I was pacing back and forth as I looked up and down the street for my mom’s car. She had never been before. The fact that she wasn’t picking up her phone was what worried me the most.
Burring!!! My phone suddenly rang out.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Where are you?” my brother asked.
“I’m in front of my academy waiting for Mom to pick me up, but she’s 20 minutes late,” I replied. He then calmly said, “Don’t worry, but Mom was in a car accident. I’m coming to get you right now taxi. Wait out front.”
As we stepped into our empty home, I felt terrible. My mom quit her job and became a housewife after had children, so she was always at home taking care of us. As the youngest daughter, I never made chore. To suddenly have her away from the house made my hands shake.
“Listen Grace,” my brother said.“ I’m not sure how long Mom is going to be gone, so we have to up. Dad’s always busy with work and comes home late, so it’s going to be just the two of us for ale.”
“Who’s going to take care of us?” I asked in a low voice.
He looked at me confidently and said, “It’s high time that we took on some responsibility, right?” Holding back tears I lied and said, “Right, I can handle it.”
The next few days were a nightmare as I had to do everything since my brother left home for university. Clothes were piling up, but I didn’t know how to use the washing machine. Trash piled up as the training family members just ordered food for every meal and I didn’t know where to throw away them. I spent most of my day at home looking at the mess enlarging itself like a growing mountain.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Feeling helpless, I decided to see my mother and ask her for advice.
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What Mom said touched me deeply.
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Babloo was picking color papers and some watercolors while his mum was busy selecting the necessary daily supplies for this month. They both completed their selection of items and went to the checkout to pay the bill. Seetha was surprised to see the bill of Rs. 1000 (卢比), which was more than the budget that she had set. She wanted to return some of the items picked up by Babloo.
“But I like drawing. My teacher always shows my art to the class,” Babloo cried. He usually went to a secret place to work on creative artwork. He knew it was difficult for his parents to earn enough money. He was sure his artwork would be appreciated by the shop-keepers around and that he could give his parents a big surprise.
Seetha decided not to disappoint her son. Back at home, Babloo wanted to eagerly open the boxes and look at those items he had selected. But Seetha asked him to do his homework first. She was a litle worried about what her husband, Ramesh, would say about the additional bill amount.
Ramesh reached home around 7:00 P. M. He was very tired and Seetha offered him a cup of coffee. He was a sales executive. He had to work hard to complete the sales target to save his job in the company.
“We need to save at least a little more amount per month, Seetha. It might help us for any emergency expenses,” said Ramesh with a dull face. “What was the bill amount for this month? I hope that was within our budget.”
Seetha was silent for a moment and asked him to have his coffee first. Ramesh, with worry on his face, asked again, wondering if there was any problem.
“No... no issues at all. Only thing is this week’s spending has gone over the budget.” answered Seetha. “Babloo bought color papers and some watercolors and I did not want to disappoint him.”
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
At this, Ramesh called Babloo and talked to him angrily and seriously.
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Four weeks later, Babloo ran towards his father with lots of excitement and 10 notes of Rs. 100.
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By December 2007, my husband had been out of work for six months. Of our six children, the eldest one Jack was 19 and usually pretty handy(手巧的) with electronics. Dad had told him, “I wouldn’t open that DVD player if I were you.” Well, Jack wasn’t Dad, he did open it out of curiosity and as a result, it quit working. A new DVD player cost $250 and it wasn’t on our list to buy, since car repairs would need a large amount of money and daily expenses were also wanting money.
The next day, our neighbor came to our house. When she saw the broken DVD player, she said, “Your children wouldn’t be happy without the DVD player in the coming Christmas holiday.” I just shook my head as I told her about our financial situation.
However, I determined to make our upcoming Christmas happy with cheap things — parades, community fun days, baking cookies, and making candy and homemade gift baskets. Perhaps those things weren’t as exciting as filling the tree with gifts, but hopefully my children would learn that family togetherness and traditions are more important than gifts.
One evening after dinner, I was standing in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I went to answer the door but found no one there. I hate it when those bad neighbor kids “ring and run”. I decided to find them this time! Quietly, I headed out to the sidewalk to find the bad kid and give him/her a good lesson.
Heading toward the mailbox, I heard someone near the house and called out, “OK, you may think it’s funny to ring the doorbell and run, but I don’t!” Then I saw movement. Someone moved behind my car, probably thinking he/she could go quickly around the back of the car and be home free. I stood at the end of the driveway. “Come out,” I said, in my biggest, scary Mom voice. “I can see you there!”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式作答。
A disguised but familiar female voice replied, “Hey lady, go and check your door!”
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Surprisingly, inside the red envelope was a $250 gift card for a department store.
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I live in a small but lovely neighborhood. Our house is neither large nor luxurious, but it has a fairly big garden. My father loves his garden. He planted some seeds in it and took good care of the plants, watering them, applying fertilizer, weeding and getting rid of bugs. He was never tired of doing all that stuff. But at that time, I didn’t understand why working in the dirt excited him so much.
Unfortunately, in the summer vacation before senior high school, my father was seriously injured in an accident. He had to stay in bed for a while. My mother had several business trips, so she couldn’t take care of the garden. I didn’t want my father to worry. I said that I would take care of his garden until he recovered. I assumed that the little plants would continue to grow as long as they had water, and luckily it rained fairly often, so I didn’t think much about the garden.
One Saturday morning, my father said to me, “Christine, the vegetables should be about ready to be picked. Let’s have a salad today!” I went out to the garden and was upset to see that many of the lettuce (生菜) leaves and carrots had been half eaten by bugs. There were hundreds of bugs all over them!
I panicked for a moment but then I quietly went to the nearest supermarket to buy some vegetables. When I was making the salad, my mother came home and saw the bag from the supermarket in the kitchen. I was embarrassed and admitted, “Dad would like a salad, but the garden is a disaster. I don’t want to disappoint him, so I went to the store and bought some vegetables.” My mother smiled, saying, “Honey, you know what is the right thing to do.”
Paragraph 1
My father seemed very pleased when I took the salad to him.
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Feeling guilty, I decided to do the right thing.
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I was hungry and hopeful that our babysitter would make a meal. But I found she was sleeping on the sofa. So I wanted to turn to my sister, Ashley. She was coloring in her room. When she saw me, unexpectedly, she said, “I’m hungry. Let’s make some sandwiches.” Unluckily, before making sandwiches in the kitchen, Ashley and I had a fight. We ran around the kitchen, throwing flour at each other. Flour flew in the air around us as we went into the living room. Suddenly, we heard footsteps outside.
“Oh, no! Mom is coming!” I said. “What are we going to do about the mess?” I wondered nervously. It looked like it had snowed inside the house. Ashley quickly ran and took a vacuum cleaner, but she didn’t know how to turn it on. Suddenly, Mom walked in, tired from a long day’s work. After seeing the scene, she shook her head.
Ashley and I ran to her and smiled. Mom didn’t get angry at us. But she seemed disappointed at the babysitter when she woke her up and showed her the mess. Once the babysitter had gone, Mom went into her room. “We’re not in trouble!” I shouted with joy. “But Mom didn’t look so good,” Ashley said to me in a sad voice. “What? She was smiling. Surely she looked good and happy!” I argued. Then Ashley continued, “Well, let’s go and see!”
So we went to Mom’s bedroom door and secretly looked in. Mom was sitting on the bed with tears in her eyes. We returned to the living room. “Mom is crying because of our mess,” Ashley said. “Let’s clean the house. And she’s probably hungry now. Why don’t we make sandwiches for her? We just need to put some meat, vegetables, or something else in between two pieces of bread.”
注意：1. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答；
2. 续写词数应为150左右。
After hearing Ashley’s words, I agreed.
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Seeing the kitchen become clean again, Ashley and I began to make sandwiches there.
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I have a brother and a sister named Tex and Indi, who are five‑year-old twins. One day, Tex was playing with his friend Sammy. They were building a space station out of Legos, and I was sitting nearby, so I could hear their conversation.
“I'm putting a jetpack on this guy,” said Sammy, “so he can fly from the space station to the spaceship.”
“You know, my grandfather invented jetpacks,” said Tex.
“Really?” said Sammy.
Tex nodded, “And, my grandpa lets me use a jetpack whenever we visit him.”
I could hardly believe my ears. I knew that Tex had a great imagination, but I'd never heard him tell a lie before. Then I realized I'd better talk to him privately, so I asked him to meet me in the kitchen.
“Why would you lie to your friend?” I asked.
Tex said, “Sammy always gets to do cool stuff that I wish I could do. I wanted to be the one talking about cool stuff for a change.”
“Well, you should apologize to Sammy,” I said. “And from now on, always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. OK?”
“OK,” Tex replied.
He went to apologize to Sammy while I patted myself on the back for being the world's best big sister. But it wasn't long before I realized that my helpful advice wasn't actually that helpful.
The next morning, while I was singing along to my favorite song on the radio, Tex popped his head into my room and said, “I don't think your voice sounds very good with that song.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” I said.
“I was just telling the truth!” said Tex.
That afternoon, Indi ran into the house after her art class and said, “What do you think of the horse I made out of clay?”
“It's ugly,” said Tex.
“That wasn't nice,” said Indi, crying and leaving the room.
“But it's true,” Tex said.
Then, at dinner, our mom said, “I tried a new recipe for buckwheat noodles. It took me forever to make. I hope you like it.”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Tex put one forkful in his mouth and said it tasted terrible directly.
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Throughout the rest of dinner, we had a big family conversation.
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7 . I was visiting my sister and watched as my fifteen-year-old nephew, Ben, emptied the trash without being asked. “You’re such a great kid,” I told him. “Thank you for doing that.” He smiled, “The trash is my job. I’m ATT around here.” At my confused look, my sister Mandy explained that ATT stood for All Things Trash. “Emptying the trash has always been Ben’s job, and sweeping the floor is Anna’s job. Whenever some of the trash would spill out onto the floor, they’d argue about whose responsibility it was to clean it up,” she said. “So, we came up with the word act to solve that problem. If it has anything to do with trash, no matter where it is, it’s Ben’s job.” I nodded. “That makes sense. I love easy ways to solve common problems.”
A few days later, I was back home with my own family. I had a deadline for a huge project at work, and I was really feeling the pressure. When I’d picked up my son from school that afternoon, I’d enter the grocery store to buy a toasted chicken for dinner. I figured that would buy me an extra hour to work on my project since I wouldn’t have to cook that night.
Now, it was 6:00 p.m., and I was typing away, making good progress. My kids were downstairs watching TV. My eleven-year-old son, Nathan, came into the room and said, “Mom, I’m getting hungry. Can you warm up the chicken now?”
“In a little bit,” I answered without looking up from the computer, “I’m trying to work.”
Ten minutes later, my older son, Jordan, came in to tell me that he was hungry too, and I needed to warm up the chicken. “I’ll do it as soon as I’m at a stopping point,” I said.
Fifteen minutes after that, my eighteen-year-old daughter, Julia, made the same request. I exploded. “Each of you is old enough to put a toasted chicken in the microwave,” I nearly shouted. “You are watching TV while I’m working on something important. I would think you would realize that I’m busy and just take some responsibilities.”
注意:
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答.
Twenty minutes later, a paper plate filled with chicken and cheese appeared on the desk next to my computer.
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Sharing the load has given me more time to read and rest.
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