Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't 1 it to be blue - the name has nothing to 2 the color of our closest celestial（天体） neighbor.
A full moon 3 on December 2. It will appear again on Thursday in time for the New Year's countdown.
"If you're in Times Square, you'll see the 4 moon right above you. It's going to be that brilliant," said Jack Horkheimer, director emeritus of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of a weekly astronomy TV show.
The New Year's Eve blue moon will be 5 in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Africa. For partygoers in Australia and Asia, the full moon does not show up 6 New Year's Day, making January a blue moon month for them.
However, the Eastern Hemisphere can celebrate with a partial lunar eclipse（月蚀） on New Year's Eve when 7 of the moon enters the Earth's shadow. The 8 will not be visible in the Americas.
A full moon occurs 9 29.5 days, and most years have 12. 10 , an extra full moon in a month - a blue moon - occurs every 2.5 years. The 11 time there was a lunar double take was in May 2007. New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won't 12 again until 2028.
Blue moons have no astronomical 13 , said Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
"`Blue moon' is just a 14 in the same sense as a `hunter's moon' or a `harvest moon,'" Laughlin said in an e-mail.
The popular definition of blue moon 15 after a writer for Sky & Telescope magazine in 1946 misunderstood the Maine Farmer's Calendar and marked a blue moon as the second full moon in a month. In fact, the calendar 16 a blue moon as the third full moon in a season with four full moons, not the usual three.
Though Sky & Telescope corrected the 17 decades later, the definition caught on. For purists（语言纯正癖者）, however, this New Year's Eve full moon doesn't even qualify as a 18 moon. It's just the first full moon of the winter season.
In a tongue-in-cheek essay 19 on the magazine's Web site this week, senior contributing editor Kelly Beatty wrote: "If skies are clear when I'm 20 celebrating, I'll take a peek（眯着眼睛看） at that brilliant orb（天体） as it rises over the Boston skyline to see if it's an icy shade of blue. Or maybe I'll just howl."
( ) 1. A. wish B. wait C. hope D. expect
( ) 2. A. deal with B. do with C. develop with D. form into
( ) 3. A. occurred B. came C. ran D. went
( ) 4. A. full B. half C. bright D. part
( ) 5. A. out of sight B. visible C. big D. clear
( ) 6. A. until B. when C. before D. since
( ) 7. A. part B. all C. any D. none
( ) 8. A. moon B. eclipse C. sun D. shadow
( ) 9. A. each B. every C. either D. all
( ) 10. A. On the whole B. Generally speaking C. On average D. In addition
( ) 11. A. last B. next C. other D. another
( ) 12. A. go B. see C. come D. look
( ) 13. A. point B. evident C. theory D. significance
( ) 14. A. name B. object C. phenomenon D. tradition
( ) 15. A. created B. came about C. made D. copied
( ) 16. A. named B. called C. introduced D. defined
( ) 17. A. error B. name C. reality D. number
( ) 18. A. blue B. red C. yellow D. grey
( ) 19. A. published B. posted C. printed D. written
( ) 20. A. in B. out C. away D. on
阅读下面短文，从短文后各题所给的四个选项(A、B、C、和D)中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，并标在答题卷的相应位置。
Last weekends, my kids along with few other kids from the neighborhood volunteered to help me wash my car. My 10-year-old daughter came up with the idea of____ other people’s cars as well. It was pretty ____ outside and I had no plans to ___ being in the bright sun. She ____ wanted to give lemonade（柠檬汽水）to passers-by for free. I had seen little kids ____ and sell fresh lemonade for a small cost but not free. Although I felt ____ , I decided to help her.
Then she asked me, “What if we ____ this a smile car wash?” I couldn’t hold ____ my tears and ____ her and the other kids to go outside the house and come up with ____ ideas. While I kept myself busy in drying the car, the group walked up to me with a(n) ____ with beautiful images of smiles. They had “Free Car Wash” written on it and the ____ of their exercise was “smile”. It was pretty neat to see a team of kids ranging 5--11 years with the ____ to do something for others.
All that seemed ____ and came right from their heart. Nothing seemed to ____ to them: their playtime, the heat outside—they just wanted to ____ others and do something nice in the community!
I helped them make some fresh lemonade and brought out some additional ____ to help clean cars. Passers-by were ____ and one even shouted back to them saying “God Bless You, my kids…” One of them even tried giving them 5 dollars, which they refused. A pretty heartwarming ____!
I feel blessed by being ____ by such wonderful and loving souls.
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阅读下面短文，从短文后各题所给的四个选项(A、B, C和D)中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
In the depths of my memory, many things I did with my father still live. These things have come to represent, in fact, what I call and love.
I don’t remember my father ever getting into a swimming pool. But he did the water. Any kind of ride seemed to give him pleasure. he loved to fish; sometimes he took me along.
But I never really liked being on the water, the way my father did. I liked being the water, moving through it, it all around me. I was not a strong , or one who learned to swim early, for I had my . But I loved being in the swimming pool close to my fathers’ office and those summer days with my father, who come by on a break. I needed him to see what I could do. My father would stand there in his suit, the person not in swimsuit.
After swimming, I would go his office and sit on the wooden chair in front of his big desk, where he let me anything I found in his top desk drawer. Sometimes, if I was left alone at his desk he worked in the lab, an assistant or a student might come in and tell me perhaps I shouldn’t be playing with his . But my father always and said easily, “Oh, no, it’s .” Sometimes he handed me coins and told me to get an ice cream...
A poet once said, “We look at life once, in childhood; the rest is .”And I think it is not only what we “look at once, in childhood” that determines our memories, but , in that childhood, looks at us.
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阅读下面短文，从短文后各题所给的四个选项(A、B、C、D)中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
People say one man’s trash(垃圾) is another man’s treasure. That________comes to me as I________the house purchased in 1962 by my parents. My mother passed away in 1996. My father left the house ________ my sister and me when he died a few months ago.
After Dad was ________ , we looked around the________ house where we grew up and that Dad loved so much. At first we felt so ________ all the stuff left. Like so many of their generation, my parents ________ everything. And like many in my generation, we faced anxious ________ about what to abandon and what to keep.
As we started throwing out old phone books and every medical bill from every ________my parents ever saw, I also ________many hidden treasures. Mom's pocketbook was in their bedroom closet, which had everything in it, ________ her hairbrush with hair, as if she were still here. And Dad, who was a World War II veteran(退伍兵) and a world traveler, ________ everything—from little spoons from all over the world to every letter he wrote to his parents while in the ________ . The letters he wrote during the war ________ his thoughts as a young man. Later, in the basement, I ________ our old kitchen table, which brought back ________ of my parents and sister and me having breakfast together.
I'm realizing all these things ________ my parents' life journey. Each time I go to________ , I find something that reminded me of my childhood or teaches me something about my parents I ________ knew. ________ , from the shabby furniture to all the hidden treasures, means more to me than all the money in the world.
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阅读下面的短文，掌握其大意，然后从1—20各题所给的四个选项（A、B、C、D）中，选出最佳选项．
On a cold November afternoon，my mother and I were walking home from a ．We were dressed ．I was feeling a little as I was carrying our shopping，and decided to throw away something．So I started to walk towards a when I noticed a poor man walking out of the restaurant in front of us．He over to another nearby dustbin and started looking through it.
I suddenly felt very guilty because I was about to throw away a new drink just because it was ．I walked up to him and handed the and some snacks（小吃）over to him．The man looked up and took what I gave him．A huge smile across his face and this me to feel indescribable satisfaction．I felt I couldn’t be happier myself．But then he said：“Wow，this is my son’s lucky day!”
With that，he thanked me happily and started off on his bike，I heard him whistling a song as he rode away．
I got a warm inside．I now understand is meant by the saying “giving is getting”．
Although it only a little action and a few words，I gained and learned more in those two minutes than I did in the rest of the month．Everyone in the world needs ，everyone can help and everyone will be helped by kindness．
The image of that man’s happiness caused by my small gift appears in my mind every I have the chance to do sething nice．
This is the of charity（慈善行为）．
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The cultures of the East and the West really distinguish each other a lot. This is because the culture systems are two ______ systems on the whole.
The ______ of the eastern cultures is mainly from two countries: China and India. Both of the two cultures are gestated by rivers. In China, the mother river is the Yellow River _____ the Indian one is the Hindu River. These two cultures were developed for several thousand years and formed their own _____. Then in Dang Dynasty of China, the Chinese culture _____ went overseas to Japan, _____ into the Japanese society and shaped the Japanese culture nowadays. Though a bit different from the Chinese one, it belongs to the same ______.
When the two mother rivers gave birth to the eastern culture, another famous culture was ______ on the Mesopotamian Plain ---- the Mesopotamian Civilization. This civilization later on developed into the cultures of the Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. And these two are well-known ______ the base of the European culture. Like the Chinese culture, the European one also ______ waters. When the colonists(殖民者) of England _____ in America, their culture went with them over the Atlantic Ocean. So the American culture doesn't _______ from the European one a lot.
At the same time, the difference of the language systems _______ the cultural differences. In the East, most languages belong to the pictographic language while the Western languages are mostly based on the Latin system, for example, the one I’m using to write this paper.
Other factors like human race difference counts as well. But what’s more, ______ the far distance and the steep areas between the East and West, the two cultures seldom communicate until recent centuries. So they grew up totally in their own ways with almost no _____ with the other.
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