【推荐2】I was 15 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!

And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for a shoplifting extravaganza (狂欢)?

Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book ---- it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises ---- and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barens and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another biology exam when                                 I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).

I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role ---- as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student ---- in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed by something I loved.

Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imaginations. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was hot on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.

【推荐3】It was the day before Thanksgiving and Kaleb Benham was wandering around outside his home in Noring California. His 90-pound pit bull (斗牛犬), Buddy, was playing around nearby, doing what dogs do: getting into trouble. And this time, Buddy was getting into a whole lot of trouble.

The unmistakable sound that no one wants to hear alone in the woods caught Benham’s attention. It was the deep, strange roar of a black bear. Benham wheeled around to see the beast, which Benham figured weighed around 350 pounds, some 100 feet away. In an instant, the bear fastened on to Buddy’s head and started dragging him away.

Benham, a thin, fit, 24-year-old, took off after them. “Honestly,” he told CBS13, “the only thing I could think of was ‘save my baby’.” He lowered his shoulder and ran quickly towards the bear. But it only seized Buddy tightly. Benham grabbed the bear by the throat. Nothing. He tried getting its mouth open but the jaw was locked tight. Benham resorted to street fighting —punching the bear over and over around its mouth and nose. It worked. The bear dropped the dog and ran off into the woods.

Buddy was in bad shape. His face was bloodied. He had a bite mark clear through his lip and one that barely missed an eye.

“My first thought was that I was going to lose him,” Benham said. He picked up Buddy, put him into his car, and sped off to a nearby veterinarian. Buddy’s surgery took nearly four hours. Benham watched the procedure through a window, waiting for a miracle.

This was the second time Benham had rescued Buddy, says CBS13. The first was from a shelter a few years ago. “If it was your kid, what would you do?” he asked. Nodding toward Buddy, he added, “That’s my kid.”

【推荐1】One night Peter received a call from his social worker asking, “Can you take in an 11-year-old boy just for the weekend?" It was just a few days after he had said goodbye to two brothers he was fostering（收养）, so he told the social worker that his heart was deeply saddened by the loss of the two boys that had just been reunited with their birth parents. Peter thought he didn't have enough energy left to care for another child at the moment. But the worker convinced him.

The social worker arrived at his home with the boy at 6 am after driving five hours from another county. There is a huge shortage of foster families in Oklahoma so when a child enters the foster care system, social workers are often forced to place the children outside of the county of origin, often removing the child from the only place he or she has ever known. Add in the fact that older children are much more difficult to place.

Peter asked why Anthony, the boy, was in foster care. Then he knew that the boy had been abandoned(抛弃）by his mother when he was 2. He was then placed with a family. But almost ten years later, the family abandoned him at the hospital. Peter was shocked," It's like my life!”

The two have been together ever since. And on the 12th of November, Anthony finally got to share Peter's last name officially. However, Peter didn't stop fostering kids. “It's hard to be a single foster dad but it's worth every minute of it. We are about to have another child next month and we are excited.”

【推荐1】Crockett Travel Agency

Stay at the Huntley Plaza in downtown Boston, walk the Freedom Trail, visit historic sites. You can even go to a Red Sox baseball game! Your children will have a ball! $179 per night.

Spend a week at the Big Sky Dude Ranch where you’ll learn to ride horses, camp under the stars, and care for cattle. Now that sounds like fun! $89 per night.

Meet Mickey Mouse and play some golf! Spend your days at the theme parks and our nights at the show! Restaurants, beaches, fireworks — we’ve got it all! $185 per night

See the most beautiful lake in America! Climb mountains, enjoy fantastic scenery and wildlife, and go mountain biking. Try the exciting Alpine Slide. It’s an experience you’ll never forget! $199 per night.

See the Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building, and Ellis Island! Watch a Broadway show and take a carriage (四轮马车) ride through Central Park! You’ll have the time of your life! $209 per night.

All special rates are per room, based on double occupancy (居住). Offers not valid during holiday period, July1-6 and September 3-8.

【推荐2】Activities For Families with Children

There are plenty of things to do and see around Cusco, Peru that children will enjoy.

Horse riding

Many children will enjoy the opportunity to ride a horse. The Happy Ranch horse farm organizes horse rides through the countryside passing wheat fields and small towns, wooden huts, open air markets and cooking outside over a fire. Price for a horse ride is US $ 12 per person.

Cooking class

If you enjoy local food, taking a cooking class could be fun. Several restaurants offer classes, which start with a visit to a local market to buy fresh ingredients ( 原 料 ). Wearing a cook’s hat, children can help washing and cutting. Prices for a 3 hours class start at US $ 13 per person.

Hot air balloon

A hot air balloon ride will give you great views of the city. The balloon goes up about 200 meters if weather conditions are OK, less if conditions are windy. The balloon will stay at that altitude for about 10 minutes. Prices are US $ 20 for an adult, half price for children.

Ceramics class

A fun activity for kids is taking a ceramics class at the Fine Arts Center. With the help of an experienced potter, kids can make their own creation on the potter’s wheel from clay. The basic clay class costs US $15 per person and takes 1.5 hours.

【推荐1】18-year-old Kayla Perkins explains what is in her bedroom, “I throw something on the floor and I know right where it is.” However, her parents, Steve and Deborah Perkins, of McKinney,Texas, haven’t caught on. Even Kayla admits that, at the worst, her room is a mess.

Most families at some point have at least one child whose room looks like a landfill (垃圾堆) .The mess can disturb the whole household. Dirty clothes pile up; dirty dishes get lost in the mess and smell bad; homework is lost; and valuable things are ruined.

Some parents let it go, believing that a bedroom is private space for children to manage as they wish. Others lecture their children, offer rewards for cleaning, or punish them when they don’t. What doesn’t work, parenting experts say, is constant lectures, verbal (口头的，言语的) threats or getting very angry. Mrs. Perking says they picked up all the clothes on Kayla’s floor and hid them. They cleaned everything up. When Kayla came back to a bare bedroom, there was screaming and shouting, “How can I live without my clothes?” Mrs. Perkins asked Kayla to earn her clothes back by doing housework. These days, she keeps her room clean.

Humour can help, too. For example, since Jessica, the 14-year-old daughter wasn’t bothered by the dirty clothes all over her floor, the whole family started using her room as a place to store dirty clothes. Her attitude changed after her family did that. By the time she gave in and cleaned up her room a few days later, even she was laughing.

Parenting expert, Jim Fay, also recommends that parents first ask children in a nice way to clean up and agree on a reasonable time limit. Children often behave better if you treat them in the way you would want to be treated by your boss at work - with respect and high expectation.

【推荐2】When I was reading a post about taking someone to the movies, something happened a couple of years ago suddenly hit me.

I used to drink Cokes and they had a competition where there was a code inside the bottle cap. You might win something so long as you went to a website and entered the code. I won some free Cokes. But what astonished and delighted me was the Grand Prize I won then.

The Grand Prize was free movies for a year. They pointed out that one movie a week was what free movies for a year meant. All of the tickets were valid(有效的)for one year from the day I received them. So I must use them in the following year. 1 used quite a few taking friends to movies we all wanted to see.

Then I donated 20 tickets(all I had left by that time)to the local Women's Transition House. Women and children could go there when they want to avoid a bad situation in general and get help to make a new start. It was the best thing I did with the tickets.

My workplace team had decided to help people in need, so we collected donations for that particular New Year's Day. I knew that the Women's Transition House provided some childcare for the women so they could go for job interviews and things like that.

I put those tickets in a box and wrote a note on the outside. And I asked the Women's Transition House staff to give movie tickets to women there over the holidays to have some fun to do, with or without their children, which made me really happy.

【推荐3】Government in Tibet have denied the permanent(永久的) closure of Mount Qomolangma National Nature Reserve.

The announcement came after a report went viral online claiming the base camp of the world's highest mountain was "permanently closed due to heavy pollution" and caused a universal misunderstanding.

Mount Qomolangma National Nature Reserve was set up in 1988. Covering an area of more than 33, 800 square km, it is home to one of the world's weakest ecosystems.

Kelsang, deputy director of the reserve administration, said ordinary tourists are allowed to visit areas around Rongpo Monastery, almost 5, 000 meters above sea level. As for travelers who have a climbing permit, they can go to the base camp at an altitude of 5, 200 meters. The mountaineering activities have been permitted by the regional forestry department.

To protect the environment surrounding Mount Qomolangma, China carried out three major clean-ups at an altitude of 5, 200 meters and above last spring, collecting eight tonnes of household wastes, human wastes and mountaineering trash. This year, the cleanup will continue, and the remains of mountaineering victims(受害者) at above 8, 000 meters will be centrally dealt with for the first time. Meanwhile, the number of people who stay at the base camp will be kept under 300.

Recently, there are 85 wildlife protectors in the reserve, and 1, 000 herders have part-time jobs going around and cleaning up garbage.

These measures aim to strike a balance between various demands such as environmental protection, local poverty relief, mountaineering and education, said Wang Shen, county chief of Dingri at the mountain foot.