1 . It happened today, which we never want to happen, but we’ve been preparing for it for a whole school year. A tornado touched down (登陆) near our school.

I wasn’t even in the classroom at the moment. I had taken a student with me to the workroom to help gather something for a test. When the emergency alarms went off, immediately I grabbed my student’s hand and ran as fast as I could back to the classroom.

I never imagined needing to put our tornado practice into use. I never imagined actually needing to line my students up against the wall and have them crouch down (蹲伏) with their knees and heads touching the ground, hands on the backs of their heads. Their hearts beat so fast that they couldn’t catch their breath. Their fear-filled eyes looked up at me as they asked if their parents, grandparents and friends were going to be fine. Never could I imagine that the silence would come over the whole schoolyard, with hundreds of students gathered in the classrooms of one building.

Other teachers and I tried our best to comfort our students, assure (使确信) them of their safety and promise them everything would be all right, though we truly didn’t know what the result would be.

Today has done something bad to me, and I am sure it has done harm to the hundreds and thousands of teachers in the local areas and surrounding areas. But at the same time, I am very proud, surprised and pleased with how my students behaved. Never have I seen they follow directions so quickly and quietly. Even though tears were in eyes and hearts were beating fast, my students were brave beyond their age today. They were able to be 100% calm and collected (镇静的) the whole time and for that, I was greatly moved.

Saturday, August 5th

It is cool today. I went to the Great Wall with my friends. The Great Wall is very long. We were very tired but happy in the evening. We ate a lot for dinner. I ate a large bowl of noodles, some chicken, and an ice-cream. The food was delicious.

Sunday, August 6th

It is a good day today. My friends and I had eggs and apples for breakfast. Then we went to Tian’anmen Square in the morning. It was great! In the afternoon, I taught some kids to swim. It was interesting.

Monday, August 7th

It is rainy today, so we stayed in the camp. I wrote e-mails to my family and friends. At noon, we ate hamburgers and salad for lunch. After lunch, we watched a movie. It was exciting.

3 . Boyan Slat is a 17-year-old Dutch boy. He has been dreaming of cleaning up the world’s oceans for a long time.

In 2010, he went on a diving vacation in Greece and was surprised. “I saw more plastic bags than fish in the water,” he said.

From then on, he began to pay more attention to ocean pollution. Slat decided to give up higher education and set up the Ocean Cleanup, a Non-Government Organization. Its purpose is to clean up ocean rubbish. He has set up the world’s first ocean cleanup system with his team.

Every year, over 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans, and it can take up to 500 years to break down. In 2018, the World Economic Forum predicted that the weight of ocean plastic would match that of all the fish in our oceans by 2050.

Sea animals easily get trapped in plastic so that they can’t move. They can even die if they eat it. Smaller plastic pieces can also enter the food chain and end up in our bodies.

Slat’s plan was to create an environmentally-friendly, large system to clear out plastic rubbish from the ocean.

After seven years of tests, on Oct. 2, 2019, a device called System 001/B came out. It successfully caught and collected a large amount of plastic rubbish floating in the ocean.

Slat and his team are working to improve System 001/B. Their dream is to clear out 90 percent of all the ocean plastic by 2040.

4 . Poverty(贫困) is a big problem around the world. But China has done a good job of dealing with it and it has found its own way to fight poverty. Instead of just giving money to poor people, it has tried to educate people and give them the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Ordinary(普通的) people play a big role in the fight. Here are two of them.

Zhang Guimei has been helping girls pursue(追求) education since she traveled to Yunnan at the age of 17. As a teacher, Zhang was heartbroken when she saw her students quit school after finishing senior high school. They couldn’t go to college because their families couldn’t afford it. So in 2008, Zhang started a free school for poor girls. Since then, Zhang has been busy asking for donations to provide money for the school. She has convinced parents to send their daughters back to school. The school has sent more than 1,800 students to universities and colleges.

When Mao Xianglin started to work as the Party secretary of his village, there was only one pathway out of the village for many years. He led more than 100 villagers to build a road with their hands. It took them seven years to build an eight-kilometer road. Mao then encouraged the villagers to grow oranges. Last year, their orange yield(产量) was nearly 40 tons. Young people have returned to the village to sell oranges online. By the end of 2019, 269 villagers had been lifted out of poverty. The per capital income(人均收入) reached 12,670 yuan, 40 times more than in the 1990s.

Over the last eight years, 98.99 million rural people have been lifted out of poverty. The 832 counties (县) and 128,000 villages which these people live in are no longer in poverty. China has been responsible for reducing 70 percent of poverty world-wide since the late 1970s.

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8 . No one wants to be in a life-or-death situation. However, if you are getting into such a dangerous situation, what will you do, fight or flight?

When 13-year-old Joe Rowlands and his dad were in a kayak (皮艇) accident, the brave teenager chose to fight. He not only fought for his own life, but also saved his father’s.

On that day, Joe and his father Paul were out on their kayak off the coast of Anglesey in the UK. Suddenly they noticed that the kayak was starting to fill with water. Then they found out there was a hole in the floor of the boat. Without another choice, Paul turned the boat over. He asked Joe to climb on top so that he could push the boat to a nearby island.

However, the rough(汹涌的) waves made it too hard for Paul to push the boat to land. They had to swim without the boat. Luckily, Joe made his way to the island safely. But when he looked back, be found his dad was no longer swimming. Risking his life, Joe jumped back into the cold water and managed to drag (拽) his dad up onto some rocks. Then Joe did CPR (心肺复苏) on his dad until he came around.

“I know I can never pay him back for saving my life and I’m very proud of him. He acted with courage beyond his years.” Paul said of his son.

9 . On a sunny Sunday, ten fully well-dressed people were standing at the airport waiting for the parachute(降落伞)training. Suddenly, with the help of a guide dog, a blind man was coming with a parachute on his back.

“Do you also come for the parachute training?” someone asked.

“Yes!” the blind man answered in a loud voice.

“Ah-” the people cried in surprise.

“I know. Are you wondering how a blind man can parachute?” the blind man said cheerfully, “It’s not difficult. I’ll parachute like you.”

“But how do you know when to jump?” someone asked.

“Although I’m blind, I can hear! When the bell for the training rings. I’ll carry my dog to follow you.” the blind man replied.

“Then how do you know when to open the parachute?” someone asked again.

“The coach says, counting to five from the moment I jump down. I can open it.” replied the blind man.

“But when you are about to fall to the ground, how do you know when to fall to the ground? It is the most dangerous moment.”

“It’s a simpler. When my dog is scared into crying and the rope in my hands becomes light, I’ll prepare for falling to the ground.” They looked at each other, all silent.

At the end of the training, the coach told everybody, “In this training, Robert gets the highest score for his most standard and perfect action.”

“Who is Robert?” they asked.

“He,” the coach replied, pointing at the blind young man.

10 . I hired a man to help me repair an old farm house. His first day on the job made him mad—a flat tire (轮胎) made him lose an hour of work, he cut his finger with a knife and his old truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in silence.

On arriving, he invited me to meet his family. As we walked towards the front door, he stopped at a small tree and touched the tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door, his face was full of smiles and he hugged his two children and gave his wife a kiss.

Afterwards, he walked with me to the car. We passed the tree. I was so curious that I asked him about what I had seen earlier. “Oh, that’s my trouble tree,” he replied. “I know I can’t help having troubles on the job, but one thing is for sure. Those troubles don't belong to my children and wife. So I hang them in the tree every night and ask God to take care of them. Then in the morning, I pick them up again.

“The funny thing is.” he smiles, “when I come out to pick them up in the morning, there aren’t as many as those hung up the night before.”