Lisa Pina never thought she would need the fire safety training she received during her apprenticeship(学徒期)as a union painter and dry waller(筑墙工). On Friday morning, she was thanking God she had it.

On Thursday night, while Pina was babysitting her granddaughter, nephew and two nieces in her sister’s apartment, she smelled smoke and realized the apartment building was on fire. When her 4-year-old granddaughter Ilean Garcia began saying, “We’re going to die, ”she knew she had to act.Pina,39, first sealed the door, and then told all four children to get on the floor. After calling 911, she told the children to start singing and promised them all treats as soon as they reached safety. “I said, ‘OK, we’re going to lie down and we’re all going to play a game,’” Pina said. “We all started singing our ABCs and 123s.I was just trying to make it fun.” Pina patiently waited, and a few minutes later, Riverside County sheriff’s deputies (治安官的助手) arrived. Pina, Ilean,8yearold Gabriel Parga,5-year-old Aubreyana Parga and 4-year-old Meriyah Parga were all trapped on the second floor as flames filled the first story.  Pina did the only thing she could. She opened the window and dropped the children, one-by-one, into the arms of the sheriff’s deputies about 15 to 20 feet below. “I just needed to keep the kids calm so they wouldn’t be afraid，”Pina said.“I was deathly afraid inside，but I couldn’t let them know that.”[Not long after dropping the children out of the window, firefighters arrived with a ladder and rescued her. Ten people were treated at the scene for suffering smoke, but nobody was seriously injured.

I had the meanest mother in the world. While other kids ate candy for breakfast, I had to have cereal (麦片粥), eggs and toast. Others had cokes and candy for lunch, while we had to eat a sandwich. As you can guess, my supper was different from the other kids’. But at least I was not alone in my suffering. My sister and two brothers had the same mean mother as I did.

My mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. She had to know who our friends were and what we were doing. We had to wear clean clothes every day. Other kids always wore their clothes for days. We reached the height of disgrace (丢脸) because she made our clothes herself, just to save money.

The worst is yet to come. We had to be in bed by 9:00 each night and up at 7:45 the next morning. So while my friends slept, my mother actually had the courage to break Child Labor Law. She made us work. I believed she lay awake all night thinking up mean things to do to us. Through the years, our friends’ report cards had beautiful colors on them, black for passing, red for failing. My mother, however, would merely be content with black marks. None of us was allowed the pleasure of being a dropout (辍学者).

She forced us to grow up into educated and honest adults. Using this as a background, I’m now trying to bring up my three children. I’m filled with pride when my children think I am mean because now I thank God every day for giving me the meanest mother in the world.

The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.

The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th-to 15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling.

The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings, and artists include Leonardo da Vinci, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titian and Veronese.

The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings, and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velaazquez, Claude and Vermeer.

The East Wing houses 18th-to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.

The Gallery is open every day from 10am to 6pm (Fridays 10am to 9pm) and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.

Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk), Leicester (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).

Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.

“I think we are knocking at the door of immortality(永生),” said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. “I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate(保守的估计).”

At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology(纳米技术) make it likely that humans will live in the future beyond what was possible in the past. “There is a great effort so that people can live from 120 to 180 years,” he said. “Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.”

However, many scientists who specialize in aging are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.

Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. “It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?” said Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Centre. “At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all.”

You are one of the most familiar faces in class, not because you are funny or have great note-taking abilities but because you ask the most number of questions.    16     It is important to have a good way to ask questions. Here are a few tips for improving your questioning skills:

Be clear about what you want to know.

Be clear about what you want to know and frame your question accordingly    17     If you beat around the bush, your teachers won’t be entirely sure what it is that you haven’t understood, or need an explanation for.

    18    

If you are uncertain about a particular subject, make it clear when it is being discussed. If you put your question in context (语境), you can be sure of it. Because questions often open up new avenues within a subject, doing this would benefit the whole class.

Don’t hesitate to talk to your teacher after class.

    19     Therefore, if you feel uncomfortable about asking a question in front of your classmates, wait till the class is over. This will probably put you more at ease.

Write down your questions.

    20     They may appear when you’re studying, reading or taking notes. Note them down on a piece of paper so that you won’t forget to ask them later. This can also make sure that you don’t have any unanswered questions when the exam approaches.

Years ago, if a teenager had some problems in her life, she might go home and write in her diary. Now a teenager with __ problems might go onto the Internet and write about her problems in a blog (博客). In many ways, a diary and a blog are very __. So what makes blogging different from writing in a(n) __ diary?

The biggest difference is that blogging is much more __ than a diary. Usually a teenager treats her diary like a book full of __ that she does not want to __.

It’s interesting that someone who writes in a blog __ a diary will probably write nearly the same information.

I have a little sister, and sometimes I go online to read her __. She writes about things like waking up early for swimming practice and not studying enough for her chemistry test. __ I was her age, I wrote about the same things, but __ in my diary. Then after I had finished writing, I would hide my diary in a secret place because I was __ that my sister might read it.

The biggest __ with blogging is that anyone can read what you write. If I was angry with a friend during high school and wrote something __ about her in my diary she would never know. __, if my sister ever wrote something had about a friend, that friend __ read her blog and get a “cry”.

There are also __ to blogging, of course. If I felt sad one day and wrote in my diary, “Nobody cares about me.” __ would know about it. However, if my sister wrote the same sentence in her blog, her best friends would __ respond (回应) and tell her how much they __ her. Blogs help people __ in contact with their friends and know what the people around them are doing