【推荐2】Travel young, travel far

I’m not a full-time traveler. I spend most days working to make a living just like you do. So whenever I have a chance to visit a far-off country. I always jump at it. When I was studying abroad in New Zealand, I traveled all over the country with two friends. We booked everything from whale watching to a private flight over the Southern Alps, and used up all the money we took. Another international student almost looked down her nose at our pricey adventures（冒险）, saying that she had come to New Zealand to study, not to spend all her savings on travel.

My question to her came. Why would you come literally halfway around the world to save your money and keep your nose pressed（压扁的） into a book every weekend? Would you go to China and not visit the Great Wall because it costs money? Would you go to Italy without a visit to the Vatican because it requires a ticket?

I know where I would like my life to go in the coming months and years. But there are no guarantees（保证）that things will go as planned. In fact, nothing will go as planned.

“Oh, I’ll travel when I retire（退休）.” “I’ll travel when the kids are grown.” “I’ll travel when the house is paid off.” How often do we hear others say these? I hear these excuses all the time. But you know what happens? Age. And stress. And, well, life. Life happens, and by the time you retire and your kids are grown and your house is paid off, you have bad knees and weak lungs（肺）and you simply can’t visit all those places you dreamed about in your youth. How sad! I don’t want to end up like that, holding on to youthful travel dreams that will never be reality.

So I often think, what if “sometime later” never came?

So, if you are lucky enough to be able to afford to travel, then you should attack it with curiosity and energy and a sense of adventure.

So travel young, and travel far. Never stop dreaming.

At the end of the day, I’d rather die with a million memories than a million dollars. Money won’t comfort me on my deathbed, but knowing that I lived a full and satisfying life might.

【推荐3】Can you imagine a world without insects? Without ants or flies in your house, it might sound great. However, the results may be out of imagination.

The number of insects has dropped by half in the past few years, according to a British biologist Dave Coulson. You may think small insects are not important. But in fact they are the main part of the species(物种)on Earth.

Insects are indeed on the way to extinction, according to the first review of insect population. The researchers say the main reason for this is the use of pesticides(杀虫剂)because they destroy insects’ living areas. Also, weather change is another important cause.

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects will go down the way to extinction in a few years,” the researchers wrote in the review. “This will have huge influences on the planet’s ecosystem(生态系统).”

We need insects to pollinate(授粉)crops. They also break down(分解)dead plants and animals, which can keep the soil healthy. Without insects, many animals would have nothing to eat and die of hunger. Then, the ecosystem would be off balance.

“If the number of insect species keep dropping, this will have bad influences on both Earth’s ecosystem and the survival of us humans,” said one of the writers of the review.

“The first step to stop this is to let more people understand the values of the natural world,” he suggests. “The best place to start is from our children, who should realize environmental protection from an early age.”

【推荐2】Grace is a 12-year-old girl from the USA with a love of slime (粘土)! She likes to play with it and then, with the help of some online videos, she starts to make it. In fact, she likes slime so much that she starts a slime business called “Grace the Slime Lover”!

At first, Grace sells the slime she makes in a “slime shack (棚屋)”. She builds it with her dad. Grace uses her birthday money to buy the materials(材料) to create the shack. It is in her front yard near the end of the driveway so that people can drive by and buy slime!

Over her first summer, Grace sells slime there on 3 different days and makes over $100 altogether! Now Grace makes all kinds of slime with different colors and different scents(气味). Also, she often posts slime videos online and has hundreds of followers! Now, Grace opens an online store so she can sell slime online. She now sells it to people all over the world, including Europe and Australia! She has many plans to grow her small business into a big one.

Grace creates a business out of something she loves and she sets a good example for young people.