4 . We bought a Shamrock trailer (房车) in the fall of 2019 in anticipation (期待) of our three-month journey to Baja, Mexico. The camper (露营车) would be home base for all the fun and adventure our family, myself, my husband and our three teenagers, would have all the way.

It took three days to drive from Calgary to Las Vegas and the temperature went from negative 30 to 15 °F-a miracle! But by the time we made it to San Diego, California, we had visited two RV mechanics to fix water leaking from the water tank and a bed heater blowing up. Thankfully, while we waited for repairs, we could listen to waves lapping on the shore.

Eventually, we crossed the border into Mexico at Tijuana and pushed our way down the shore coast. While we swam, ate Mexican food and watched sunsets, the Shamrock kept throwing us surprises. We all learned to savor (尽情享受) the good moments while dealing with the bad.

Driving through Utah, our truck began making noises. The truck’s engine had completely broken, and we needed a new one. We holed up (躲) in St. George, Utah, to wait for repairs. One evening, we were heating up dinner when the oven let out a big WHUMP! The whole camper shook.

After a few weeks, we left our truck in Utah—the engine repair wasn’t going too well—and drove home to Calgary. There could not have been five travelers so happy to stay in their house for two weeks.

Eventually, we hired someone to drive our truck and the Shamrock to Calgary, but he arrived with just the truck. The camper was causing problems, and the keys got lost, so it was left in Idaho. It’s still there; we recently marked its one-and-a-half-year anniversary of storage.

This brings me to the point of this essay: For Sale: A lively 30-foot Shamrock camper. Keeps you on your toes! Sleeps five. $9,000. Pick-up is somewhere in Idaho. Bring some tools to break into it.

Those who haven’t been to the Mu Us may not have an opportunity to do so. The desert is disappearing from    1     map as it has been turned into an oasis(绿洲)!

The Mu Us     2     (stretch) over 42,200 square km between Shaan Xi and inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, lying north of the Great Wall. In Mongolian, “Mu Us” means barren land     3     nothing can grow.

However, the area was no desert in ancient times. It used to be grazing land     4     (sufficient) supplying grass and water for sheep and cattle. Since the Tang Dynasty, it began to degrade because of excessive farming and overgrazing and     5     (year) of war.

In modern times, the Mu Us, the fourth     6     (large) desert in China, began to move southward and passed the Great Wall,     7     (attack) Yulin (Shaan Xi province). Local pastures(牧场) faced serious desertification, salinization and degradation, and the villagers had to move as the desert advanced. By the time People’s Republic of China     8     (found), Yulin had only 0.9 percent of forest cover. It became an urgent task     9     (block) the sands.

Thanks to greening, the desert is poised to disappear. The feat(丰绩) wouldn’t have been achieved     10     national anti-desertification policies and the efforts of generations of eco-warriors.

6 . Fun Summer Books for Grades 9—12

Yes, even some high-schools appreciate recommendations for vacation books. Encourage your high-school child to read with this list of approachable teen titles. Or surprise your teen with one of these books when you reach the beach and boredom sets in!

This collection of simple poems reveals what it was like to grow up as a young African American girl in the 1960s and 1970s. Woodson’s autobiographical poetry overflows with love for her family. Brown Girl Dreaming won multiple awards, so il may be assigned class reading in coming years.

Jake has a secret skill. When he holds something that belongs to another person, he can locate them, wherever they are. Once the government learns of Jake’s powers, it insists that he use his skill to find criminals. In this spy novel,Jake has to decide just how far he’s willing to risk his own safety in order to protect and help others. It is a series of modern graphic novels that have the look of classic cartoons.

Can your mom force you to become a superhero? That’s what Hank Chu finds out. A Chinese American teen in 1940， Hank is reluctant to stand up to the gangs(匪徒)in his neighborhood who threaten his family’s grocery store. But as the masked Green Turtle, he may just have the confidence to protect his family and fight back.

Things aren’t exactly panning out for 17-year-old Josh. He wants lo be a heavy metal guitarist. And he and his pals wish they had girlfriends. But regular teenage obstacles like bossy parents and poor self-confidence have been holding him back.

8 . Have you ever thrown a camel? Camels are large and heavy animals, so it would be hard to do so. But in the French-speaking Democratic Republic of the Congo, “to throw a camel” is a way of saying “to make a spelling mistake”. In the past, a phrase like that was not accepted by the French government as an official French term. But recently, the French Ministry of Culture worked on a new kind of dictionary that accepts the idea that many people in other countries and regions speak the language. The language has changed as time goes by and is different in places like Ivory Coast in West Africa or Quebec in Canada, compared to how it is in Paris.

The new online French dictionary includes new French words from around the world. It was released (发布) on March 18—just in time for International Francophonie Day on March 20. After its release, it is updated (更新) on a regular basis. It now contains about 600,000 terms. The French Culture Minister says the dictionary is not just for France’s 67 million citizens, but for the 300 million French speakers worldwide.

Supporters say the new dictionary is more democratic (大众化的) than earlier French dictionaries that   only showed the way highly educated French people spoke. Official dictionaries produced by the French Academy in Paris were first published hundreds of years ago and are regularly updated. The online dictionary, however, has a new part you cannot find in a book. If you live in Senegal, for example, you can search the dictionary, and it will give you the meaning of a word based on its use in that country.

“The French no longer have a monopoly (独占) on French,” a French magazine that supports the dictionary wrote recently. “And that is good news”.

10 . Empathy, the ability to understand and co-experience the feelings and thoughts of other people, is probably one of the most important skills a person can have.     1    

• Humans are social animals.

There are very few activities that humans take part in that don’t involve others.     2    It allows you to perceive others’ motives, treat them the way they want to be treated, understand how others perceive you, and so on.

• It lets you better understand non-verbal components of communication.

    3    People who are not empathetic have a hard time reading between the lines of conversations. They cannot understand that what the other person means to communicate is different from what they actually say.

•     4    

When you unconsciously perceive what the other party wants and needs and can understand exactly why they want it, reaching a “win-win” solution gets easier. You don’t have to blindly search for a way out.

• It broadens your horizons.

Seeing the world from other people’s perspectives lets you perceive it to a fuller extent. When you are able to look at life from other people’s point of view, you are able to live a more fulfilled life.

    5    Thus, achieving higher levels of empathy often means achieving greater fulfilment as human beings.