Shlander is a man from space. He thinks the people and things on the earth are very strange. He is now writing a letter to his friend at home. Here is part of his letter.

Read it and answer the questions.

Now I am in a strange world. It is very nice. There are many new things here. There are many earth monsters here, too. The earth monsters look very funny. They have just one head, two arms and two legs. They have thin black strings on their heads. Some earth monsters have brown or yellow strings. The earth monsters have a hole in their face. Every day they put nice things and balls from the trees into the hole."

They put water into the hole, too. The earth monsters do not walk very fast. They move from place to place in tin boxes.

At night, the earth monsters like to look at a square window box. This box has very small earth monsters in it.

When my family moved to America in 2010 from a small village in Guangdong, China, we brought not only our luggage, customs and culture. One of the rules is that young people should always respect elders. Unluckily, this rule led to my very first embarrassment in the United States.

  I had a part﹣time job as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. One time, when I was serving food to a middle﹣aged couple, the wife asked me how the food could be served so quickly. I told her that I had made sure they got their food quickly because I always respect the elderly. As soon as I said that, who happened to hear what I said, took me aside and gave me a long lecture about how sensitive（ 敏感）, they understood that the problem was caused by cultural differences, so they laughed and were no longer angry.

In my village in China, people are proud of being old. Not so many people live to be seventy or eighty, and people who reach such an age have the most knowledge and experience. Young people always respect older people because they know they can learn from their rich experience.

However, in the United States, people think "growing old" is a problem since "old" shows that a person is going to retire or that the body is not working well. Here many people try to keep themselves away from growing old by doing exercises or jogging, hoping to look young. When I told the couple in the restaurant that I respect the elderly, they got angry because this caused them to feel they had failed to stay young. I had told them something they didn't want to hear.

After that, I changed the way I had been with older people. It is not that I don't respect them anymore；I still respect them

One cool morning, my mother and I went to several garage sales （宅前旧货出售） to find something that our family might want. We finally1at a pleasant house in the woods. The elderly2told me that he and his wife were retired （退休的） teachers. As we were searching, I heard the gentleman's wife say her3to someone, and I immediately4who she was. She looked at me and said. "You're Lisa Miller" I looked at her5, for it had been nearly thirty6since I had been in her class.

My mother immediately said sorry to her for any trouble I might have made. She did that again after learning that I wasn't the sweet little child. She thought that if this woman7me after so many years, I must have done something8My teacher looked at my mother and softly said. "Oh, no, She was very good. " My teacher9that during the last week of school, I10her a plant from my mother's garden. It was a lamb's ear. She took us to her garden where she planted the lamb's ear. Over the years it11. As I looked down her driveway with lamb's ears on both sides, she said, "Every day when I leave my house and drive up the driveway, I think of you. " Tears12my eyes. There at her home was a piece of my life that she had raised.

At that moment, she taught me more about life than I could imagine. We give pieces of ourselves every day13thought. We seldom imagine the effects （影响） that we have on others' lives. That piece may grow and spread, becoming a（n）14part of a life. In the end it isn't he big things that matter, 15the small things that make all the difference in the world.