1 . Few Americans remain in one position or one place for a lifetime. We move from town to city to suburb, from high school to college in a different state, from a job in one region to a better job elsewhere, from the home where we raise our children to the home where we plan to live in retirement. With each move we are forever making new friends, who become part of our new life at that time.

For many of us summer is a special time for forming new friendships. Today millions of Americans vacation abroad, and they go not only to see new sights but also with the hope of meeting new people. No one really expects a vacation trip to produce a close friend, but the beginning of a friendship is possible.

The word “friend” can be applied to a wide range of relationships — to someone one has known for a few weeks in a new place, to a fellow worker, to a childhood playmate, to a man or woman, to a trusted confidant.

Swimmers enjoy cold swims

Many people enjoy swimming in icy cold water. An open-air swimming pool,     1     (know) as a lido, in Bedfordshire, England, proved very popular this winter. The Woburn Lido is usually open from May to September,     2     this year it stayed open to swimmers throughout the autumn and winter months too.

Until the lockdown for England was announced on 4 January, outdoor pools were allowed to remain open. “Demand has taken us by surprise,” said Murray Heining, a volunteer at the Woburn Lido. Over Christmas and New Year, the lido had to offer extra openings to keep up with the demand from     3     (swimmer).

Cold-water swimming has grown in popularity in the UK over the past few years. A survey found that 7.5 million people in England had swum in outdoor pools, as well as lakes, rivers and the sea, in 2018. In some areas, such as the river Wharfe in Yorkshire, this new trend has made environmental groups think more about     4     the water is cleared of pollution and clean enough for bathers.

Some people make it a regular practice;     5     just enjoy a refreshing dip on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day. Every year around the UK, people     6     (photograph) plunging into icy water, often in fancy dress, and the recent festive period was no exception,     7     freezing temperatures.

The Outdoor Swimming Society classifies temperatures below 6℃ as “Baltic” and from 6-11℃ as “freezing”. They advise people     8     (get) in the water gradually, so as not to shock the body. Likewise, they recommend warming up gradually, and not     9     (rush) the process by leaping into a hot bath when you get out. Instead, they suggest layering up and drinking something warm.

It wasn’t just the water that was cold—many people experienced a white Christmas; snow fell in several counties including Yorkshire and Suffolk. Paul Davies, the UK Met Office’s chief meteorologist (气象学家), a scientist     10     job is to study the weather, said the forecast indicates “the likelihood of the cold conditions experienced recently continuing through January”.

5 . A shocking 53.6 million metric tons of electronic waste was discarded last year, a new UN-backed report has revealed. The report shows that e-waste is up by 21% from five years ago. This isn’t surprising, considering how many more people are adopting new technology and updating devices regularly to have the latest versions, but the report also shows that national collection and recycling strategies are nowhere close to matching consumption rates.

E-waste contains materials including copper (铜), iron, gold and silver, which the report gives a conservative value of $ 57 billion. But most are thrown away or burned rather than being collected for recycling. Precious metals in waste are estimated to be worth $ 14 billion, but only $ 4 billion-worth is recovered at the moment.

While the number of countries with national e-waste policies has grown from 61 to 78 since 2014, there is little encouragement to obey and a mere 17% of collected items are recycled. If recycling does occur, it’s often under dangerous conditions, such as burning circuit boards to recover copper, which “releases highly poisonous metals” and harms the health of workers.

The report found that Asia has the highest amounts of waste overall, producing 24.9 million metric tons (MMT), followed by Europe at 12 MMT, Africa at 2.9 MMT, and Oceania at 0.7 MMT.

But whose responsibility is it? Are governments in charge of setting up collection and recycling points, or should companies be responsible for recycling the goods they produce? It goes both ways. Companies do need to be held accountable by government regulations and have incentives to design products that are easily repaired. At the same time, governments need to make it easy for citizens to access collection points and deal with their broken electronics in a convenient way. Otherwise, they may turn to the easiest option — the landfill.

6 . At around 10 pm, Jane got off the train at Bell port, New York. She jumped into her Honda Odyssey and began the 20-minute _________ home. She was so _________ with the route that she almost drove automatically all the way. Jane had just crossed the railroad tracks when out of nowhere a truck hit her car, _________ her backward some 100 feet onto the tracks. She was _________ the car, injured but mostly shocked by the _________.

As it happened, Peter, a volunteer firefighter and retired teacher, was getting ready for _________. At the _________ noise of clanging metals and breaking glass coming from not far outside his bedroom window, he, still dressed in his pajamas, ran out of the door.

He first came upon a(n)_________ truck lying 2,000 feet from his front yard. After _________ its driver was OK, Peter looked around and __________ Jane’s car lying across the tracks. And then he heard the bells __________ an oncoming train.

Peter rushed to Jane’s car and__________ the driver’s side window. Jane just looked up at him, here yes __________. “I have no __________ of where I am,” she said.

“You are on the railroad tracks,” Peter yelled. “I have to get you off right now!” He __________ the handle, but the door was jammed. The train was __________. Without a moment of hesitation, Peter ran to the passenger side and __________ open the door. He __________ pulled her across the passenger seat and dragged her to safety behind a signal box a few feet away. Several seconds later, the train crashed into the __________.

Jane recalled the__________ moment. “I can never repay him for this,” she said, “last night the hero arrived in pajamas, not in a fire truck.”

My Opinion on Smartphone Addiction Among Teenagers

8 . Many of us like to eat out and treat ourselves to delicious food. We are used to choosing hearty (丰盛的), fat-filled dishes and sugary desserts, which are not easily cooked at home.

The recent rise of light meals, however, gives us a smarter choice. According to Economic Daily, low-calorie, low-fat and high-fibre meals have become popular in China’s restaurants and online delivery plat-forms.

The country saw a rapid increase of restaurants concentrating on light meals, from just 600 in 2017 to more than 3,500 in 2018. According to a report published by Meituan, a major online food delivery plat-form, the number of light meals ordered online also rose 75 percent from the previous year.

Having a light meal, however, doesn’t mean eating only vegetables. Different from the meat-free lifestyle, a typical light dish avoids oily, salty and spicy food. Instead, it contains things like boiled meat, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Healthy nutrients (营养物) are the theme of the light meal.

These dishes are useful for keeping healthy and controlling your weight. That’s probably why so many people, especially the youths are into them. They see it as “a great way to avoid getting fat,” wrote the Telegraph.

“After eating several light meals, I now prefer light flavours,” Zou Jing, a college teacher in Wuhan, told China Daily. She shared a picture of her lunch: a mixture of beef, eggs, corn, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

These changes in eating behaviour are connected to deeper changes in how people think about food, says Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health, US. “Diet quality, not quantity, is important for both weight control and long-term well-being,” Willett told The New York Times.

So the next time you have a party with friends, try a light meal. It will satisfy not only your stomachs but maybe also your hearts.

10 . Sometime in the early 1960s, a significant thing happened in Sydney, Australia. The city discovered its harbor. Then, one after another, Sydney discovered lots of things that were just sort of there — broad parks, superb beaches, and a culturally diverse population. But it is the harbor that makes the city.

Andrew Reynolds, a cheerful fellow in his early 30s, pilots Sydney ferryboats for a living. I spent the whole morning shuttling back and forth across the harbor. After our third run Andrew shut down the engine, and we went our separate ways — he for a lunch break, I to explore the city.

“I’ll miss these old boats,” he said as we parted.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re replacing them with catamarans. Catamarans are faster, but they’re not so elegant, and they’re not fun to pilot. But that’s progress, I guess.”

Everywhere in Sydney these days, change and progress are the watchwords, and traditions are increasingly rare. Shirley Fitzgerald, the city’s official historian, told me that in its rush to modernity in the 1970s, Sydney swept aside much of its past, including many of its finest buildings. “Sydney is confused about itself,” she said. “We can’t seem to make up our minds whether we want a modern city or a traditional one. It’s a conflict that we aren’t getting any better at resolving.”

On the other hand, being young and old at the same time has its attractions. I considered this when I met a thoughtful young businessman named Anthony. “Many people say that we lack culture in this country,” he told me. “What people forget is that the Italians, when they came to Australia, brought 2000 years of their culture, the Greeks some 3000 years, and the Chinese more still. We’ve got a foundation built on ancient cultures but with a drive and dynamism of a young country. It’s a pretty hard combination to beat.”

He is right, but I can’t help wishing they would keep those old ferries.