In the tenth grade, I began working for free at a vet’s that was run by a friend. I wanted to get experience for what I thought would be my future job. However, on one particular Saturday morning I learnt something perhaps more important.

The hospital was in the middle of one of the poorer sections of the city and some people could only pay for the most basic treatments. On this Saturday, a man and his young son, who was probably about 7 years old, walked in with a small cat in a cardboard box. There was something wrong with the cat’s left eye. But the man could not afford to pay for the cost of the medicine. He kept quiet for a while, and then he asked where the nearest animal shelter was. Hearing this, his son cried and started to argue with him. All of a sudden, an older woman who was sitting in the waiting room stood up, walked up to the counter, and told the man that she would pay for the cost. The man thanked her and the son got to keep a healthy cat.

I always thought it was the right thing to help out a needy person, but I only saw people do acts of kindness on TV or in movies. What the woman did made me believe that these things do happen in real life, and quite often.

Now, when I can’t decide whether to help someone who is in need, I remember this woman, and then I have the courage to step up to the plate. Sometimes other people follow.

Many little girls like flowers, watching butterflies and riding small horses. A lot of them also like cars, robots and spaceships. But most girls’ clothing only has pictures of flowers, butterflies or horses.

Two mothers decided to make clothes that include all the things that little girls do and love.

Six-year-old Bella loves to play with cars. So her dress has pictures of cars on it.

“We haven’t found this type of dress in the store,” Cathy, Bella’s mother, says.

The car dress is from a new girl’s clothing line called Princess Awesome. Rebecca Melsky set up the business. She says its products (产品) for girls have some designs normally found on boys’ clothes.

It all started two years ago when Rebecca was hoping to buy clothing for her two-year-old, who liked robots, trucks and spaceships.

“One day when I walked through a girls’ store. I thought to myself I wish they’d make one of those beautiful dresses that also have a robot on it because she will love that. And I thought someone should do that. Maybe I should do that.” Rebecca said.

Her friend Eva St. Clair believed she should, and their business was born. The women sold the first 70 dresses they made at a market. So they decided to expand (扩展) their business online. Their products sold very well there, too.

“They sold out so fast that I could not make them fast enough. We decided it was time to think about a factory,” Rebecca said.

So they started to raise money from people over the Internet. The women raised more than $215,000 within days, far more than the $35,000 they expected.

“Our biggest challenge (挑战) is going to be how we expand as rapidly as people seem to want us to,” Rebecca said.

The women hope Princess Awesome will expand into products for girls of all ages and all interests.

Humans were designed to stand upright(直立). And yet in this modern world, too many of us spend our days with our heads lowered for a simple reason: we’re staring at the tiny screen of a smart phone.

People spend an average of 2 to 4 hours each day with their neck bent while shooting off emails or texts. That’s 700 to 1,400 hours a year. The success of social media has led to a rapid development of bad smart phone posture.

The average adult head weighs 10 to 12 pounds when it’s in the upright position. However, because of the gravity, bending your head at a mere 15 degree puts 27 pounds of pressure on your spine(脊椎)；a 30 degree neck bend could equal(等于) 40 pounds of pressure; a 45 degree bend adds the force of 49 pounds, according to the research from Dr. Kenneth Hansraj from New York. These stresses may lead to many problems.

It’s no secret that correct posture is better for your back. According to the researchers, good posture is described as ears aligned(成一条直线) with the shoulders. In proper alignment, spinal stress disappeared. It is the best position for the spine. Standing tall doesn’t just make you look better; it improves your health, too. Other studies have found good posture has even been connected to ways of behaving. People who have poorer posture often have poorer physical and emotional health.

The researchers describe bad posture（姿势）as “the head in a forward position and the shoulders dropping forward in a rounded position”. Bad posture has been connected to many medical problems, including headaches and other problems, depression and heart disease. This is why Hansraj said it’s important to be mindful of your smart phone posture. While it is nearly impossible to avoid the technologies that cause these problems, people should make an effort to look at their phones with a correct posture.

Email has brought the art of letter writing back to life, but some experts think the resulting spread of bad English does more harm than good.

Email is a form of communication that is changing, for the worse, the way we write and use language, say some communication researchers. It is also changing the way we communicate and build relationship. These are a few of the recently recognised features of email, say experts, which should cause individuals and organizations to rethink the way they use email.

“Email has increased the spread of careless writing habits,” says Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics (语言学) at an American university. She says the poor spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure of email reflect a growing unconcern about the way we write.

Baron argues that we shouldn’t forgive and forget the poor writing often shown in email. “The more we use email and its tasteless writing, the more it becomes the normal way of writing,” the professor says.

Others say that despite its poor writing, email has finished what several generations of English teachers couldn’t: it has made writing fashionable again.

“Email is a critical new communication technology.” says Ian Lancashire, a professor of English at Toronto University. “It fills the gap between spoken language and the formal methods of writing that existed before email. It is the purest form of written speech.”

Lancashire says email has the mysterious ability to get people who are usually scared by writing to get their thoughts flowing easily onto a blank screen. He says this is because of email’s close similarity to speech. “It’s like a circle of four or five people around a campfire,” he says.

Still, he accepts that this new-found freedom to express themselves often gets people into trouble. Emails sent in a day almost exceed (超过) the number of letters mailed in a year. But more people are recognising the content of a typical email message is not often exact.

Because of work, school or family responsibilities, many people have no time to take an extended vacation. 【小题1】 Therefore, there is one popular choice for them—a mini vacation.

A mini vacation is a one to three days’ getaway. Unlike the standard vacation, it doesn’t require weeks of planning and needn’t cost much. 【小题2】 You will have the chance to get your mind off work and take a break from your regular routine.

Quite often, a mini vacation is planned around an official holiday or school break, in order to avoid taking too many personal days off from work or having to pull children out of classes. A typical long weekend could start after work or school on Friday and end the night before a regular schedule comes again. Time is really limited. 【小题3】

An overnight trip to an amusement park nearly could be considered a mini vacation. It has advantages. People can enjoy an inexpensive vacation from the stresses of work or school. 【小题4】 Many people are surprisingly unaware of interesting attractions located within a few hours of their hometowns, but local hotels and visitor centers often have lots of informational booklets on local attractions.

【小题5】 It includes minimal (最少的) packing and little gas. Other costs may include entry fees of the attractions, hotel reservations, meals and souvenirs. Some vacationers on limited budgets may be able to stay overnight with relatives or friends. They can also save money by purchasing inexpensive meals at local stores or fast food restaurants.

Many years ago, when we first went to Canada, we were driving through Montana to Colorado with our two children, then aged 8 and 11. As it was getting __________ , we started looking for a hotel, only to find out that it was __________ time in that part of the country, and all the hotels were __________ .

Finally, around 9 o’clock in the evening, we __________ at a gas station to fill up with gas. My husband asked for a __________ book and told the woman at the counter that we were trying to find a hotel. She told us it would be __________ . He tried for 15 more minutes. When he was __________ , the woman, Linda, said she and her family lived nearby and would be happy if we spent the night at her home.

My husband was __________ at her offer of generosity(慷慨). She called her son to __________ us, since she had to work at the gas station till midnight.

When we reached their home, her husband ____________ us. He invited us to have coffee and chat while we ____________ his wife. She came past l2 am. We asked if we could slip away in the morning so as not to disturb them. They said we were now ____________ and we would have to have breakfast with them.

Next morning, we ate breakfast, and when we were ____________ , my husband asked if he could offer some ____________ . They would not hear of it and insisted we were their guests. We kept in touch for many years, and invited them to our ____________ , too. Over the years, we lost touch, but have never forgotten their kindness.