The Beginning of Summer

A Chinese lunar year has 24 solar terms. The 7th term is the Beginning of Summer, which is the turning point from 【小题1】 (温暖 ) weather to hotness. Each year, the fifth, sixth or seventh day of 【小题2】(五月) is the day of the Beginning of Summer. It 【小题3】 (认为) to be the important growing season for crops. Chinese do many activities 【小题4】(度过) it. They eat five-color rice, eat eggs, and 【小题5】 (甚至) weigh people. Eating five-color rice is to reach a balance of Yin and Yang. It’s said that you will get a summer fever easily 【小题6】 (除非) you have eaten eggs on hot weather. Weighing people is a 【小题7】(主要) activity in southern China. It is said that after weighing yourself on this day, you will not lose weight during the summer. All 【小题8】 (这些) are filled with people’s hope for good health.

According to Traditional Chinese 【小题9】(药), known as TCM, summer is a Yang season. It’s suggested to eat Yin foods, something 【小题10】(湿) and cool, and red foods such as red beans, tomatoes, peaches, watermelons, and carrots.

You asked about places to go and things to do in 【小题1】 (we) town. The Downtown Mall is always fun. It is a great 【小题2】 (shop) place. There 【小题3】 (be) some good stores and restaurants there.

Hope Clothing Store is a fun place to shop, and it has the 【小题4】 (good) clothes in town. The shop assistants(售货员)are 【小题5】(friend) to people. My favorite restaurant is Nicks Restaurant. It’s the closest to my house. It’s cheap and the hamburgers there are great. You can also 【小题6】 (enjoy) wonderful noodles there and the beef noodles are the 【小题7】 (delicious)! Showtime Cinema is my favorite cinema. It has the 【小题8】 (big) screens and you can sit the seats 【小题9】 (comfortable) there. It doesn’t have the newest movies, but the tickets are the 【小题10】 (cheap).

There are lots of things to do and to see here. Come for a visit soon.

Yours,

Susan

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) recently tested an oven they used to bake five chocolate chip cookies. We now know the results of that experiment: the cookies took a lot l【小题1】 to bake in space than on Earth. The cookies that came out best r【小题2】 two hours of baking time inside the International Space Station. The baking time for cookies on Earth is generally only about 20 minutes.

The cookies are the first food 【小题3】 (bake) in space from raw food materials. The American company Nanoracks d【小题4】 and built the cookie oven. Hilton Double Tree hotels supplied the cookie dough. The makers of the oven did e【小题5】 some big difference in the baking time in space, but they were surprised that that difference was so large. “There is still a lot to look into to figure out really what is 【小题6】 (drive) that difference, but definitely a cool result,” said Mary Murphy, a baking expert. She said the baking results will continue to be examined in order 【小题7】 better understand why space baking took so much longer. In addition, researchers will study the effectiveness of the baking tray, which was designed to work in micro-gravity（微重力）【小题8】 (condition).

The five chocolate chip cookies were frozen when they were s【小题9】 to space. Each had to be baked separately in the oven. Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano took charge of the baking experiment in December. No one has tasted the space-traveling cookies just yet. Organizers of the experiment say additional testing will need to be carried out to determine whether they are s【小题10】 to eat.