Your family may love to travel. However, you may worry about the environmental effect of doing so. It is time to take an eco-friendlier trip. We have discovered four destinations for you.
Vienna
Explore the kid-friendly city of Vienna, Austria. Here, you can find plenty of bike-share stations for getting around. The city has a large number of playgrounds and some fantastic museums for children. In the city, there are many hostels run by local people. There is always one that suits your family's taste.
Volcan Tenorio Area
When you think about taking your kids to Costa Rica, you normally focus on viewing its amazing wildlife. But what about turning to the human activities？One way to do so is to stay on a farm. Kids can take a hand in looking after animals and learning about traditional farming methods.
Khao Sok National Park
In this park, you can show your children a different side of Thailand. Use a local guide to introduce you to the interesting plants and animals. Stay at one of the locally owned cottages. You can even spend a night in a raft house on Chiaw Lan Lake, which runs without electricity.
Countryside of Fiji
Leave luxury hotels behind and head to a village homestay in Fiji. Your kids will learn all about Fijian culture. Your money will go directly to the community. With older children you can join in both sea conservation and community projects, with the help of a reliable organization.
Maria and her parents moved to the US from Brazil one year before the pandemic (流行病). Better education opportunities lay ahead, and they were excited to get Maria into an American high school to prepare for college.
Each parent got a job, and Maria started studying. She also signed up for a service club because she wanted to meet people, practice her English and be a part of the community. "I love to serve," Maria says. "I think it is my thank-you for the opportunities I have."
She worked at the local food bank with other kids of her age, organizing bags for families who were having a hard time making ends meet. But when the pandemic hit, she found herself at the food bank for another reason: to bring home groceries to her parents. "We were all shocked when my mother lost her job. My friends at the food bank got me through it," Maria said.
Luckily, her father kept his job. And with classes moving online, Maria was able to secure a full-time job and do her class work at night. Three of her courses were college prep classes that demanded a lot of work. During her senior year, Maria worked 40-hour weeks and studied even more. Yet, in her spare time, she packed food bags for others before taking hers home.
Just before graduation, Maria came into the food bank. One of the volunteers started getting a bag ready for her. "I don't need one today," Maria said. "My mother got a job. I'm here to help."
Maria supported her family for eight months. She graduated on time and got scholarship offers from three different colleges. She moved to part-time work and has completed her first semester of college.
BEIJING- Wang Yaping, a taikonaut onboard China's space station core module (舱), offered people on Earth a zero-gravity musical performance on Tuesday evening to celebrate the Lantern Festival. The space show was shared via a video released at an annual TV gala for the festival celebration. In the video, Wang was seen floating in the space module while playing a guzheng, or Chinese zither. She played a segment of the popular Chinese folk song. "Jasmine Flower".
The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar. People usually hang colorful lanterns, play riddle games and express their wishes and hopes for the future.
The crew members, who traveled to the space station core module on the Shenzhou-13 mission, kept some festive traditions alive as they continued to rotate around the Earth. Commander Zhai Zhigang wrote riddles on red paper scrolls with a brush pen. He displayed the calligraphy together with taikonaut Ye Guangfu and extended festival greetings to the audience. They also sent blessing to athletes at the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics: "We hope that you all achieve success, gain friendship and harvest your best Olympic experience."
The video of the space performance was received with much enthusiasm after it was shared on social media platforms. It drew nearly 2 million clicks in one hour after several national media outlets posted it on the Chinese micro-blogging site Sina Weibo. The Weibo account of Zhurong, China's first rover on Mars, reposted the video, commenting, "The music was so beautiful, and it made me homesick, too."
The Lantern Festival also marks the last day of the lunar New Year celebration. Though far from home, the festive sentiments in space are the same. The China Manned Space Agency released a video on social media platforms on Tuesday, showing that the taikonauts had decorated the orbiting core module with red lanterns, Chinese knots and paper- cutting decorations. Wearing new clothes, the trio (三人小组) enjoyed the traditions of eating dumplings and posting spring couplets on walls During the Chinese New Year holiday, they were also spotted watching the Winter Olympics and doing workouts in orbit.
Tiny sensors inspired by dandelion (蒲公英) seeds could be spread to the winds to help track of climate change and global warming.
As the climate crisis continues to strengthen, tracking changes in temperature and other environmental signals across a wide area is useful. But doing effectively requires distributing sensors throughout the environment, which can be time-consuming.
"We wondered whether it's possible to build a system that can spread sensors in the wind, rather than having a person go out and place sensors alone, which can be dangerous in hard-to-reach places," says Vikram Iyer at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Iyer and his colleagues used a laser-powered tool to make devices. Each one weighs 30 milligrams with a diameter of 28 millimeters, and has a number of small holes through which air can float in the air like dandelion seeds.
The devices carry tiny sensors, essentially a microcomputer powered by small solar panels that can send back signals to the researchers, who developed different types that can measure temperature, pressure, light and so on. A small capacitor (电容器) can store energy overnight or in cloudy conditions.
In all, the team tested 75 different designs before finding the right mix of variables. The final design can move through the air at 0.87 metres per second, travelling up to 100 metres in a mild wind when released from a drone (无人机). Real-world tests showed that the sensors can transfer data up to 60 metres.
"The production of the ‘seeds' is especially interesting, so is the design of the electronic devices," says Jonathan Aitken at the University of Sheffield, UK. "Both seem to be very strong to the natural environment."
Aitken is also impressed by the range of the sensors' communication abilities. "Plus the cheapness of the device, it means that it can be placed in large numbers, and the communication range makes this an excellent choice, especially within agriculture or disaster area monitoring,'' he says.
Music is one of the most interesting art forms on earth. We enjoy music because it makes us feel great.. We thought we'd take some time out to explore exactly how beneficial music is to your language development skills. Below is a list of all the ways that listening to music can improve your English skills.
Strengthen your vocabulary and listening skills.
When listening to a song, you'll pick up new words that you haven't heard before. Listening to a new song per week can help you learn 52 songs a year. Those songs are full of new vocabulary and phrases that are difficult to forget. For example, listening to a song like "Friday, I'm in Love" is a great way to remember the days of the week!. Music can help your brain react more quickly to hearing English.
Perfect your pronunciation.
Once you have learned the lyrics, the words of a song, you can practice your pronunciation and explore different accents (口音). . Singing will help you to learn their correct pronunciation of the words and will also help you remember easily the new vocabulary you have learned.
Catch obvious grammar mistakes.
If you have a good eye for mistakes, you can find many grammar "exceptions" songwriters usually use. Sometimes singers need to adapt the lyrics to the rhythm of the song. Therefore, they may be creative enough to use grammatical mistakes on purpose. It's not funny when you catch them.
Music can also increase your cultural understanding. Many songs talk about great stories and can teach you a lot about love, life, tradition, history, philosophy, literature, and more. You can find many great examples of a storytelling song on the Internet.
A. Discover more about English culture.
B. But rather it's a good way to practice your English.
C. This exercise will also develop your listening skills.
D. Listening to songs can help you recover from illness.
E. Those accents depend on the areas the singers come from.
F. Write some storytelling songs to improve your English skills.
G. But did you know it is also a great way to help you learn English?
10-year-old Sasha Olsen went on a trip in the summer of 2021 with her family to Vietnam and Japan. She was shocked at the ocean's pollution levels and dying sea animals.
"We went on this trip and I was so1," said Sasha. "But when I saw the way the oceans had become, I got upset. I wanted to know why things were this way but couldn't find an2."
When she returned home to Bal Harbour, Florida, she grew even more3. She learned some of the4in South Florida had been closed by the health department because the5had too much bacteria (细菌)in it.
Sasha sought the6of her cousin, Narmina Aliyev. Together, they7 a nonprofit Organization —Iwantmyoceanback.8 the group started small, with friends joining together on weekends to 9the beaches in Bal Harbour. Recently, however, she has10 events to raise funds for beach cleanups and to 11to protection groups.
"It's12to bring awareness not just through doing cleanups and meetings, but to show people they can come together through their hobbies and13together to a common goal," said Sasha.
Sasha hopes to14their work to neighboring cities. "We really want to make ourselves visible and 15to all," said Sasha. "After all, in Miami the ocean is everyone's backyard. This is the best place to start."
Ballet is a formal kind of dance performance with a rich and interesting history. The word "ballet" comes from the French language. Ballet's early roots began in Italy in the late 1400s. But it was in France ballet developed into the form we know today.
The French ruler Louis the Fourteenth had a big influence the direction of ballet in its early history. He ruled France for seventy-two years, (start) in 1643. He started dancing as a boy and worked hard daily.
Louis the Fourteenth turned ballet into a form of dance that reflected (he) power and influence. Ballet's many rules and (extreme) detailed movements expressed a person's power and social relations. The king made sure that ballet became requirement for the people of his court. He was also the (found) of the Royal Academy of Dance, an institution important people could learn this art. The aim of this dance was self-control, order and perfection.
Ballet slowly changed from a dance at the king's court to one (perform) by professional dancers. When Louis the Fourteenth died in 1715, ballet (bring) to other parts of Europe and was developing in other ways.
