1 . One of my wonderful memories is about a Christmas gift. Unlike other gifts, it came without wrap (包装).

On September 11th, 1958, Mum gave birth to Richard. After she brought him home from hospital, she put him in my lap, saying, “I promised you a gift, and here it is.” What an honour! I turned four a month earlier and none of my friends had such a baby doll of their own. I played with it day and night. I sang to it. I told it stories. I told it over and over how much I loved it!

One morning, however, I found its bed empty. My doll was gone! I cried for it.Mum wept and told me that the poor little thing had been sent to a hospital. It had a fever. For several days, I heard Mum and Dad whispering such words as “hopeless”, “pitiful”, and “dying”, which sounded ominous.

Christmas was coming. “Don’t expect any presents this year,” Dad said, pointing at the socks I hung in the living room.“If your baby brother lives, that’ll be Christmas enough.” As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears. I’d never seen him cry before.

The phone rang early on Christmas morning. Dad jumped out of bed to answer it. From my bedroom I heard him say, “What? He’s all right?” He hung up and shouted upstairs. “The hospital said we can bring Richard home!”

“Thank God!” I heard Mum cry.

From the upstairs window, I watched my parents rush out to the car. I had never seen them so happy. And I was also full of joy. What a wonderful day! My baby doll would be home. I ran downstairs. My socks still hung there flat. But I knew they were not empty; they were filled with love!

2 . Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there’s an assumption by many non-Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what’s known as a Received Pronunciation (RP，标准发音) accent, also called “the Queen’s English”. However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents (口音).

Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country — from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands — are just three of the countless non-RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.

In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowestrated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.

However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in a RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.

Kong Seongjae, 25, is an Internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He’s now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he’s learned. “British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent,” he said.

So if you’re working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.

3 . Afroz Shah, a lawyer in Mumbai, hasn’t had a weekend off in four years. But he hasn’t spent this time preparing for _________.

His mission? Saving the world’s oceans from _________ pollution.

It’s a calling he found in 2015 after moving to a community in Mumbai called Versova Beach. He had played there as a child and was_________to see how much it had _________. The sand was no longer _________ because it was covered by a layer of garbage more than five feet thick — most of it plastic waste.

“The whole beach was like a_________of plastic,” he said. “It hurt me. The _________ mess.” What Shah had seen is part of a global environmental crisis. More than 8 million tons of plastic _________in the world’s oceans each year. It’s predicted that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. “Plastic in the ocean is a _________. And the sea species have no choice at all, ” Shah said. “We are ______________ their habitats.”

In October 2015, Shah began ________________ up plastic waste from the beach every Sunday morning. At first, it was just him and a neighbor, and then he began calling on others to join in. Word ________________ and with the help from social media, more volunteers got ________________.

For Shah, the work has always been a ________________ journey, but it has earned global attention. After he was ________________ as a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations in 2016, Shah now devotes nearly all of his free time to this ________________.

He’s now spent 209 weekends on this mission, ________________ more than 200,000 volunteers, some of whom are young students, to join him in what’s been called the world’s biggest beach cleanup. By October 2018, Versova Beach was ________________ clean and Shah’s cleanups expanded to another beach as well as a stretch of the Mithi River and other regions of India.

“This world talks too much. I think we must talk ________________ and do action more, ” he said when interviewed by CNN in October 2019.“We are a smart species. Well adapt. We’ll learn. And with these youngsters rising up, I see ________________.”

5 . Do you have a talented young artist, photographer, or designer in your life? It’s never too early to start helping them get their work out there! We’ve rounded up the top art contests for kids and teens that can help these young creators share their first masterpieces with the world. Best of all? Most of them are totally free to enter!

Global Canvas Art Competition

Ages: 16 and under

Mediums: Drawing, painting

Global Canvas is all about the environment. Launched by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, this art competition wants to inspire the next generation to be more mindful of how we take care of the earth. The judges are looking for artists to capture the wonderful places that wildlife call home.

Toyota Dream Car Art Contest

Ages: Four to 15

Mediums: Drawing, painting

Time to design a dream car! Toyota wants to get junior artists thinking about what the future of transportation might look like. Prizes include cash and a chance to tour one of the Toyota manufacturing plants.

Advena World’s art   Competition

Ages: 15 and under

Mediums: Drawing, painting

Advena World’s art competition aims to promote creativity and self-expression. Instead of a theme, they ask the participating artists to simply express their feelings — anything from sadness or joy to anger or excitement — through their chosen medium,.

Progressive Young Artist Awards

Ages: 13 to 19

Open to: All international applicants

Mediums: Painting, drawing, photography, mixed media, sculpture

Cost to enter: $5 USD

PYAA is all about expressing and celebrating progressive values. So, if there is a creative teen in your life who wants to do good in the world, sign them up for this art contest for teens. The prize is a scholarship which they can put toward their post-secondary schooling.

8 . Exercise and I had never had a good relationship due to my fear of sports. From a young age, my dad _______ me into a dozen sports. I didn’t like any of them, _______.

When I entered the University of Regina, my dad _______ telling me “You have to find a way to stay _______.” or “You don’t want to get the Freshman 15, do you?” So I _______ to give swimming a shot, but I _______ managed to go to the pool twice during the fall semester (学期). Worse still, I was _______ to convince myself that’s OK.

The spring semester came. A friend of mine _______ me if I wanted to try Zumba (尊巴) with her. All I knew about Zumba was that it was basically a kind of exercise: dancing to Latin pop songs. It didn’t sound too bad, but I couldn’t be _______.

I went, and that was it. Zumba became my ________ of tea. The instructor would always say, “Don’t worry about the steps. Have fun. Do your own thing.” That removed my ________ of sports. I didn’t have to be ________. I didn’t even have to be good. I just needed to ________ the music and move. Zumba did ________ me from the Freshman 15, and it also did so much more. It let me make ________ with my unpleasant past about physical exercise, and enjoy staying healthy.

9 . The following four famous paintings—from Jan van Eyck’s portrait to Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece—have stood the test of time.

The Arnolfini Portrait

The Arnolfini Portrait of Jan van Eyck, an oil painting on wood produced in 1434, in which a man and a woman hold hands with a window behind him and a bed behind her, is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces in the National Gallery, London. This painting is as visually interesting as it is famed. It is also an informative document on fifteenth-century society, through Jan van Eyck’s heavy use of symbolism—while husbands went out to engage in business, wives concerned themselves with domestic duties.

The Starry Night

During his 12—month stay at the mental hospital near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France between 1889 and 1890, Vincent Willem van Gogh painted The Starry Night, an oil on canvas(帆布), a moderately abstract landscape painting of an expressive night sky over a small hillside village. When the Museum of Modern Art in New York City purchased the painting from a private collector in 1941, it was not well known, but it has since become one of Van Gogh’s most famous works.

The Harvesters

The Harvesters is an oil painting on wood completed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565. It depicted the harvest time which most commonly occurred within the months of August and September. Nicolaes Jonghelinck, a merchant banker and art collector from Antwerp, commissioned this painting. The painting has been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City since 1919.

Guernica

Guernica, a large black-and-white oil painting, was painted by the Cubist Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso in 1937. The title “Guernica” refers to the city that was bombed by Nazi planes during the Spanish Civil War. The painting depicted the horrors of war and as a result, has come to be an anti-war symbol and a reminder of the tragedies of war. Today, the painting is housed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

10 . When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we had a milkman delivering milk to our doorstep. His name was Mr. Basille. He wore a white cap and drove a white truck. As a 5-year-old boy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the coin changer fixed to his belt. He noticed this one day during a delivery and gave me a quarter out of his coin changer.

Of course, he delivered more than milk. There was cheese, eggs and so on. If we needed to change our order, my mother would pen a note — “Please add a bottle of buttermilk next delivery” — and place it in the box along with the empty bottles. And then, the buttermilk would magically (魔术般) appear.

All of this was about more than convenience. There existed a close relationship between families and their milkmen. Mr. Basille even had a key to our house, for those times when it was so cold outside that we put the box indoors, so that the milk wouldn’t freeze. And I remember Mr. Basille from time to time taking a break at our kitchen table, having a cup of tea and telling stories about his delivery.

There is sadly no home milk delivery today. Big companies allowed the production of cheaper milk, thus making it difficult for milkmen to compete. Besides, milk is for sale everywhere, and it may just not have been practical to have a delivery service.

Recently, an old milk box in the countryside I saw brought back my childhood memories. I took it home and planted it on the back porch (门廊) . Every so often my son’s friends will ask what it is. So I start telling stories of my boyhood, and of the milkman who brought us friendship along with his milk.