1 . Moving to a new neighborhood, town, state, or even country can be a pretty scary experience. All you know is that things will be different and chances are you won’t know the kids at your new school.

Leaving old friends and familiar places behind can be difficult. However, as you begin the moving process, keep in mind that saying goodbye to your old house, school, and friends does not mean that you have to forget them or that your farewell is permanent! If you’re moving to a new state or even a different country and won’t see your friends for a long time, don’t despair. Make sure to ask everyone for their address so you can write to them. Also, thanks to the Internet, it is very easy to stay in touch through email or instant messaging technology. With your parent’s permission, you can even create a blog or web page to chronicle all of your new experiences. Your old friends will love seeing what you are busy with.

Many schools have an orientation program where a student already established at the school show a new student around for their first week. This can help you to find your way around the school and to make new friends faster.

While moving is tough on kids of any age, high school counselor Karen Turner says moves can be particularly difficult for teens. “I think moving during adolescents is an extremely stressful experience, especially if you are into your junior high or senior year. Students tend to have established a very strong peer network during that period in their lives. Often this has more influence on them even than their familiar in some cases, and when they are torn from that there’s often resentment(怨气).” However, Turner adds that while moving isn’t easy, there are things that your parents and the school can do to help you cope with the change.

3 . I once stopped behind several cars, waiting at the red light. The wind blew fiercely. Ahead of me stood a young woman alongside the street rubbing her bare hands together and dancing to keep ______. Beside her rested a sign that read, “I have a baby and no food.”

Homeless and unemployed people are a ______ sight in many of our large cities, and most people drive by without ______ assistance. No doubt they have been taught that giving them money develops a dependent ______, or that the cash may be used to buy alcohol ______ the food it was intended for. Like me, they may have been taught that one should give money to a local charity, as these organizations can ______ those in need far more effectively

As I waited for the light to turn green, I felt ______ about that woman. She was obviously in need. And whether or not she actually had a baby really didn’t ______. What should I do?

Should I give her money?As I ______, the window of the car in front of me was ______ down and a hand reached out holding a pair of warm gloves. The driver ______ her own gloves and gave them to the woman. I saw the young woman ______ the words “Thank you” and a broad smile lit up her face.

As I was wondering, somebody else ______. As I tried to decide the best way to help, somebody else just did what she could. I made myself a(n) ______ that day to always do something. Whether it is big or small, just do something.

Something is almost always better than nothing!Too often we underestimate(低估)the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the ______ to turn a life around.

4 . Chinese consumers have said they will avoid eating Japanese seafood over safety concerns once Japan starts releasing (排放) nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

On July 7, the General Administration of Customs released an import (进口) ban on aquatic products from the 10 Japanese cities. It’s indicated that Japan’s plan to release polluted wastewater into the sea was a matter of global concern. The plan caused more Chinese consumers who eat seafood began to worry about their safety, according to the administration.

According to a survey in 2022 by Chinese market consultancy company iiMedia Research, 39.58 percent of participants eat Japanese seafood once every two or three weeks.

“I will not eat seafood imported from Japan anymore,” said a data engineer surnamed Wang in Shanghai. The 42-year-old has been a fan of Japanese food since 2000 and used to eat Japanese food once a month. “If I have other options, I will choose seafood that does not come from the Pacific Ocean,” he added.

Wang Qian, a financial employee in Beijing, said she has been to about 20 Japanese restaurants so far. “Normally, I would not pay attention to where the seafood came from. But now I will try not to choose seafood from Japan,”she said. “Wastewater poses a threat to human health and marine ecology.”

Wang Qian said that Japan should use other methods to solve the problem, rather than releasing nuclear wastewater into the ocean.

An employee of the Japanese restaurant Jiubanwu, in Beijing, who did not want to be named, told China Daily that the restaurant’s fish and shrimp are imported from Russia, France and other countries. “We have not been buying seafood from Japan since April,” she said.

In addition to food safety, some people are worried about using cosmetic (美容的) products made in Japan.

5 . “Farm to table” is the name of a movement that encourages people to eat locally grown food. The farm­to­table idea has become more popular in recent years. But there is also a movement that brings “table to farm”. Its purpose is to connect people to the land and to honor local farmers by creating a sort of restaurant without walls.

Its founder, Jim Denevan, got the idea for this kind of “culinary adventure (美食探险)”, as he called it, ten years ago. He recently prepared tables for more than a hundred people at Briars Farm in Virginia. He and his eight­member team arrived the night before. Chefs (厨师) from a local restaurant prepared the dinner.

Jim Denevan’s brother is a farmer and he himself is a chef. He thought that the idea of a meal served right on the farm made sense, though not everyone agreed.

“But I wanted to make the idea work, so I decided to cross the country,” said Denevan. “I went all the way across the United States and set the table on farms, ranches (大牧场) and beaches, and all the places where food came from.”

“This kind of event connects us with a lot of enthusiastic people, people that we can form relationships with,” said Matt Szechenyi, who operates Briars Farm.

The tour of the farm ends at the dinner table. The meats in the meal come from Matt Szechenyi’s farm. The vegetables come from nearby farms. Guests and local farmers sit together.

Annoica Ingram came with a friend. “The food is wonderful. I appreciate their hard work. I see everything they have to do to take care of the animals and make sure they are well­cared­for. Without them, I think, we’ll have big problems,” she said.

6 . At the start of every working week, millions of people around the world get ready for something they do endlessly, joylessly and badly: a meeting.

The reason is simple, says Madeleine de Hauke, a meeting coach and teacher in an Antwerp Management School. “We spend our lives and huge amounts of money on meetings, but there’s very little work that helps people run them effectively.”

Madeleine is correct. Running a meeting well takes skill. People need to know ahead why they are meeting, what they are supposed to achieve, who really needs to be there and how they should contribute. That sounds obvious but it is not, as anyone who has been to a pointless meeting knows. Yet meeting leaders are expected to learn all this on the job. I cannot remember ever being taught how to organize a meeting, and I have rarely had a job requiring me to do it.

I also like Madeleine’s descriptions of what she calls the Meeting Monsters: people who destroy meetings with all sorts of annoying behaviors. There is the unkind off-topic speaker. The non-stop noise in the background. The confusing rambler whose speech is endless. The rude multi-tasker. The one who says nothing but emails later to say what was decided will never work.

The trouble is, we are all meeting monsters sometimes, says Madeleine. A good meeting leader knows how to stop this behavior, or make sure it never starts by making it clear what will and won’t be allowed.

A bad meeting is like a virus (病毒). By failing to produce good decisions it often requires another meeting to be held, then another and another. Luckily there is no need for a vaccine (疫苗), just a bit more care and preparation, and an understanding that there is no shame in being taught how to lead a meeting well.

7 . Feeling overcome by your to-do list can make you unhappy, but a new study suggests that more free time might not be the magic elixir (灵丹妙药) most of us dream it could be.

The researchers analyzed data from 35,000 subjects about how Americans spend their free time. They found that people with more free time generally had higher levels of subjective happiness—but only up to a point. Compared to those with less time, people with up to two hours of free time a day generally felt better. However, people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally felt worse. So the free-time “sweet spot” might be two to three hours per day.

Part of finding this “sweet spot” is connected with how people spend their free time. In an online experiment, the subjects were asked to imagine having four to seven free hours per day and spending that time doing “productive” (富有成效的) or “unproductive” activities. Most of them believed their happiness would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day—but only if they used it unproductively. Though that experiment was based on the previous assumptions (假设), which is one limitation, it agrees with other experiments showing that being in a state of flow can benefit people’s mental health.

Of course, for you, any activities that increase your happiness are “productive”. If watching soap opera in your free time makes you feel better, you should do that due to self-care. And some traditionally productive activities can be easy and fun. For example, walking and cooking can help burn stress and put people in a state of flow.

“In cases where people find themselves with large amounts of free time, such as retirement or unemployment,” Sharif said, “our results suggest they can benefit from spending their newfound time with purpose.”

8 . Children’s lives have changed greatly over the last 50 years. But do they have a happier childhood than you or I did?

It’s difficult to look back on one’s own childhood without feeling nostalgic(怀旧的). I have four brothers and sisters, and my memories are all about being with them, playing board games on the living room floor, or spending days in the street with the other neighbourhood children, or racing up and down on our bikes. My parents hardly appear in these memories, except as providers of meals.

These days, in the UK at least, the nature of childhood has changed greatly. Firstly, families are smaller, and there are far more only children. It is common for both parents to work outside the home and there is the feeling that there just isn’t time to bring up a large family, or that no one could possibly afford to have more than one child. As a result, today’s boys and girls spend much of their time alone. Another major change is that youngsters today prefer to spend most of their free time at home, inside. More than anything this is because of the fact that parents worry far more than they used to about real or imagined dangers, so they wouldn’t dream of letting their children play outside by themselves.

Finally, the kind of toys children have and the way they play is totally different. Computer and video games have replaced(取代) the board games and more active pastimes of my childhood. The irony(讽刺) is that so many of these games are called “interactive(互动的)”. The fact that you can play computer games on your own further increases the sense of loneliness felt by many young people today.

Do these changes mean that children today have a less pleasant childhood than I had? I personally believe that they do, but perhaps every generation(一代人) feels exactly the same.

That night, Nick Bostic could only see a weak orange light as he drove down the streets of Lafayette. It was not until he drove his car further that he finally figured out what he was seeing. Oh my god, he thought, that house was on fire!

It was an ordinary night for Bostic, who was still figuring out how to make his way through a life that hadn’t always been easy.

That night, he was on the road back to his apartment just after midnight when he saw the house on fire. Fires were climbing up, and his phone was dead, with no other vehicles around coming to the rescue (救援). He ran around to the back door, not realizing that it was open. Without pausing to think about the danger, he ran into the burning building.

In the building were the Barrett families, and before the fire broke out, the Barrett couple had left home for a party, leaving their four children at home. Seionna, their 18-year-old daughter, was in charge. She was sleeping when she heard what sounded like an explosion (爆炸), followed by the heat and smell of smoke. Immediately she woke up the other kids, but then a horrible realization hit Seionna. The 6-year-old Kaylani wasn’t there, who would like to sleep in the living room. And the living room was on fire.

At the same time, Bostic peered (盯) into each room of the burning house, searching to see if anyone was home. He had just started climbing the staircase when he looked up and saw three faces from a room at the top of the stairs and peer down at him, their eyes wide.

“Your house is on fire. You need to go!” Bostic shouted.

He ran forward and threw himself out of the window, with Kaylani landing on his shoulder after the fall.