Can you a better way to help the little girl?

    I remember when I was growing up, my mum always said, "Half the fun of doing anything is sharing it with others." It's so true. Friends allow us to enjoy the taste of our success and our joys and comfort us in our challenging moment. They provide a mirror for us to learn more about ourselves. I've always looked on friends as the family members. They enrich our lives. As Robert Steven once said, "A friend is a present which you give yourself."

    To be a good friend，①成为一个好的听众是很重要的. Hear what your friends say first rather than making conclusions (结论) quickly. Sometimes it is useful to repeat their words back to them. It can help them to realize whether their words were what they wanted to say.

    Patience is also important in being a good friend. You know the old golden rule, "Care for others the way you would like them to care for you." The support of a friend during a difficult time could make the difference between success and failure.② Encouragement and confidence are the best gifts that can change a person's life.

    We should choose our friends carefully, because they can have a huge effect on our life. As someone told me, "The attitudes of your friends are like the buttons (按钮) on a lift. They will either take you up or down."

    Teenagers who listen to the same music often have a common look. One hot style in music and fashion is hip-hop. Hip—hop is a type of urban music with a heavy beat. Typical (典型的) hip-hop fashions are loose-fitting street clothes. The style includes baggy (宽松的) pants, sweatshirts, hiking boots, baseball caps (usually worn backward), jackets with sports logos, and expensive athletic shoes. In the hip-hop style, boys and girls often dress the same way.

    African-American kids in Detroit and Chicago first made hip-hop fashions trendy (时髦的) more than 20 years ago. They wore baggy street clothes to dance in clubs. Then North American and European bands also began wearing like this. Thanks to the popularity of music videos and films, hip-hop soon became an International fashion.

    Teens around the world, from Britain to South Africa to Japan, now wear hip-hop clothing. Seventeen-year-old Melanie Borrow, from Manchester, England, said, "My pride and joy in life are my Levi's jeans." In the United States, teens spend a lot of money on hip-hop fashions. David Bowen, 17, from Evanston, Illinois, has five pairs of hiking boots, each costing around S 100. David said. "They are popular because a lot of hip-hop performers wear them."

    It may be hard to believe, but the American Revolution (革命) —the war that freed the American states from British control—began over a cup of tea. Tea was not the only thing that caused the war, of course, but it played a very big part.

    The British people's love of tea is well-known. When the British won control over much of North America in the early 1700s, they brought their tea-drinking habits with them. Tea quickly became the continent's most popular drink. As tea could not be grown locally, just as in Britain, it was shipped into the country—mostly from India.

    In the early 1700s, the Britain government made a special deal with the East India Company, an English trading company. They agreed that no other company was allowed to bring tea to Britain or any country controlled by Britain, including America. It was a great deal for the East India Company, since it meant that the company could decide whatever price it wanted for its products. And it always decided on a high price!

    In North America, the local people did not like having to pay such high prices. Instead of overpaying for tea from the British, they turned to Dutch traders, who secretly brought tea to the country that was just as good—and much less expensive. Although this broke the law, the American people didn't care. They got the same cup of tea at a much lower price.

    The East India Company, however, didn't like this at all. By the 1760s, they were losing millions of pounds each year to Dutch traders—a huge amount of money in a time when £60 a year was considered a good income. Instead of reducing their prices to compete with the Dutch, the company asked the British government for help and the government agreed.

    In 1767, the British introduced new laws that increased the prices of all goods which were brought into America. These laws helped make the East India Company even richer and forced local people to pay much more for everything. The American leaders asked the British government not to do so, but the British refused to listen. These unfair laws increased Americans' anger about British rule and the rest, as they say, is history.