6 . It was a spring afternoon. My classmates and I ______ happily on the playground when I cried, “Ow! Something in my shoe is biting (咬) me.” Everyone was ______. They helped me sit down and were about to take off my shoes. “______ foot is it. Anna?” one asked.

______, I remembered the holes in my socks. My family ______ poor then. Those socks didn’t last long because I ______ cheap welfare (福利) socks. They soon had holes at the ______. I refused to take off my shoe. I couldn’t stand ______ seeing the holes in my sock. I tried to hold back my tears (眼泪).

Soon Miss Diane came, “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Something is biting her foot, but she refused to take off her shoe,” one of my classmates answered.

Miss Diane lived next door to me. She knew everything about my family. She held my hand and ______ my hopeless eyes. “Oh, yes, it ______ be a sock-eating ant,” she said as if she had already seen the ants. “I got bites from those ants. ______ I got my shoe off, the ants had eaten almost the whole bottom of my sock.”

Miss Diane took off my shoe and sock and shook ______. Two red ants fell out. “That’s just ______ I thought. The ants have eaten part of her sock.” When she put an alcohol (酒精) 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 ______ by the “sock-eating ant” story. Thanks, my dear teacher.

10 . In ancient China, when people were separating, they would pick a willow twig (柳条) and give it to the person who was leaving. This was to express their     1     (wish) for him or her to stay. In Chinese, the word for “willow” is pronounced the same as the word for “stay”.

Many Chinese poets liked writing about willows in their works. One of the most famous poems     2     (be) A Farewell Song (《送元二使安西》) by Wang Wei. It reads,

No dust is raised on the road wet with morning rain.

The willows by the hotel look so fresh and green.

I invite you     3     (drink)a cup of wine (酒) again.

West of the Sunny Pass no     4     (many) friends will be seen.

Nowadays, willow twigs can also be seen in modern art. There was     5     amazing performance about willow twigs. 365 people held willow twigs     6     their hands on the green stage. At the same time, a painting of weeping willows (垂柳) appeared on the LED screen. The setting of 365 people stood for 365 days, and the color green     7     (mean) the return of spring. The performance     8     (praise) highly by the audience (观众). “I was deeply attracted by     9     (tradition) Chinese culture,” one of them said.

In short, giving a willow twig to a person is not saying goodbye     10     asking him or her to stay. This is the beauty of Chinese culture.