2 . Last year I attended the annual autumn saffron (藏红花) harvest festival on a trip in Italy, known as the sagra. Giovannina Sarra and her family ________ me at their home. Early the next morning, we ________ among the fields and participated in the harvest.

Saffron , taken from the stigmas (柱头) of the saffron flower, is a(n) ________ crop. Also called red gold, it is a(n) ________ from Spain, first introduced into the region around the 13th century. Saffron is ________ in the hours just before ________, while the petals (花瓣) are closed. This helps protect their precious stigmas and makes the flowers easier to ________, especially preferred by the acquirers (收购商). Later, on the same day, the stigmas — three ________ strings per flower — are separated from the petals. It’s a delicate ________ that takes hours with a skilled and ________ hand. In the evening, over an open wood fire, the stringlike stigmas are ________ to make saffron powder to add to the richness of the color and the flavor, which brings considerable income.

Now sitting at a mouth-watering plate of Risotto alla Milanese, a dish cooked with saffron, I ________ the freezing morning with Sarra and her family. There’s no ________ that it is the families like the Sarras that stick to the many ________ that have survived from generation to generation. ________ more people will join them.

December strode (阔步走) into the mountains of Colorado, shooting snowflakes and blowing them into a thick blanket of white. As Christmas approached, the farmers there closed down most wooden houses for a holiday cheer. Not all were closed, however. There was still work to be done, and someone had to stay. That someone was Slim Carter.

Old Jake, another farmer there, had offered to keep him company, but Slim shook his head. “After all, a young man like me has got plenty of Christmases ahead,” Slim joked. Before Jake offered to stay again, Slim hurried on. “I’ll just have a private Christmas this year, and that’s the way I want it.” So he was left alone at the house. Alone, with his horse in the farm and the wolves roaring in the forest nearby.

Truth was, Slim had decided not to celebrate Christmas at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Christmas. In fact, his Christmas memories were good ones. His mother would fill their house with the light of candles and the smell of candy. His father would make their Christmas tree hunt an all-day, men-only affair. Slim smiled as he remembered sitting on the broad back of their horse with the freshly cut tree along behind. Back home, they would cover the tree with paper snowflakes and homemade decorations and sing all the Christmas songs they knew. And that’s the way he liked it. Those were the memories he pulled out on nights when he was working alone. Such memories warmed him inside, even if his outsides were aching with cold.

This was Slim’s first year away from home. “Christmas is nothing if not spent with family,” Slim declared to the empty house. That was the real reason he’d sent Jake away. He figured he would handle Christmas better if he just pretended it was an ordinary winter workday.

But on Christmas Eve, as Slim headed back with snow beneath his feet and stars overhead, his head hung low. It was Christmas, even without the tree and the gifts. Christmas, and he was all alone.

Then he remembered decorating the tree with his family again.

While singing to his decorated Christmas tree, Slim heard a knock on the door.

World Olive (橄榄) Tree Day takes place     1     26th November every year. It was established     2     (official) at the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in 2019.The olive tree, especially the olive branch, holds an important place in people’s mind. Since ancient times, it     3     (symbolize) peace, harmony and     4     (wise) .It is important not just to the countries     5     these noble trees grow but also to people and communities worldwide.

Protecting and growing the olive tree is     6     increasingly urgent thing as the world fights against climate change. The conservation of cultural and natural heritage is one of UNESco’s     7     (center) goals, and marking World Olive Tree Day strengthens the efforts to achieve it.

World Olive Tree Day is set up     8     (encourage) the protection of the olive tree and stress the values it symbolizes,     9     (inspire) people to appreciate its important social, cultural, economic and environmental significance to humans.

There is much to learn, share and celebrate on World Olive Tree Day, and UNESCO encourages everyone to participate in     10     (activity) such as debates, conferences, cultural events and exhibitions organized worldwide.

8 . Almost everyone who has studied English has been warned about the way Brits love their manners. It is part of our national identity, as much as fish and chips or complaining about the weather. Recently I have been wondering where this comes from and I read online that we say sorry up to eight times a day. Probably the same amount of times that any other person says “hello” or “how are you”. It is almost like greetings to us! It was only when I was explaining how there are five steps of saying thank you when you buy something from a shop to a Mexican friend of mine that I realised how mad it sounded.

After some research online I have not been able to find any specific reasons why we are the way we are. I suppose for centuries manners and how we eat at the table and talk to other people have been the barriers between the lower and upper classes and represent your social status. Britain has traditionally been a quite conservative country. There are many articles suggesting that this seemingly polite attitude of always saying please and thank you is quite false because it is impossible to always feel that you want to thank someone or say please.

Maybe it is for this reason that people are going one of two ways: they are incredibly polite and hold back on their feelings or not polite at all, and express their true feelings. Some Brits are fed up of pretending that they are always content and having to please people. Sometimes because we feel we have to be polite, we are prevented from saying what we truly think. Do you think it is better to not hurt people’s feelings and be polite or to let people know the truth? In your country what is the custom? I know in some countries if someone is considered to be doing their job, the clients think that they do not need to be thanked.

10 . What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?

As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.

Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.

It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.

With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.