【推荐1】A few days ago, our school held a two-day food festival. Before the food festival started, the school had set up tents and posted menus at the gate of the canteen to attract students.     1    

On the first day of the food festival, when the bell rang after the last class in the morning, everyone rushed to the booths (摊位) in front of the canteen.     2     There was a long line in front of each booth. Everyone sweated in the burning sun, but the heat didn’t stop the students’ enthusiasm for delicious food. Fortunately, I bought a cup of milk tea that I had been longing for in just a few minutes. It tasted even better than I had imagined!

    3     Without any experience, I chose to try as much food as I could, which gave me so much joy and satisfaction. For example, I fell in love with the crispy durian pastry (榴莲酥) at first bite.     4     And I can still remember how exquisite the craftsmanship (技艺) of making Indian pancakes was. However, what impressed me most was in fact the “intangible cultural heritage on the tip of the tongue”.

It was everyone’s combined effort that made the activity such a big success, and it is people’s love for food that made the festival special. Enjoy food, value food, have a heart of gratitude and never forget the ones who have brought you up.     5    

【推荐3】A walking school bus (WSB) project can help reduce air pollution, increase the number of students walking and bicycling, and offer children and parents an opportunity to exercise and socialize, while getting to school on time!

WSB is a safe and fun way for children to get physical activity as they travel to and from school. Each “bus” walks along a way with one or more parents leading it, picking children up at stops along a way designed ahead of time and walking them to school. Then it runs back in the afternoons on the way home from school under adults supervision (监管). It is that easy. You may find that families are already doing this with their children and would be glad to help more students get to school in this healthy, safe and fun way!

Planning WSB seems not to be simple. But the key is to make sure you know the steps. This guide will walk you through how to plan a WSB and help to tailor (定制) your project to your school, community and students. First, get started and plan the route, and then recruit (招募) students and leaders. Finally, run and perfect your project. You may or may not choose to perform these steps in order, depending on your project.

As you work through some steps in order, the WSB Planning Worksheet and Timeline will help you organize your project. Each section of the worksheet helps you record the progress: who is responsible for each task, when things need to start, and the date due to finish. These planning documents will help you organize ideas, people and time in order to improve your WSB as easily as possible.

For more information, explore the references at the end of this guide.

【推荐1】A man in Indonesia is walking backwards for 435 miles. He's making the trip to encourage the government and others to value and protect Indonesia's rainforests.

Medi Bastoni is 43 years old. He is an Indonesian. Indonesia is a large country in the world formed by a group of islands. There are over 16, 000 islands there， and most of them are covered with rainforests. But on Java, where Mr. Bastoni lives, far more forests have been cleared.

Mr. Bastoni believes it's important to protect forests from being cut down, and to restore (恢复) them when they have been destroyed. Near his home, Mount Wilis is now being restored, but Mr. Bastoni wants to make the protection continue. That's how he came up with the idea of the 435-mile walk.

And walking backwards? Mr. Bastoni wants Indonesians to look back at their past. Walking backwards is a good way to get attention. Right now, Mr. Bastoni's backward walk is pretty big news in Indonesia.

Mr. Bastoni is wearing a frame(框架)that supports a large mirror in front of him, above his head. This allows Mr. Bastoni to look behind him while walking backwards. Besides, Mr. Bastoni is carrying a backpack with some clothes and a little food. He is planning on buying more meals from restaurants along the way. He has been sleeping at police stations, security posts, and even strangers homes during the trip. His plan is to cover about 19 miles a day. In early August he was in Sragen -- about 100 miles from his home. It's not clear whether Mr. Bastoni is still on track to arrive in Jakarta by August 17.

【推荐3】One sunny morning, my wife and I piled the kids into the car with a hope that my memory was reliable. We went out looking for my trees.

About 25 years ago, I started working as a tree planter in Northern Ontario. I would have planted several thousand a day, every day, for weeks and weeks. I worked every summer for six years, which added up to over 500,000 trees. While we were planting, we talked about what our trees would be like when they grew taller. The small trees were no longer than my thumb. It seemed unlikely that our trees would last more than a day or two.

Eventually, I stopped the car and stared at the clear blue sky and treetops softly waving. I walked toward them.

They were so tall and solid, much bigger than I thought they would be. There were so many of them, waving soundlessly in the wind like they were welcoming me. Row upon row of fully grown, healthy pines left me speechless. They spoke of that time of my life, in 1995, when I was strong and young in my mid-20s.

I walked among them, listening to the sound of the wind in their high branches. Humbled and moved, I never had such a strong sense of my impact on the world.

I felt a quiet presence and at home among my trees, as if they had been waiting for me. What was unclear and unlikely had grown specific and very real. What I had held in my hands had grown into a towering forest surrounding me.

My kids ran to join me.

“You planted all these?” asked my 10-year-old son, Forest.

“I planted more than this every day. And this is where your name comes from,” I told him.

Together, with my 6-year-old son River, we walked deeper into the woods and spotted a clearing. We emerged suddenly into the open space and I felt even more at home than in the forest I’d planted. It was more familiar, this open space where I had once spent thousands and thousands of hours.

【推荐1】Sometimes people can find new interest in old things. For me, it was discovering a love for ballet more than 15 years after I first started training.

My parents put me in ballet classes as a young girl and I just sort of kept going. I don’t know I had any particular passion for it. I quitted. It felt like I was slowly closing a chapter in my life, with no particular sorrow about the matter.

Years later, something, maybe boredom, led me to a decision to start classes at a studio, where I met a group of middle-aged ballet lovers, all of them starting ballet as adults.

Stepping into the ballet studio again unearthed a whole set of unexpected feelings. I wasn’t strong or flexible enough to accomplish moves that used to be second nature. I had to stop to adjust my breath after each combination in the center. Mostly, I felt ashamed. But those women cheered me on. The longer I watched them in class, the more I was moved. This was the point staring me right in the face—it didn’t matter; they just loved to dance. Their passion for ballet helped me see it in a new light. It didn’t need to be competitive; it was something people did for fun, no matter what their skill level is. Slowly, it began to feel challenging in a good way. I started having fun. I’ve found that when we dance, it’s an exercise in directing our energy to a number of different areas.

When we stepped on stage for our year-end performance, I felt the effects of that sustained attention and my body flowed through well-practiced movements. I was totally lost in bright stage lights and felt the whole world belonged to me. After the performance, one of the audience came to me and remarked, “Wow, I can tell you really like to dance!” I smiled and nodded. It was true.