2 . Do you want to see majestic lions roaring, rare rhinos running and colorful birds flying? You’ll find this incredible display of nature in the Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley.

First stop

Fly into Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. This great city is known for its fashion markets and beautiful art. And be sure to pick up some rich Kenyan coffee while you’re there! Then head for the countryside.

Plan your trip

The largest of the three lakes in the system, Lake Nakuru, is less than 175 kilometers from Nairobi. But Lakes Bogoria and Elementaita are equally worth a visit. You can stay at one of several choices of luxurious cabins in the valley. And if you sign up for a trip, be sure to put flamingos, the white and pink birds, at the top of your list.

Paradise

The Kenya Lake System is shallow and alkaline (碱性的). That means it supports vegetation such as green algae, a food source for many waterfowl. Hundreds of species of birds flourish here, using this area as a major breeding and nesting ground. Water buffalo, leopards, monkeys and the endangered Rothschild giraffe also make this area their home.

Other sights

Wildlife isn’t the only natural wonder in the Great Rift Valley. The valley marks a place where the earth is divided far below the surface. This rock separation below ground leads to noticeable features above ground. Walking around Lake Bogoria especially, you will see steam rising from hot springs.

Other activities include golfing, horseback riding and hiking. The fun doesn’t stop when the sun goes down, either. The river valley is far from city lights, so many visitors gaze at the stars shining above.

If you are ready for a wildlife experience, don’t hesitate!

5 . Some folks spend decades looking for their best friends. I was   ________   enough to find mine in Grade 7 at my senior school –eight   ________   girls.

As we progressed to high school, a couple of girls ________ and a couple of new ones wormed their way in. By the end of Grade 12, the group had more or less ________ into its final form, one that’s remained remarkably ________ for the past 20 years.

Among our many ________ is an annual Christmas exchange. This event first ________ when we were 12. We set it up on the long, sticky cafeteria tables at our school to swap ________ gifts bought with our babysitting money. In following years, we’d ________ a night of it, watching movies and ordering pizza in parents’ living rooms, ________ moving into our own shabby student apartments, into slightly less shabby adult apartments and then into our first   ________ .

At the beginning, we gave each other butterfly hair clips and so on. Those ________ bright mall jewellery and cheerful housewares as we began nesting in our 20s and baby clothes once we started having ________ in our 30s.

Holidays with family can be ________ , but our exchange offered something else:a chance for my friends and me to ________ our own traditions and play at being grown-ups.

6 . In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.

Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts—people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the “single perspective instinct” that hampers(阻碍)our ability to grasp the intricacies of the world.

Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.

Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This “single perspective instinct” ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively.

It saves a lot of time to think like this. You can have opinions and answers without having to learn about a problem from scratch and you can get on with using your brain for other tasks. But it’s not so useful if you like to understand the world. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.

Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn’t fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. I have been wrong about the world so many times. Sometimes, coming up against reality is what helps me see my mistakes, but often it is talking to, and trying to understand, someone with different ideas.

If this means you don’t have time to form so many opinions, so what? Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?

8 . Gardeners who use pesticides are contributing to the decline of British songbirds, a study suggests. Scientists have urged people to stop “spraying their gardens with poisons” in order to halt bird decline and adopt instead wildlife-friendly practices. The results of the University of Sussex study, which researchers call the first of its kind, were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

The experiment, which surveyed 615 gardens in Britain, found 25% fewer house sparrows when glyphosate (草甘膦) was used regularly. This is an ingredient found in commonly used herbicide (除草剂) brands such as Roundup or Gallup. Slug pellets (鼻涕虫杀虫剂) also seemed to have an impact on bird sightings; in gardens where Slug pellets were used, house sparrow numbers were down by almost 40%.

Prof. Dave Goulson, of the school of life sciences at the University of Sussex, said, “The UK has 22 million gardens, which collectively could be a fantastic refuge for wildlife, but not if they are overly tidy and sprayed with poisons. We just don’t need pesticides in our gardens. Many towns around the world are now pesticide free. We should simply ban the use of these poisons in urban areas, following the example of France.” The Royal Horticultural Society, the UK’s leading gardening charity, said the use of pesticides and herbicides should be avoided if possible and they should only be used, if ever, in small and targeted applications.

The research also found that those who adopted wildlife-friendly practices such as planting native shrubs and flowers, or digging a wildlife pond, saw more birds than those who did not. Cannelle Tassin de Montaigu, a PhD researcher within the school of life sciences and an author of the study, said, “It’s encouraging to find that simple measures, such as planting native shrubs and trees and creating a pond, together with avoiding the use of pesticides, really make a measurable difference to the number of birds you will see in your garden.”

10 . The Munfords were moving into a house they bought. They wanted to see if all the furniture was in good condition before they used it. James Munford was_________ the built-in drawers in the closet last month, when he found two cases holding 46 gold Liberty $5 coins and 18 Morgan silver dollars that were made in the 1800s. They looked really old, like they were really worth a lot of _________.

James and his wife, Clarrisa, who are both retired thought the coins are _________a family heirloom (传家宝), so they went ahead and made sure the owner _________them back. James texted pictures of the _________to the home’s former owner and made plans to _________them.

“We really didn’t know anything about the _________of the coins. We really didn’t _________, to be honest with you. We knew they were not ours,” said Clarrisa Munford, who runs a restaurant business.

The home’s _________owner, who asked not to be __________, estimated (估算) that the coins were worth about $25,000. He said he’d put the containers in the back of his sock drawer a few months ago for safe keeping and didn’t see it in his__________ to get packed up and moved out of the house. The rest of his coin collection was in his safe. He didn’t realize the coins were __________until the Munfords contacted him. He added that he would never have known if they had __________to sell the coins and keep the money for themselves.

The Munfords are still unpacking and their furniture just arrived last week, so they haven’t had a __________to see if there are any other __________.