-Did Linda see the traffic accident?  -No, no sooner ______than it happened.

—When did the great earthquake in Wenchuan happen ?

—It happened __________14:28 __________the afternoon of May 12, 2008.

A．on, in            B．at, on             C．at, in             D．on, on

This economy has really got a lot of people moving and not always by a choice they wanted to make. My wife and I now find ourselves among those unfortunates feeling that  1 .
At the end of last year, our customers just  2 .  We had to make the painful decision to 3 our office and put our house up for  4 . We haven’t lived in it for two years yet and expected it would be the  5  one for a long time. How   6 this world economic mess is changing our lives!
As I get older, I find moving less adventurous and more  7  . This time, we’re in the process of moving without knowing where we’ll   8 next. Job searching has been thrown into the quagmire(困境) of an unsettled life. Both my wife and I had been feeling pretty  9  from all this. I’ve been challenged to find the positive in all this down that’s  10  us.
But then it happened while I watched my wife  11  things up. She’s an absolute whiz(能手) when it comes to packing. I took delight in watching her  12  just the right boxes for  13  in front of her and filling in the  14  with pillows and towels. I began feeling something like a wind lift me up and sail me through my own  15 of the packing and loading.
Some friends will be helping us with the  16 . I’ve told them that they’re not  17  friends but gaining some new vacation spots.
I have  18  that we’ll get through this transition finally. We all will always have work to do, by choice or  19 , and we can also consciously make the effort to create a sense of  20  in a new place.

Joe came to New York from the Middle West, dreaming about painting. Delia came to New York from the South, dreaming about music. Joe and Delia met in a studio. Before long they were good friends and got married.
They had only a small flat to live in, but they were happy. They loved each other, and they were both interested in art. Everything was fine until one day they found they had spent all their money.
Delia decided to give music lessons. One afternoon she said to her husband:
“Joe, , I’ve found a pupil, a general’s daughter. She is a sweet girl. I’m to give three lessons a week and get $5 a lesson.”
But Joe was not glad.
“But how about me?” he said.” Do you think I’m going to watch you work while I play with my art? No, I want to earn some money too.”
“Joe, , you are silly,” said Delia. “You must keep at your studies. We can live quite happily on $15 a week.”
“Well, perhaps I can sell some of my pictures,” said Joe.
Every day they parted in the morning and met in the evening. A week passed and Delia brought home fifteen dollars, but she looked a little tired.
“Clementina sometimes gets on my nerves. I’m afraid she doesn’t practice enough. But the general is the nicest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe.”
And then Joe took eighteen dollars out of his pocket.
“I’ve sold one of my pictures to a man from Peoria,” he said, “and he has ordered another.”
“I’m so glad,” said Delia. “Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have a good supper tonight.”
Next week Joe came home and put another eighteen dollars on the table. In half an hour Delia came, her right hand in a bandage.
“What’s the matter with your hand?” said Joe. Delia laughed and said:
“Oh, a funny thing happened! Clemantina gave me a plate of soup and spilled some of it on my hand. She was very sorry for it. And so was the old general. But why are you looking at me like that, Joe?”
“What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Delia?”
“Five o’clock, I think. The iron-I mean the soup-was ready about five, Why?”
“Delia, come and sit here,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch and sat beside her.
“What do you do every day, Delia? Do you really give music lesson? Tell me the truth.”
She began to cry.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she said, “So I got a place in a laundry ironing shirts. This afternoon a girl accidentally set down an iron on my hand and I got a bad burn. But tell me, Joe, how did you guess that I wasn’t giving music lessons?”
“It’s very simple,” said Joe. “I knew all about your bandages because I had to send them upstairs to a girl in the laundry who had an accident with a hot iron. You see, I work in the engine-room of the same laundry where you work.”
“And your pictures? Did you sell any to that man from Peoria?”
“Well, your general with his Clemantina is an invention, and so is my man from Peoria.”
And then they both laughed.
【小题1】To support the family, Delia worked as             .

BUKHANNON, West Virginia—Two rescue teams slowly moved along a two-mile path on Monday night to the site of a coal mine explosion that trapped 13 miners, who had not been heard from since the early morning accident．
Meanwhile, at a nearby church, more than 250 family members and friends gathered, waiting for updates（最新报道）on the rescuers’ progress．
The miners were trapped at about 6:30 and many families weren’t informed of the accident until about 10 a．m-more than three hours after it happened．“It’s very upsetting, but you’ve got to be patient, I guess,” said John Helms, whose brother, Terry, was trapped in the mine．
The trapped miners were about 260 feet underground and about 10,000 feet from the Sago Mine’s entrance, said Roger Nicholson, general counsel from International Coal Group．
At a late night news conference, Nicholson said one team had advanced about 4, 800 feet in the four hours since entering the mine just before 6 p．m．Another team entered the mine about 30 minutes later．
He said the crew was very experienced, with some members having worked underground for 30 to 35 years．The miners were equipped with about one hour of breathable oxygen each．The company has not released the names of the miners．
The teams test the air about every 500 feet, and have to disconnect （remove） the power to the phones they use to communicate with the surface before doing that．“ We don’t want to be energizing anything if it’s in an atmosphere with burnable gases,” Kips said．
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known．High levels of carbon monoxide were discovered shortly after the explosion, which delayed rescue efforts, but those levels have since subsided（减退）, authorities said．
【小题1】According to the passage, we can infer that ________．