Studying abroad is complicated. Apart from academic matters that needed to be dealt with, you also need to maintain a great many personal relationships. 【小题1】 I spent most of the three and a half years in Canada with my host family. Their house is not far from my school. They are a local family of five: the parents, two sons at the age of eight or nine, and the grandmother.

In the first half year, we had no big conflicts. 【小题2】 Take food as an example. I had to bring my own lunch to school and my host family made cold sandwiches for me every day. Back in China, I always had warm meals, which maybe was why after having cold sandwiches for half a year I couldn’t stand it anymore.

【小题3】 They lived in a villa, and offered me a room on the first floor, while their living room and activity room were all on the second floor. At night or on weekends when I was ready to read, do my homework or go to bed, their sons would play with a ball, jump up and down and horse around. It felt like the whole floor was shaking.

After enduring for half a year, I told my parents I wanted to change to a Chinese host family, so that there would be less incompatible living habits. 【小题4】 He thought living in a Chinese host family overseas was no different from studying in China.

In the end, I chose to stay with that family and I gradually realized that they were actually nice people. 【小题5】 Gradually, they also started to care for me, a stranger from China. Occasionally, they would steam rice and make some stir-fried dishes for me; when the kids were playing upstairs, the host mother would remind them not to make too much noise. Although I was still bothered by their noise sometimes, I knew that there was no perfection in life. We needed to understand each other.

The Party of Their Lives

In Los Angeles’s infamous Skid Row, there are hundreds of children living on the streets or in shelters. It’s a place where dreams go to die. But one couple is determined to use their own experience with loss to foster a sense of hope.

In 2013, Mary Davis and her husband lost their first unborn kid. Refusing to let the heartbreak break them, they became volunteers in a Skid Row homeless shelter. They found that many of the kids there had never had a single birthday party before, so they decided to throw a birthday party for those homeless kids. They took over a room in the Union Rescue Mission and filled it with streamers, gifts and a cake. The kids were so excited that they made their own music — singing and clapping and, of course, laughing.

Since then, the couple have thrown a party each and every month. They routinely attract 250 kids and their parents. An hour before each party, volunteers arrive to set up the decorations and activities: face painting, balloon artists, a DJ, cake, and pizza. There are small presents for the kids celebrating their birthdays, but the Davis make sure there are more than enough to go around.

“I remember a mom came with her kid,” Mary says. “It was their first night at the shelter, and her child had a birthday. We had an extra gift for her — pink headphones. The little girl was so excited. And her mom... she’s crying. ‘I never imagined we would ever need to be in a shelter. I didn’t know what to expect. But I really didn’t expect a birthday party for my child.’ she cried with happiness.”

Doing her best to normalize these kids’ lives is both heartwarming and bittersweet, Mary says. “If you look outside, you see homeless person after homeless person on the street, and it reminds you that these kids don’t get to leave this area after the party.”

It may be why, after throwing 88 parties, she still cries after each one. She credits the kids in the shelter with helping her hold on to hope. “We didn’t realize how much joy they were going to bring us,” she told CBS News. “And it was so healing for both kids and us.”

One North Carolina business owner is helping the homeless by opening up his parking lot to people who may be living out of their cars.

James Charles is the owner of Kiplin’s Automotive Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. For about two months, he has been encouraging people sleeping in their cars to use the company’s parking lot as a safe place to sleep at night.

Charles was first encouraged to do something helpful after his team tried to take back a woman’s car back in January.

“The gentleman who was taking back the car said, ‘We can’t take the car; there’s somebody living in the car,’” Charles told WBTV.

Then he tried to get the woman into a homeless shelter (收容所). But he was shocked to find that every shelter in the city was full. Although he paid for her to stay in a hotel for a few nights, he knew that there were other people suffering from the same thing.

Charles made a Facebook post: “We would like to provide a safe place for those going through this tough time. We can’t put everyone in a hotel, but we can get you a safe place for the night.

Since more and more people have shared his post, people have donated (捐赠) hats, scarves, food, and even an easy-to-move toilet for the parking lot. Not only that, but about 20 different people have helped Charles with his offer by parking their cars overnight at the lot.

These kind acts also made it possible for Charles to start his non-profit (非盈利的) organization, HALO Now. The organization was set up to raise money for the homeless people of Charlotte — and he has raised more than US$30,000.