【推荐2】One day, a speaker was making a speech about happiness. However, after a few hours, people began to lose their attention. The speaker thought of an idea. He stopped his speech and asked all the people to take part in an activity.

He gave each person a balloon (气球) in the room and asked them to write their name on it. Then, he collected all the balloons and moved them to another room.

He invited people to come into the room and told them to find the balloon with their own name.

Everyone rushed around, searching for their own balloon. People were tripping over (被绊倒) each other. But after about five minutes of searching, no one could find their own balloon.

After seeing this, the speaker asked each person to collect a balloon and try to find the person whose name was on it. Everyone started talking to each other and asking each other for their name. In just a few minutes, everyone had his or her own balloon.

“Can you see what happened?” the speaker said. “The balloons are like the happiness we look for in our own lives. Everyone is busy looking for their own happiness, not caring what happens to others. But sometimes the best way to find happiness is to help others. Help them find happiness and you can find your own.”

【推荐3】A person has two ears but only one mouth. That means we should listen, not just speak. The word “listen” has the same letters as the word “silent”. Listening silently(安静地) is a good quality that we should have. Then why is it important to be a good listener?

Listening is really helpful.

When someone is sad or angry, he wants to express his poor feelings. At this moment, we need to listen silently first until he gets calm(冷静的). Then we may have a good talk with him. Maybe it is a good way to help him out.

Listening is a kind of love.

For example, we may think our parents are always talking too much. But in fact, they do so because they are anxious about our health, study and so on. If we listen patiently, our parents will feel we care about them. A loving silence is often more powerful(有力量的) than words.

Listening is polite behavior.

Sometimes, we just want others to listen to us but forget to listen to others. In fact, that’s not polite. In order to show our respect(尊重) for others, we had better listen to them first. Then we can express our ideas.       

Listening sounds easy, but it’s not. We should learn to listen with our ears, eyes and hearts as much as we can, and try to make ourselves good listeners from now on.

【推荐1】My younger sister is Cindy. Today is her birthday. My mother gets her a big cake. She is eight years old now. She likes cakes. On the table in her bedroom, you can see a nice cake. Her name is on the cake. There are other（其他的）things for her birthday, too. They are some apples, salad, ice-cream, strawberries and oranges. But she wants to have something to drink（一些喝的东西）now. Her friends, Kate, Barry, Bill, and Frank are coming to her birthday party. She likes to eat these things with her friends.

【推荐2】I feel very sad because I was not able to get the ticket to he film Hero last Friday. I learned from the newspaper that tickets could be bought at the cinema (电影院) box office in Richland Hills any day between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Since I work from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the only time I could go to the cinema is during my 45-minute lunchtime. It is a pity that the cinema is on the other side of the town and the bus service between my company and Richland Hills is not very good. But if you are lucky, you make the round trip in 45 minutes.

Last Monday, I stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes waiting for a bus. When I saw one come round the corner, there was not enough time left to make the trip, so I had to go back. The same thing happened on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. On Thursday my luck changed. I got on a bus right away and arrived at the cinema in twenty minutes. But when I got there, I found a long line of people at the box office. I heard one man said he was waiting in line for over an hour. I found I would not have enough time to wait in line. I caught the next bus and went back across the town. By Friday I understood my only hope was to make the trip by car. It was expensive, but I felt it would be worth seeing the film. The trip by car only took 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour to me. When I reached the cinema, I was happy to see that nobody was waiting in line. But I quickly found out that it was because they sold out all the tickets.

My dad bought me a new Jeep when I was 17, but the real gift was what he taught me about life through this car. Every month, on the first day, he asked me to pay him $150 if I wanted to continue driving my Jeep. If I didn’t pay, I couldn’t drive my car (or “his car”, as he often reminded me, since he owned the title (所有权). My dad was (and still is) a successful businessman, who makes a very good living. To a 17-year-old student who only had a part-time weekend job, $150 was more than I usually made every month. I had to work harder. Although I was unhappy about my father’s request, I always made sure to give him $150 on the first day of each month, and did so for two years.

The day I graduated from high school, my dad pulled me into his office at our house for a talk. “Kevin,” he gave me a white box and said, “here is your graduation present. To be honest, this is actually a present you gave yourself.” I opened the box carefully, and almost started crying when I found he just gave me $3,600! It was 24 car payments that he had saved for the last two years. Every payment I gave him went straight into this box. By asking me to pay him every month, he was teaching me how to save, how to use my money and how to be responsible. My dad is and will forever be the best man I have ever known.

Four years later he gave me the title to the Jeep, as my college graduation gift.