It was not until I was 9 years old that I found out my father was ill. It was 1994, but I can remember my mother's words as if it were yesterday: "Kernel, I don't want you to take food from your father, because he has AIDS. Be very careful when you are around him." AIDS wasn't something we talked about in my country when I was growing up. From then on, I knew that this would be a family secret. My parents were not together anymore, and my dad lived alone. For a while, he could take care of himself. But when I was 12, his condition worsened. My father's other children lived far away, so it fell to me to took after him.

We couldn't afford all the necessary medicine for him, and because Dad was unable to work, I had no money for school supplies and often couldn't even buy food for dinner. I would sit in class feeling completely lost, the teacher's words muffled as I tried to figure out how I was going to manage. I did not share my burden with anyone. I had seen people reacted to AIDS. Kids laughed at classmates who had parents with the disease. And even adults could be cruel. When my father was moved to the hospital, the nurses would leave his food on the bedside even though he was too weak to feed himself.

I had known that he was going to die, but after so many years of keeping his condition a secret, I was completely unprepared when he reached his final days. Sad and hopeless, I called a woman at the nonprofit National AIDS Support. That day, she kept me on the phone for hours. I was so lucky to find someone who cared. She saved my life.

I was 15 when my father died. He took his secret away with him, having never spoken about AIDS to anyone, even me. He didn't want to call attention to AIDS. I do.

1.What does Kernel tell us about her father?

A. He had stayed in the hospital since he fell ill.

B. He worked hard to pay for his medication.

C. He told no one about his disease.

D. He was carefully attended by the nurses on his deathbed

2.What can we learn from the underlined sentence?

A. Kernel found what the teacher said hard to understand.

B. Kernel had special difficulty in hearing.

C. Kernel was too tired to hear her teacher's words.

D. Kernel was too troubled to focus on the lesson.

3.Why did Kernel keep her father's disease a secret?

A. She wanted to obey her mother.

B. She was afraid of being looked down upon.

C. She found no one willing to listen to her.

D. She thought it was shameful to have AIDS.

4.What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A. To tell people about the sufferings of her father

B. To prove how little people knew about AIDS.

C. To draw people’s attention to AIDS.

D. To recall a hard time of her childhood.

Two traveling angels(天使) stop to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the guest room. Instead the angels were given a space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor but very hospitable(好客的) farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had, the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night’s rest. When the sun came up the next morning, the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their only income, lay dead in the field.

The younger angel was very angry and asked the older angel, “How could this happen? Why didn’t you watch out for the cow? The first man had everything, yet you watched over his house,” she accused. “The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you didn’t help.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem,” the older angel replied. “When we stayed in the basement, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so greedy and unwilling to share his good fortune, I asked God if I could seal(封口) the wall so he couldn’t find it. Then last night as we slept in the farmer’s bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I asked God if the angel could take the cow instead. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

1.Why did the old angel repair the hole for the rich family?

A. Because the basement was too cold to stay in.

B. Because she wanted to save the gold for the poor.

C. Because she wanted to punish the greedy owner.

D. Because she believed that one should always be ready to offer help.

2.In Paragraph Two, “the pair” refers to ________.

A. the poor couple B. the rich couple

C. the guests D. the angels

3.The story tries to tell the readers that_________.

A. sometimes things are not what they seem

B. angels are always ready to help the poor

C. angels are always ready to help the rich

D. the young should always learn from the old

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