When you are little, the whole world feels like a big playground. I was living in Conyers, Georgia the summer it all happened. I was a second grader, but my best friend Stephanie was only in the first grade. Both of our parents were at work and most of the time they let us go our own way.
It was a hot afternoon and we decided to have an adventure in Stephanie’s basement. As I opened the basement door, before us lay the biggest room, full of amazing things like guns, dolls, and old clothes. I ran downstairs, and spotted red steel can. It was paint. I looked beyond it and there lay even more paint in bright colors like purple, orange, blue and green.
“Stephanie, I just found us a project for the day. Get some paintbrushes. We are fixing to paint.” She screamed with excitement as I told her of my secret plans and immediately we got to work. We gathered all the brushes we could find and moved all of our materials to my yard. There on the road in front of my house, we painted bit stripes (条纹) of colors across the pavement (人行道). Stripe by stripe, our colors turned into a beautiful rainbow. It was fantastic!
The sun was starting to sink. I saw a car in the distance and jumped up as I recognized the car. It was my mother. I couldn’t wait to show her my masterpiece. The car pulled slowly into the driveway and from the look on my mother’s face, I could tell that I was in deep trouble.
My mother shut the car door and walked towards me. Her eyes glaring, she shouted, “What in the world were you thinking? I understood when you made castles out of leaves, and climbed the neighbors’ trees, but this! Come inside right now!” I stood there glaring hack at her for a minute, angry because she had insulted (侮辱) my art. 
“Now go clean it up!” Mother and I began cleaning the road. Tears ran down my cheeks as I saw my beautiful rainbow turn into black cement.  
Though years have now passed, I still wonder where my rainbow has gone. I wonder if, maybe when I get older, I can find my rainbow and never have to brush it away. I guess we all need sort of rainbow to brighten our lives from time to time and to keep our hopes and dreams colorful.
【小题1】What did the writer want to do when his mother came home?

第二部分：阅读理解(第一节20小题。第二节5小题；每小题2分，满分50分)

第一节：阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项，并在答题纸上将该

选项标号涂黑。

     When you are little, the whole world feels like a big playground. I was living in Conyers, Georgia the summer it all happened. I was a second grader, but my best friend Stephanie was only in the first grade. Both of our parents were at work and most of the time they let us go our own way.

     It was a hot afternoon and we decided to have an adventure in Stephanie's basement. As I opened the basement door, before us lay the biggest room, full of amazing things like guns, dolls, and old clothes. I ran downstairs, and spotted a red steel can. It was paint. I looked beyond it and there lay even more paint in bright colors like purple, orange, blue and green.

     "Stephanie, I just found us a project for the day. Get some paintbrushes. We are fixing to paint. " She screamed with excitement as I told her of my secret plans and immediately we got to work. We gathered all the brushes we could find and moved all of our materials to my yard. There on the road in front of my house, we painted big stripes ( 条纹) of colors across the pavement (人行道). Stripe by stripe, our colors turned into a beautiful rainbow. It was fantastic!

     The sun was starting to sink. I saw a car in the distance and jumped up as I recognized the car. It was my mother. I couldn't wait to show her my masterpiece. The car pulled slowly into the driveway and from the look on my mother's face, I could tell that I was in deep trouble.

     My mother shut the ear door and walked towards me. Her eyes glaring, she shouted, "What in the world were you thinking? I understood when you made castles out of leaves, and climbed the neighbors' trees, but this! Come inside right now !" I stood there glaring back at her for a minute, angry because she had insulted (侮辱) my art.

     "Now go clean it up!" Mother and I began cleaning the road. Tears ran down my cheeks as I saw my beautiful rainbow turn into black cement.

     Though years have now passed, I still wonder where my rainbow has gone. I wonder if, maybe when I get older, I can find my rainbow and never have to brush it away. I guess we all need some sort of rainbow to brighten our lives from time to time and to keep our hopes and dreams colorful.

1. What did the writer want to do when his mother came home?

   A. To introduce Stephanie to her.          B. To prevent her from seeing his painting.

   C. To put the materials back in the yard.    D. To show his artwork to her.

2. In his mother's eyes, the writer __ .

   A. was a born artist                          B. always caused trouble

   C. was a problem solver                      D. worked very hard

3. The underlined word "rainbow" in the last paragraph refers to __ .

   A. the rainbow in the sky                     B. the stripes on the pavement

   C. something imaginative and fun              D. important lessons learned in childhood

4. It can be learned from the passage that parents should       .

A. encourage children to paint          

B. value friendship among children

C. discover the hidden talent in children 

D. protect rather than destroy children's dreams

I guess we’ve already talked about this before but I’ll ask you again just _________．

1. A.
   by nature
2. B.
   in return
3. C.
   in case
4. D.
   by chance

My daughter recently asked me what a Travel Agency does. There is one located on our street and it has just been completely rebuilt. I told her that they helped people book their trips and vacations. “Why haven’t we ever been in there?” she wanted to know. “Because we do everything ourselves online these days” I explained. “But why do it yourself if other people want to do it for you?” she wondered out loud.

The answer is that the travel agency makes a little bit of money on each ticket you book through them. If you book your ticket yourself, online, you save that money. Saving money sounds great except that when you think about it you typically spend three evenings comparing prices to end up saving $30 on a $300 trip. All those $30 discounts add up of course so I guess we should be happy with that.

Still, how bad is it really to pay someone $30 and trust them to buy you something decent? Wouldn’t you say your free evenings are worth more than $10 a piece?

Consider books for a moment. Buying your book at Amazon saves you maybe 30% to 40% on each book. Add to that the convenience of shopping from home and getting the package delivered to your home address. So far so good.

Unfortunately that does mean you spend way too much time browsing Amazon. com while you could do something fun instead. Like maybe reading an actual book?

Then the package arrives and you aren’t home and end up having to pick it up at the local post- office. All in all I wonder how much time I end up investing in the whole process.

Time sounds free, but to most of us, it is more valuable than money.

The Internet Economy promised to get rid of the middle-men and we loved it. Somehow, I’m starting to get the feeling that we ourselves ended up doing the work of that middle-men we were so eager to get rid of.

In any project you can always pick two of these: fast, cheap or good. We seem to have focused a lot on ‘cheap’ and ‘good’ but the extra time we need to invest to keep it ‘fast’ comes out of our own pockets.

You can always make more money but you can never make more time.

1.What is the purpose of the first paragraph?

2.What’s the author’s attitude towards the Internet Economy?

3.What’s the best title for the passage?

I guess we’ve already talked about this before but I’ll ask you again just          .

    A. by nature                B. in return            C. in case              D. by chance