Happiness (幸福) is for everyone. You don’t need to care about (关心) those people who have beautiful houses with large gardens and swimming pools or those who have nice cars and a lot of money and so on . Why? Because those who have big houses may often feel lonely, and those who have cars may want to work on the country roads at their free time.

In fact, happiness is always around you if you put your heart into it. When you are in trouble at school, your friends will help you; when you study hard at your lessons, your parents are always taking good care of your life and your health; when you get success, your friends will say “Congratulations” to you; when you do something wrong, people around you will help you to correct it. And when you do something good to others, you notice them, and you can see that happiness is always around you.

Happiness is not the same as money. It is a feeling of your heart. When you are poor, you can also say you are happy, because you have something else that can’t be bought with money. When you meet with difficulties, you can say loudly you are very happy, because you have more chances to challenge yourself. So you cannot always say you are poor and you have bad luck. As the saying goes, “Life is like a revolving door. When it closes, it also opens.” If you take every chance to get, you can be a happy and lucky person.

My English teacher is very strict(严厉) with us. Several days ago, when we were having class, Tom asked me a question. But she thought we were speaking in class. She asked us to stand at the back of the classroom tor a few minutes. This made me uncomfortable. After that, I feel nervous in her class, so I don’t like her class. However, I really want to learn English well. What should I do?

Yours,

Mike

I am sorry you are having difficulty with your English class. Every teacher wants his or her students to study hard especially in class. So I think you should have a talk with your English teacher and tell her what you were doing with Tom that day. If she knows your worries, maybe she will help you with your English. And she will be pleased to hear you want to learn English well. I believe when students are not trying as hard as they can, a teacher is forced(被迫) to take actions.

Yours,

Editor

Some parents may have had trouble getting their kids away from video games and outside this summer. But for one Virginian family, that wasn’t the case.

Josh and Cassie Sutton just hiked (徒步旅行) the Appalachian Trail (AT) from Georgia to Maine in 209 days with their five-year old son, Harvey, or “Little Man”. The AT is one of the longest trails in the world. The 3,505-kilometer-long trail passes through 14 states in the eastern US.

Harvey’s parents have been hiking with him since he was two years old. And they prepared him for hiking the AT by starting out with lots of shorter walk and hikes. Harvey was 4 years old when he and his parents began their walk in January. He turned 5 before they completed the trip on August 9.

They slept in a tent, woke at 5:30 in the morning and hiked about 10 miles a day. Harvey’s dad, Josh Sutton, said meeting and talking with other hikers along the way prevented boredom(无聊).

Harvey’s trip was praised by another hiker, Dale Sanders. He is the oldest person to hike the trail, which he did at age 82.

“It’s going to change his life forever, and his parents’, too. The kid went through some hardships. Hardships make us stronger,” said Sanders, now 87 (in 2022). “That kid is going to smile through life.”

Have you ever heard of ＂a ball of energy＂? People often use it to describe very active children. But today we tell about an invention called the soccket, that is a real soccer ball of energy. Julia Silverman explains that in fact the soccket is a portable generator(便携式发电机).

Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews developed the soccket as part of a group project for an engineering class at Harvard University.

There are mechanisms(装置) in a soccket. When you kick, hit or throw it, energy is then kept in it by these mechanisms instead of disappearing into the environment.

Then the user can put something directly into the ball, like a lamp, or a mobile phone charger so that they can get energy from it.

For every fifteen minutes of the game play, the soccket can provide enough electricity(电) for an LED lamp for three hours, and the ball can store(储藏) up to 24 hours’ electricity.

The International Energy Association reported last year that nearly one and a half billion people in the world had no electricity to use, and most of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and in India and other countries in Asia.

Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews both had experiences in developing countries before they began the project. They knew that power shortages are a serious problem in really areas.

There’s an energy crisis in the world. One out of every five people in the world don’t have any electricity. And besides that, there are a lot of health problems because what people use instead of the electricity are harmful choices like kerosene(煤油) lamps, which produce a lot of smoke.

Julia Silverman says the soccket ball is one small solution(解决方法) to a big problem.

Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman hope their soccket ball will shine more light on the problem of power shortages. It offers people a chance to put their energy into the world’s most popular sport and get some energy in return.