I have a few hobbies, but there is one I like the most, baking (烘焙). A few times I have sold my baking and made some money. But that is not why I bake. I bake because I love the feel of making people happy with my baking. Sometimes I share my baking with my study group. Everyone loves it, especially Lexi.

Lexi loves my cookies. However, she is never interested in baking them. Baking to her sounds like too much work.

I’ve tried different ways to get Lexi to like baking. I let her try a cookie after I made them, showing her what she can get after finishing baking. She wasn’t so sure.

I tried letting Lexi bake herself to show her how fun it is. Again, she still wasn’t sure.

I tried to let Lexi sell our baking. She did get some money, but she again wasn’t sure that she liked baking.

I was slowly giving up. So I advised to do something relaxing. I asked Lexi to paint with me. Lexi started painting quietly. I found that her paintings looked so great. And I also saw the brightness in her eyes while she was painting. The brightness that I imagine is always in my eyes when I bake.

“Lexi,” I said gently, “You found your hobby.”

“I what? ” She asked.

“Your hobby.”

“Oh. I guess I did, right? Painting. Never thought much of it before.” Lexi answered.

“You should sell those pictures. They all look great. How about joining me at the School Fair? ”

“That sounds great!”

For the rest of the week we talked a lot about our plan. I would sell cookies and she would make posters and sell her own paintings at my cookie stand.

On the day of the School Fair, we were so excited but also very nervous. At the end when we counted our money, we saw we had made 150 yuan.

“150 yuan!” I said excitedly.

“Yes! I can get the picture book that I’ve wanted for so long!” Lexi replied, also excitedly.

Later, Lexi got her picture book. Not only that, but we both had our hobbies.

John and Sam were friends. They opened a small shop in a small village. One day, they sold out of all their wine (酒), so they drove to the city to buy some.

On their way home, the wind was strong and it was getting colder and colder. Both John and Sam wanted to drink some wine to keep warm, but they had a rule. They couldn’t drink any wine because they had to sell it. According to the rule, if somebody wanted to drink some wine, he had to pay the other twice the price.

John was a clever man. He took out ten cents and gave it to Sam. He said, “Here is ten cents. Would you please sell me some of your wine?” Sam was a businessman (商人), so he said, “You give me money, so of course I will sell some to you.” Then he passed John a cup of wine.

After drinking the wine, John felt warm soon, but Sam was still cold. Then he took out the ten cents that John just gave to him and said to John, “Here is ten cents. Please sell me some of your wine.” John agreed. Sam drank some wine and also felt much warmer. But after some time, they both felt cold again, so they kept buying wine from each other with the same ten cents. Soon they drank up all of the wine.

“How could so much wine only cost ten cents?” the two friends asked each other.

Friends are very important in everyone’s life because friends are always there when we need them. It’s great to have many friends, and I can’t think about my life without my friends.

My name’s Molly. I am tall enough but a little fat. My best friend is Lisa. When I first met her, I was five. She is one year older than me. Now she is in the same class with me, in the 7th grade. She is tall and quite thin. She has long curly blond hair and blue eyes. I am not so beautiful. Sometimes I wish I could be as beautiful as she is.

Lisa and I like doing a lot of things together and talking about different things. She always helps me with my math and I sometimes help her with her English and history. I had to do a report on science once, but I didn’t understand (理解) what the teacher said. The next day, I read it in front of the class. But the teacher told me that my report was wrong and all my classmates laughed at me. I felt very bad about myself. Lisa was the only one who didn’t laugh at me. She tried to be nicer than anybody else and make me happy.

I am a shy person and sometimes I feel that people don’t understand me. Lisa is friendly and everybody loves her. She is also smart and she can deal with everything. I am happy to have a friend like her.