the dirt left by your fingers. In addition, alcohol is good at removing germs (细菌).

Bath, 97 miles west of London, is the largest city in Somerset, England. It became a World Heritage Site in 1987.

The city got its name from the Roman Baths, which was a place for public bathing in Roman Britain. The water there is naturally heated under the ground. Today visitors are no longer allowed to enter the water. However, the exhibitions there will tell you the history of the Roman Baths. You can see many ancient Roman objects, including the coins that were thrown into the water to show respect to the goddess.

Looking over the city, you will see many old buildings in the color of honey. Among them, the Royal Crescent and the Circus are the most famous. The Royal Crescent is a row of 30 houses in the shape of crescent (新月). The Circus is about 200 meters to the east of the Royal Crescent. It is a huge circle formed with large townhouses. It is divided into three parts of the same length by three entrances with a lawn in the center. When visiting Bath, you can’t miss these two sites.

The museums in the city are also popular. You can go and appreciate western paintings. If you are interested in the English writer Jane Austen, you can go to Jane Austen Center to know more about her life with her father in Bath. If you come in October, you can even take part in the bath film Festival.

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One early morning, I went into the living room to find my mother reading a thick book called Best Loved Poems to Read Again and Again. My interest was aroused only by the fact that the word “Poems” appeared in big, hot pink letters.       

“Is it good?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she answered. I leaned forward.

“Patty Poem,’” she read the title. Who is Patty? I wondered. The poem began:

The poem was just three short sections. The final one came quickly:

A terrible sorrow (痛苦) washed over me. Whoever Patty was, she was a mean girl. Then, the shock. “It’s you, honey,” My mother said sadly.

To my mother, the poem revealed a parent’s feeling when her child grows up and leaves. To me, the “she” in the poem was horror. It was my mama who would be sad. It was so terrible I burst (突然) out crying.

“What’s wrong?” my mother asked.

“Oh, Mama,” I cried. “I don’t want to grow up ever!”

She smiled. “Honey, it’s okay. You’re not growing up anytime soon. And when you do, I’ll still love you, okay?”

“Okay,” I was still weeping (流泪). My scare has gone. But I could not help thinking about that silly poem. After what seemed like a safe amount of time, I read the poem again and was confused. It all fit so well together, like a puzzle. The language was simple, so simple I could obviously understand its meaning, yet it was still beautiful. I was now fascinated (着迷) by the idea of poetry, words that had the power to make or break a person’s world.

I have since fallen in love with other poems, but “Patty Poem” remains my poem. After all, “Patty Poem” gave me my love for poetry not because it was the poem that lifted my spirits, but because it was the one that hurt me the most.

There is a popular Chinese saying that “Fair skin (皮肤) will make up for three flaws(缺陷)”. This mentions the fact that in Chinese culture, it is believed that people who have fair skin are more beautiful. In Western culture, however, the opposite is true---many Westerners think tanned skin is prettier. The example shows that different cultures have different ideas of what they think is beautiful. These cultural meanings of beauty, however, are no longer important, As more and more people travel overseas, ideas about beauty are being shared among cultures. The Internet has also made it easier for people to share different types of beauty since people are always posting pictures on social media. The result is an ever-changing idea of what is considered beautiful.

The cultural practice of ear piercings, for example, has become a part of modern day culture. In Kenya, it is a tradition among the Marci men and women to pierce and then make their ear lobes (耳垂) longer using ivory and wood or stones. They then wear colorful things on their ear lobes. This is a common practice since longer ear lobes are seen as a sign of beauty. This tradition has now found its way into present-day culture. Nowadays, this might still seem unusual to some, but with more and more well-known actors and film stars showing off their longer ear lobes. i: will finally become more fashionable.

It is understood that different cultures around the world have different ways of showing beauty. However, since we now live in a worldwide society, people's views about beauty are always changing. With the help of the Internet, people are now able to easily borrow ideas from other cultures to help them stand out. So what new fashions can we expect to see in the future?

Most of us get our earliest life lessons from fairy tales, like “True love can overcome (战胜) anything” and “Even a frog can turn into a prince”. However, when we grow up, we start to learn new things about life, especially that love doesn’t always win, and that a frog is just a frog. Even so, our love for fairy tales never dies. Just look at cartoons like The Lion King and Frozen which have millions of fans young and old.

“Fairy tales are always there because they are the stories of our lives in the purest form.” wrote US writer Laura Packer. “They are stories of love and loss, happiness and sadness, riches and dreams.”

Fairy tales are all about the real world. But if children only see just one side of life, adults usually see the other. For example, in the 2014 film Maleficent, we’re told the tale of Sleeping Beauty from the views of the evil queen. Unlike the children’s version (版本) of the story, we see that the queen wasn’t an evil at birth. Instead, she experiences great lossers, leading to her “evil” side. And in US writer James Garner’s bedtime story books, he tells the classic story of Little Red Riding Hood, but with a modern touch: When the wolf tells Red Riding Hood that it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through the woods alone, she calls the wolf sexist (性别歧视者), which connects with today’s women’s rights movement.

It looks like fairy tales aren’t just stories our parents read us at bedtime. They may usually start with “Once upon a time…”, but as we grow older, we learn that every story doesn’t always need a “Happily ever after” to be a good one.