1 . The world awaits. Where will you go next? The following are among the most exciting destinations to visit. Grab your bags and go!

Founded in 1931, the Mexico’s fourth-largest city is a stronghold of Baroque architecture. In Puebla’s citycenter, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there are a large number of gorgeous 17th- and 18th-century Baroque buildings. Many are decorated with colored titles, the use of which illustrates the combination of Puebla’s local and European colonial styles. In 2017, an earthquake shook the area, leading to restorations of facilities throughout the city afterward. Despite that, Puebla remains rooted in tradition.

The storybook town was probably founded in the mid-14th century. Stone walls and a system of man-madeponds help protect Telč historic town center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The triangular market square is bordered by a rainbow of light-colored houses, which were originally built of wood and rebuilt in stone after a fire in the late 14th century.

Estimated to date back to the 10th-9th millennia B.C.E, the monumental limestone pillars at Göbekli Tepe had been hiding in plain sight for several thousand years. The detailed exploration of these giant stones only began in the 1990s. What have been revealed — primarily massive stones decorated with bas-reliefs (浅浮雕) of animal — comprise the world’s oldest known temple complex. The extraordinary discoveries made here have rewritten the story of how the first civilizations began.

Archaeologists have found long-hidden ruins of an extensive pre-Columbian civilization here, confirming that Guatemala is the place to dive into Mayan culture, then and now. Ancient roots run particularly deep in the northernmost Peten region. In modern, multicultural Guatemala, people with Mayan origin make up about half the population, making the country the only one in Central America with a native cultural majority.

2 . Students at the Calhoun School in New York City have much more than a roof over their heads. They have a rooftop garden, with lush grass, colorful flowers and fragrant herbs. “Green roofs” are sprouting up all over, from schools to city skyscrapers. And roofs aren’t the only things going green. Architects are finding all sorts of new ways to build buildings that are easier on the environment. These schools, homes, and offices are called “green buildings”.

Normally it takes a lot of energy to run appliances. Too often, that energy comes from burning fossil fuels. So green buildings are designed to do all these things with much less energy. An energy-smart building starts with thick walls. A layer of insulation (隔热材料) traps air to stop heat from passing through. That keeps heat inside in the winter, and keeps heat outside in the summer. This saves energy for heating and cooling.

Heat pumps are another power-saving way to stay comfortable. A ground heat pump moves heat through pipes that run through the ground next to the building. A few feet under the ground, the temperature stays around 10℃ all year round. Water flowing around the pipes helps heat the building in winter and cool it in summer.

Another way to build green is to use recycled materials. That saves the cost and pollution of manufacturing something new. In the Chicago Center for Green Technology, the ceiling tiles (瓷砖) are made of pressed newspaper. The bathroom floors are tiled with recycled glass, and the stall walls are recycled plastic. Builders have found many creative ways to re-use old materials.

As more people become concerned about climate change, more buildings are going green. Green buildings produce less of the gases that warm the planet. City planners like green buildings because they save money. And they are healthier for the people who work and live inside. But you don’t need to build a whole new building. Simple changes like shading windows and planting trees can make any home greener—and a better Earth home for us all.

3 . The rate of childhood obesity in the U. S. has tripled over the past 50 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made waves this year by recommending that doctors put obese kids as young as two years old on intensive, family-oriented lifestyle and behavior plans. It also suggested prescribing weight-loss drugs to children l2 and older and surgery to teens 13 and older. This advice reflects the organization’s adoption of a more active position on childhood obesity.

Yet the lifestyle programs the AAP recommends are expensive, inaccessible to most children and hard to maintain. Few weight-loss drugs have been approved for children. And surgery has potential risks and few long-term safety data. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether interventions in youngsters help to improve health or merely add to the psychological burden overweight kids face from the society.

Rather than paying close attention to numbers on a scale, the U. S. and countries with similar trends should focus on an underlying truth: we need to invest in more and safer places for children to play where they can move and run around, climb and jump, ride and skate.

Why is it so hard to get kids moving? Experts blame the problem on the privatization of sports — as public investment in school-based athletics dwindles, expensive private leagues have grown, leaving many kids out. In addition to fewer opportunities at school, researchers cite increased screen time and a lack of safe places for them to play outside the home. New York City, for example, had 2,067 public playgrounds as of 2019 — a very small amount for its large population. In Los Angeles in 2015, only 33 percent of youths lived within walking distance of a park.

Kids everywhere need more places to play. Public funding to build and keep up these areas is crucial, but other options such as shared-use agreements can make unused spaces available to the public. These opportunities aren’t primarily about changing children’s waistlines — they’re how we keep childhood healthy and fun.

4 . One of the earliest forms of writing which is still being used today is Chinese characters, or hanzi. The image that many people have of Chinese characters is that they are all pictograms, but this is far from the case because pictograms have very limited use. Simple pictograms might be practical, for example, if one is making a shopping list of items to buy at the store, but they are fairly useless if one is writing something more complex or abstract. So it is a mistake to assume that written Chinese is a “picture language”．

Besides pictograms, there are simple ideograms. These are characters which provide an abstract picture of an idea, but in an often easily recognizable form. For example, “up” is “上” while “down” is “下”. While the meanings of many ideograms are not this easy to work out, they tend to be simple, easy-to-remember characters which are commonly used.

Next we have a common category of hanzi: compound characters. These are where elements of two or more characters are combined in one character for a new meaning. Some of these are easy to understand. In many cases, however, the meanings of compound characters are more difficult to work out.

Phonetic loan characters are the characters which started out as pictograms. However, they were often used to mean other words that had the same pronunciation. A good example of this is “目”. While it can be used in modern Chinese with the meaning “eye”, it is most often used to mean “an item on a list”. The reason was that Chinese had a word for “an item on a list” but lacked a character for it, so the word took the character “目”, a character with the same pronunciation.

A final category of Chinese characters is by far the most common. These are phonetic-semantic characters. With phonetic-semantic characters, one element of each character gives a clue to the pronunciation, while the other gives a clue to the meaning.

Over the centuries, Chinese characters have continually been developed, with a trend towards the simple and more abstract. It was thought that the complexity of some Chinese characters was keeping people from being able to learn them. Thus, during the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese government rolled out simplified Chinese characters.

5 . My grandfather’s old Ford was greeted not by flashing red, yellow or green—but by guardsmen armed with guns and appearing much out of place in such peaceful surroundings. As our vehicle slowed to a stop, I was scared by a huge machine gun, pointed in our direction. A young guardsman explained apologetically, “Sorry Sir, but we’ll have to search your car. Just routine procedure.”

It was the election day in Benton, a small Tennessee town. Looking forward to a visit to the ice cream shop, I accompanied my grandfather as he drove the ten-mile journey to town. That day an air of uneasiness replaced the usual contentment one felt while passing aged buildings. Having spent the first ten years of my life here, I could detect any change in the town’s mood.

Worried expressions on the faces of the few people were present on the streets. Evenyone was in a hurry. No usual groups gathered to exchange local gossip. Most noticeable was the absence of children.

As the car was being searched, we learned the reason for such severe protective measures.

Explosives would be brought into town to bomb the courthouse. As this unbelievable information was being given, I sat in panic. This was the same town where, only yesterday, old men in dirty overalls hung around the courthouse discussing the forthcoming election, and children ran freely on the sidewalks. Strangely, all this had changed overnight, and our peaceful country and the glorious right to vote were beginning to sound as a sour note. Marching through the streets, guards with guns gave the appearance of towns I had seen in the movies.

We moved on. Surely who could be so stupid as to go into that courthouse now? Thinking how wonderful it would be to get back to the safety of our farmhouse, I was somewhat scared when Grandpa parked near the entrance to the threatened building. The lines in his face carved with determination, he quickly mounted the steps to the building. That right was now even more precious. Grandpa would vote.

6 . The rangoli (印度传统地画艺术) was a giant good-luck charm. Grandma used to make one for the start of the new year. First, she would draw on the floor with chalk. Then, she would fill the drawing with uncooked_____________ rice.

This year, Manju was old enough to help. He____________ paper into a cone (圆锥体) and filled it with rice. Side by side, he placed rice across the drawing together with Grandma. Sometimes his rice skittered outside the drawing, sometimes he used the____________ color. And sometimes he rubbed away the____________ , so Grandma had to redraw it. But____________ , the bright swirls of rice transformed into a beautiful peacock. When Manju admired the peacock, he____________ a small piece of tile (瓷砖) peeking through on Grandma’s side.

A____________ ? But Grandma was away to answer the telephone. Should he fix it?

“I’ll surprise Grandma!” He decided. He____________   across, trying to reach the gap. Almost. His left leg inched up. There! Suddenly, Manju began to ____________ . His proud smile vanished. “No!” He crashed down onto the rangoli, scattering rice____________ .

Manju rose to his feet and pushed the rice back. But the colors were____________ . When Grandma came back, Manju____________ . He said, “I’m sorry. I should have waited for you.” Grandma shook her head. “You saw a____________ and tried to fix it. I’m proud of you.” They picked up the rice,____________   each grain by color. Just before nightfall, they finished fixing the rangoli.

Grandma lit candles around the rangoli. In the flickering light, the peacock seemed____________ with mystical powers. Manju smiled. The new year felt full of good luck, thanks to Grandma—and him.

7 . It was meant to connect us, make us smarter and our lives easier. And it has. But there’s at least one comer of life where the Internet has made things so much more difficult: gift giving.

Once upon a time, if you were struggling to find a present for a loved one, there were easy options to fall back on-DVDs, CDs, video games and other physical media. This wasn’t even that long ago, but now it’s been snatched from our grasp by the Internet offering us the chance, at a relatively low cost, to watch, listen to or read whatever we want, whenever we want. With everything already watched, listened to, or read, buying a present has become near impossible.

Therefore, we all have to work at becoming perfect gift givers, taking all factors into consideration and searching high and low to seek out the ideal present. If we go the extra mile, there’s less chance that the person we have in mind has already bought what we’re considering online.

But as I now consider this exact plan of action, I’m thinking perhaps it’s not all that bad. Maybe the Internet is delivering us a lesson, firm but fair: the era of half-baked present purchasing is over and it’s time to go hard or go home.

In this era of immediate satisfaction, if you want to give someone a useful present, you do have to actually go to the effort of sourcing something nice for them. Perhaps that’s making for a more rewarding gift experience for all involved. And perhaps it also means fewer gifts that are given as an excuse and end up being unused.