2 . It was through Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent: Travel in Small-Town America that I first experienced small-town travelling. I was interested instantly on reading it, for driving across the countryside is always something I like.

    1     True, the convenience and modernity are what small towns don’t have. However, caught up in the crowd, people tend to lose the true meaning of life. They are moving quickly in the streets, as if there were steamy lava (炙热的熔岩) chasing them.

Many tourists don’t realize the real purpose for travelling is to relax.     2     They manage to escape a nine-to-five schedule of annoying work, only to dive into a nine-to-five schedule of shopping or forcing themselves into packed tourist sites.     3     You don’t get trapped in space filled with tourists, but miles of fields and woods. You don’t get tiny parks with crowds of people, but natural forests where rare animals can be seen. Villagers say hi to you warmly as you drive here and farmers will warmly invite you home.

I once travelled to the Midwest and drove through the countryside. The scenery was absolutely magnificent.     4     Farmers’ houses were in and out of sight behind golden corn. Ponds (池塘) hid themselves behind woods, where a lone fisherman sat there, enjoying life.

Suddenly, it seemed to me that life couldn’t be better. Just throw away the sadness and burdens (负担) that annoy us. What matters is the simple happiness of enjoying life.     5    

Chinese silk is well known all over the world. It is considered as     1     symbol of the origin of civilization. According to legend, a teenage girl in China,     2     saw metamorphosis (蜕变) of a special kind of caterpillars (毛毛虫), did something even more     3     (amaze) — she invented silk! She is Ancest or Lei.

One day, she noticed quite a few caterpillars taking small     4     (bite) of the leaves. A few of them had formed translucent cocoons (半透明的茧) around     5     (they). One by one the cocoons grew thicker so Lei couldn’t see through them. They were like eggshells, but smaller and even     6     (strong). She kept wondering     7     was going on inside. Lei started to open them and they turned into bundles of threads. Lei knew that the threads in spider (蜘蛛) webs were strong, but she wondered if the threads from these cocoons were strong enough     8     (make) into cloth. After testing, her doubt was removed.

Later, Lei concentrated     9     figuring out how to make cloth from the cocoon threads. Eventually, Lei invented silk, and the caterpillars     10     (call) silkworms since then.

4 . Blackburn high school had a reason to be optimistic this season. For one, they had a famous coach Palus. They also had a promising football _______ named Gary. Although he was a green hand, he had the _______ to play football and could give the team a spark (火花). Palus liked Gary so much that he would often give him a _______ home. However, it was _______ at the same place.

“Then one day, he opened up to me that he had to stay with his sister from place to place,” _______ Palus to CNN.

Gary said that after his father passed away, the family couldn’t _______ to live in an apartment. When he understood his mother’s_______, he knew he had to do something. From that point on, Gary said he was couch (沙发)-surfing from friend to friend, not knowing where he’d _______ each night. And he had to do a part-time job after his football _______every day.

Palus was ________ after hearing his story. After some ________, he decided to have the boy sleep in his house and ________ him as a family member. Gary trained even harder and became the best one in his team. His story ________ his teammates so much that the team won the first national championship for the school in 2022. When asked, Gary gives all ________ to the one thing that he thought he would never have, “They’re my ________ and I can’t imagine where I would be without their support.”

6 . Kyra Peralte thought keeping a diary during the pandemic (流行病) might help her sort out her feelings. In April 2020, the mother of two in Montclair, New Jersey, now 46, started writing about the challenges of work, marriage and motherhood during a global crisis. She invited women from near and far to fill the notebook with their own pandemic tales.She named the project The Traveling Diary.

Peralte created a website for people to add their names to the queue. Each person gets to keep the diary for three days and fill as many pages as she wishes. Then she is responsible for mailing it to the next person, whose address Peralte provides. So far, more than 2, 000 women from 30 countries have joined in.

The diary reached Colleen Martin in Florham Park, New Jersey, in November 2020. “I had just recently lost my brother. By the time I actually got it and wrote in it, it was much more of a relief,” she says. Adding to the diary, she says, helped her look for meaning and “the growth and development that occurs in terrible times.”

Martin shipped off the diary to the next person, and Dior Sarr, 35, received it at her home in Toronto just before the new year. “I wrote about my ambitions(抱负), my goals and how I wanted to step into the new year, ” she says, “It felt meaningful to pass on something so personal. It felt like these were women that I had known even though I didn’t know them at all.”

Like many of the women who wrote in her diary, Peralte feels a strong bond with the people who filled its pages, none of whom she would have otherwise known. Her idea, Peralte says, has had a great effect on her and, she hopes, the other women who were part of it.

7 . SUMMER BREAK CAMPS

Strategic (策略) Thinking Training Camp

Ages: 6﹣16

Tel: 818﹣699﹣6401

Location: In person (Cobble Hill)+ Online

Full﹣day or half﹣day Summer Break Camps explore strategic thinking using board and card games. Kids will develop and discuss strategies for game play through socialization and learn good sportsmanship through cooperative and competitive play.

Rock Camp

Ages: 8﹣18

Tel: 918﹣210﹣1720

Location：In person (Williamsburg)+ Online

The music school is offering an in﹣person “ Rock Camp”for kids to play music with a band. Kids will spend three hours every day learning and rehearsing(排练) songs from popular bands. The week﹣long camp will get to its peak in a live performance to be showed on Facebook to friends and family. You can also sign up for a “5﹣day Immersion Pass” that will allow kids to learn one instrument in a program.

The Maker Space Camp

Ages: 6+ years old

Tel: 718﹣576﹣3035

Location: Online

The maker space is offering many remote programs at Geek Forest for kids’ exploration, cooperation (合作), self﹣learning, making, and sharing, which includes “Storytelling through Comics” (ages 6–10), “Video Production Lab” (ages 8–12), “Arcade! JavaScript Game Design”(ages 8–12) , and “Creator Collector, Carnifex”(ages 12+).

Virtual Camp

Ages: 7﹣15

Tel: 618﹣966﹣6000

Location: In person (Prospect Park) + Online

They are offering an in﹣person camp where kids meet in Prospect Park and create their own Survivor Kids show. Campers learn all about making short video projects while having fun outside. Virtual camp options include a painting show and a cooking show.

10 . Canada’s new Dark Vessel Detection program is using advanced satellite technology to find illegal fishing ships that attempt to steal fish from waters around the world. Illegal fishing is a major contributor to the decrease of fish and their habitat destruction.

It is said that illegal fishing accounts for about 30 percent of fishing activity worldwide. It means that u to 26 million tons of fish are caught at a cost to the global economy of more than $ 23 billion a year. Illegal fishing occurs both on the high seas and within the 200 mile limits of coastal states. It has an especially negative effect on coastal populations in undeveloped areas.

Now, the government’s Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in partnership with the Department of National Defense and MDA (Canada’s space technology maker), has started a new program that has already led to fines on five foreign ships. The $7 million Dark Vessel Detection program uses satellite technology to locate and track ships. Some illegal fishing ships have switched off their location transmitting (传输) equipment, in an attempt to avoid surveillance (监视) and control.

The program offers state-of- the-art satellite data to small island nations and coastal states around the world. The local economies of those places are often influenced by illegal fishing. Finding illegal fishing ships from space will allow these small island nations to focus on their investigations and protect their fish.

“Illegal fishing threatens the health of our fish population and takes resources (资源) away from hard- working, legal fishermen,” said Bernadette Jordan, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, “This state -of the art system will help Ecuador and small island nations in the Pacific region deal with illegal fishing. Such illegal activity will do great harm to the Galapagos Islands and the food and economic security of its people,” she added.