Trees play a special role in my life. They accompanied my growth, and my personal experiences and memories often 1with them. There was a row of poplars（杨树）in my first childhood home; I never2the house without the trees.
Out on the farm, my grandparents always cut a Christmas tree from the fields. They were always short. Those trees were a family 3; I can still 4 their smell all these years later.
The pines in our backyard were only 1.5 meters tall when we moved in. They grew right alongside our kids, and in the same 5: silently and quickly. Those pines once stretched a hammock（吊床）6 the two of them. They watched over our rounds of hide-and-seek, snowfalls, and 7 family gatherings.
A huge willow tree once 8 in the backyard as well. The kids had a tree-house in it for a long time. Other kids in the 9 enjoyed it too.
There is a sadness to a 10 tree; to the ground it makes when it hits the ground.
My husband and I were working as newspaper photographers 11 the active volcano Mount St. Helens exploded. Many nearby forests were 12 destroyed by the effects of the explosion. The loss of all the trees can somehow be as 13 as the loss of lives and homes.
Trees tend to be 14 of strength and beauty.
The trees returned to Mount St. Helens -- and they returned 15 than the experts predicted. To all who had witnessed the disaster, the 16 was encouraging. Those small trees 17 us of the beauty of new beginnings.
We've filled in the empty holes 18 the pines stood and dug a new hole that will soon be home to a new tree.
One of the grandchildren asked how tall the new tree is.
“Not much taller than I am,” I said.
“Can we decorate it for Christmas?” she asked, eyes 19.
The old trees may be gone, but the new one will soon become part of my grandchildren's 20 for many years to come.
Ferry Services Fare Table
Effective from 1st April 2019.
Cash Only is accepted onboard our Ferries.
Return Fares for Mainland to Bressay；
Mainland to Whalsay；
Mainland to Yell；
Yell to Unst.
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All Fares are RETURN - Payable on outbound journey only |
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|
Passenger |
|
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Adult |
£5.50 |
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OAPs (With SIC Pass) & Children up to 19 |
£1.00 |
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Disabled Concessionary SIC Pass Holders |
£0.00 |
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Adult 10 Multi Journey Ticket |
£22.70 |
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Vehicles - Fares include driver |
|
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Vehicles up to and including 5.50m Return |
£13.60 |
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Motorcycles Return |
£11.00 |
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Motorhome 5.5m - 9m |
£20.50 |
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Motorhome 9m - 12m |
£23.50 |
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Motorhome 12m + |
£27.00 |
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Vehicle (<5.5m) 10 Journey Ticket |
£90.00 |
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Motorcycle 10 Journey Ticket |
£72.00 |
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*For Yell to Unst, the fare payable is the same as the other “return fare” routes. However if your journey originated on the Mainland (you have had to use two ferries on the same day or after 18：00 from the day before) then you will only be charged the one fare on Yell. Please retain the ticket you were sold on the Yell ferry for presenting on the Unst ferry. |
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Allan Guei, 18, was a star basketball player at Compton High School in the Los Angeles area before he graduated last month. His good grades made him eligible for an unusual competition: A free-throw contest in the Compton High gymnasium. The top prize: ＄40,000 in scholarship money.
Guei, whose parents immigrated to the United States from the Ivory Coast, knew how much that financial aid could mean for his family. He was also feeling a fair share of pressure as students and teachers crushed into the gym to watch Guei and seven other randomly compete against each other.
Guei won the free-throw contest by one basket and netted the ＄40,000. But it's what he did next that's truly astonishing.
In the weeks following the March free-throw competition, Guei learned that he'd scored a full-ride basketball scholarship to California State University—Northridge. NCAA(全国大学生体育协会)rules allowed Guei to accept the athletic scholarship and also keep most of the ＄40,000 he had won.
But Guei couldn't stop thinking about the seven talented runners-up from the free-throw contest. They, too, had dreams and very real needs. So, he asked Principal Jesse Jones to make a surprise announcement at Compton High's graduation ceremony: Geui wanted to donate the ＄40,000 to the other seven students.
“I've already been blessed so much and I know we're living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates,” Guei said in a statement. “It was the right decision.”
Guei elaborated on his decision to give the money away in an interview with ESPN(体育电视网): “I was already well taken care of to go to school, to go to university for free… I felt like they needed it more than I did.”
A food chain is a simple way of explaining how each living thing gets its food. For example, a simple African food chain might consist of three parts: first, trees and bushes; second, giraffes; and third, lions. Each link in a food chain is food for the next link. Food chains always start with plants and end with animals.
Plants are at the bottom of the food chain. Scientists call them producers, because they use light energy from the sun to produce food from carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis（光合作用）. Animals, unlike plants, can't produce their own food. Instead, they must eat plants or other animals. This is why scientists call them consumers.
Consumer animals fall into three categories. Herbivores（食草动物）eat only plants. Carnivores（食肉动物） eat only other animals. Omnivores eat both plants and animals. In addition to producers and consumers, there are also decomposers(分解者).These organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, feed on decaying(腐烂) matter. They help the food chain by speeding up the decaying process that releases minerals back into the soil to be absorbed by plants as nutrients.
Most food chains have only four or five links in them. As you go up a food chain, the amount of energy at each level diminishes, because some of the energy is lost in the form of waste or is used up by the organism at the level. That is why it takes many plants, for example, to feed a few giraffes who in turn feed one lion.
Most animals are part of many different food chains, because they must eat more than one type of food to satisfy their energy needs. All of these interconnected food chains form a more complex structure called a food web. Humans, for example, are at the center of a very complex food web, because we tend to eat many different types of plants and animals.
Life can be so wonderful, full of adventure and joy. It can also be full of challenges, setbacks and heartbreaks. Whatever our circumstances, we generally still have dreams, hopes and desires —that little something more we want for ourselves and our loved ones. Yet knowing we can have more can also create a problem, because when we go to change the way we do things, up come the old patterns and pitfalls that stopped us from seeking what we wanted in the first place.
This tension between what we feel we can have and "what were seemingly able to have is the niggling suffering, the anxiety we feel. This is where we usually think it's easier to just give up. But we're never meant to let go of the part of us that knows we can have more. The intelligence behind that knowing is us—the real us. It's the part that believes in life and its possibilities. If you drop that, you begin to feel a little "dead" inside because you're dropping "you".
So, if we have this capability but somehow life seems to keep us stuck, how do we break these patterns?
Decide on a new course and make one decision at a time. This is good advice for a new adventure or just getting through today's challenges.
While, deep down, we know we can do it, our mind—or the minds of those close to us—usually says we can't.
That isn't a reason to stop, it's just the mind, that little man or woman on your shoulder, trying to talk you out of something again. It has done it many times before. It's all about starting simple and doing it now.
Decide and act before over-thinking. When you do this you may feel a little, or large, release from the jail of your mind and you'll be on your way.
With self-service facilities – supermarkets, to name one – beginning to appear all the time, we're now relying on integrity more than ever.
Integrity – the quality of doing the right thing no matter if anyone is watching or not – has been highly valued in China since ancient times. And the phrase“立木取信”probably best explains how integrity works in the relationship between people and the ruling of a nation.
This phrase comes from the Warring States period (475-221 BC), during which China wasn't yet a unified country and was constantly at war. States carried out reforms to make themselves stronger, with the most thorough and influential one being the reform of the State of Qin, introduced by statesman Shang Yang (395-338 BC).
Shang's reform focused on farming and giving rewards to soldiers who fought hard during wars. But at first, people had little trust and confidence in Shang.
So he decided to prove himself by putting a wooden pole at the south gate of the capital of Qin, offering those who took the pole to the north gate a reward of 10 gold pieces, before long raising it to 50. When a man did as he said, Shang paid him 50 gold pieces as promised. Word soon spread, and people began to realize that Shang was a man of his word. The reforms were finally pushed forward.
Today, integrity still plays an important role in Chinese society, which is why it's included as one of the 12 core socialist values in China.
China is also planning to build a social credit system by the year 2020, which will keep citizens' misbehaviors –- even minor traffic violations – on record, so that trust can be established among people.
“Without a system, a conman can commit a crime in one place and then do the same thing again in another place. But a credit system puts people's past history on the record. It'll build a better and fairer society,” explained Wen Quan, a blogger who writes about technology and finance, to BBC News.
☆ 不乱扔垃圾，注意垃圾分类。
☆ 保护动植物，拒绝买卖野生动物制品。
☆ 未获登山许可，不要擅自前往。
注意：
⑴请使用规范英语，词数不少于100词，开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数；
⑵可适当增加细节，以使内容充实、行文连贯 。
参考词汇：珠穆朗玛峰自然保护区Mount Qomolangma Nature Reserve
Dear Schoolmates,
Local authorities have recently denied the claim that Mount Qomolangma Nature Reserve was permanently closed. Meanwhile the government has called on everyone's attention to the present situation.
Thank you！
The Students' Union
