California is one of the richest states (州) in America. It is the third largest state in the United States in area, after Alaska and Texas. And California also has more people than any other state in the United States. Besides, it has lots of natural resources(资源). But not everything is perfect there. California has two important problems: earthquakes(地震) and forest fires.

The San Andreas Fault(断层) runs through California. As a result of it, the state gets many earthquakes. Some of the earthquakes are very strong. For example, there was a strong earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. Many buildings fell down. And the earthquake made a large number of fires happen. Up to 3,000 people died in it. There have also been many other strong earthquakes. Some people are afraid that a “big   one” will hit the state someday. They think an earthquake will bring a huge number of problems.

During summer and autumn, much of California is dry. So forest fires or wildfires often start. Those fires can spread quickly and burn many forests. What’s worse, they also burn people’s homes. They often kill people before firefighters can put them out.

Do you have any foreign friends? Do you know their characteristics (特征)?

The Germans are very quiet and they always keep calm. They don’t like to speak more words. They look very serious. They like different kinds of amusements. The Germans are very hard-working. They like tidiness, especially the women, who always keep their home clean.

In some ways, the Englishmen look the same as the Germans. They are very quiet and never talk too much with the strangers, they are really polite, so we often hear they say “Thank you” or “Sorry”. The gentlemen are also the Englishmen.

The French’s holidays are very long. They like traveling and usually spend their long time saying in other countries. The Frenchmen are more outgoing than the Germans. It is very easy to make friends with them.

Compared to the Frenchmen, the Americans are more outgoing. And they are even opener than all of the Europeans. They don’t like to depend on others. So it is very common that the students do part-time jobs in their free time. And in American’s eyes, success is an important part in their life.

There are some things amazing in the world. Have you ever watched one of these coral islands(珊瑚岛)? They teach us a lesson.

In the sea there are many islands. In its warm waters there are some little ones. We call them “coral islands”.

A coral island is very nice to look at. It looks like a ring of land with trees, grass and flowers on it. One part of the ring is open to the water. There is a little round lake inside the island.

If you look into this lake, you will see beautiful coral(珊瑚). You may think they are flowers. If you look at a piece of coral, you will see many little holes in it. A very small sea animal has lived in each of these holes. These sea animals make the coral.

They began to build under the water. Year after year, the coral grew higher and higher. At last, it grew out of the water. Then the sea brought it small trees and something else. After some years, these things changed into earth. Sometimes the wind brought seeds(种子) to this earth. Sometimes birds flew over it and brought seeds to the island. The little seeds grew. In a few years there were plants all over the island. In a few more years there were trees growing there.

So you see, these islands were built little by little. The workers were very small.