2 . I was standing in the checkout line behind a woman who looked to be in her 60s. When it was her turn to pay, the cashier greeted her by name and asked her how she was doing.

The woman looked down, shook her head and said: “Not so good. My husband just lost his job. The truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to get through these days.” Then she gave the cashier food stamps(食品券).

My heart ached. I wanted to help but didn’t know how. Should I offer to pay for her groceries, or ask for her husband’s resume(简历)?

Walking into the parking lot, I spotted the woman returning her shopping cart. I remembered something in my purse that I thought could help her. It wasn’t a handful of cash or an offer of a job for her husband, but maybe it would make her life better.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice trembling a bit. “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to the cashier. It sounds like you’ re going through a really hard time right now. I’m so sorry. I’d like to give you something. ”

I handed her the small card from my purse. When the woman read the two words “You Matter” on the card, she began to cry. And through her tears, she said: “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

I was a little startled by her reply. Having never done anything like this before, I didn’t know what kind of reaction I might receive. All I could think to say was: “Would it be OK to give you a hug? ”

A few days earlier, one of my workmates gave a similar card to me as encouragement for a project I was working on. When I read the card, I felt a warm glow spread inside of me. Deeply touched, I ordered my own box of “You Matter” cards and started sharing them.

3 . Dick lived in England. One day in January he said to his wife, "I'm going to fly to New York next week because I've got some work there." "Where are you going to stay there?" his wife asked. "I don't know yet." Dick answered. "Please send me your address from there in a telegram," his wife said. "All right," Dick answered.    He flew to New York on January 31st and found a nice hotel in the center of the city. He put his things in his room and then he sent his wife a telegram. He put the address of his hotel in it.    In the evening he didn't have any work, so he went to a cinema. He came out at nine o'clock and said, "Now I should return to my hotel and have a nice dinner."    He found a taxi and the driver said, "Where do you want to go?" But Dick didn't remember the name and address of his hotel.    "Which hotel are my things in?" he said, "And what am I going to do tonight?" But the driver of the taxi did not know. So Dick got out and went into a post office. There he sent his wife another telegram, and in it he wrote, "_________"

4 . The only known white giraffe in the world has been fitted with a GPS tracking device in an effort to protect him from poachers (偷猎者) in Kenya. The unique male giraffe now stands alone after a female and her calf were killed by poachers in March, 2020.

The GPS tracking device, secured to one of the animal’s horns, will give hourly updates of his location, said the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy. Rangers will be able to monitor the giraffe’s movements in the conservancy located in Garissa County, eastern Kenya.

“The giraffe’s living range has been blessed with good rains in the recent past and the abundant vegetation is a good sign for the future of the white male,” said Ahmed Noor, manager of the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy.

Noor thanked the Kenya Wildlife Service, Save Giraffes Now and the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) for their help in safeguarding wildlife species.

“Our mission is to work with communities, secure their livelihoods as well as protect the unique wildlife like the only known white giraffe,” said Antony Wandera, the senior wildlife monitoring officer at the NRT.

The male giraffe has a rare genetic trait called leucism (变白), which results in the partial loss of pigmentation (肤色) in an animal and makes it easy to spot for poachers. Unlike albinism (白化), animals with leucism continue to produce a dark pigment in their soft tissue, meaning the giraffe’s eyes are dark.

In March, 2020, the remains of two of the stunning white giraffes that lived at the Kenyan wildlife reserve were found dead, killed by poachers.

The world’s tallest land animal has lost 40％ of its population in just 30 years, the African Wildlife Foundation estimates.

5 . A study has found that people who are literate (识字的）had a third the risk of developing dementia (痴呆症）compared with those who had never learnt to read and write. The scientists — behind the study suggested that learning to read may reveal new intellectual worlds and promote a life of the mind that might help to keep brains sharp into old age.

“If one acquires the ability to read and write, that opens up opportunities to engage in cognitively (认知的）stimulating activities, ” Miguel Arce Renteria ，from Columbia University Medical Centre, said. “Even with low education， you can read newspapers and books. That provides opportunities for constant stimulation that can last for the rest of your life. Maybe that might give protection and reduce the effects of dementia."

The research published in the journal Neurology, looked at almost 1, 000 older people in New York, chosen because they had received little education as children. The average age was 77 and more than 90 percent were immigrants (移民），Ali of them had had four years or less of education, with about a quarter describing themselves as illiterate.

Among those who did not read, 35 percent had dementia at the start of the study, increasing to 48 percent four years later. Among the literate respondents, 18 percent had dementia at the outset, rising to 27 percent. After adjusting for social class, age and other risk factors, the scientists concluded that illiterate people were three times more likely to have dementia. They were also twice as likely to have it over the four years of the investigation.

It is impossible to say for certain that the link means that literacy delays dementia. It may be that people who managed to get a better education before arriving in the US were also different in other ways. However, Dr Arce Renteria said, “What this provides is strong evidence for a pretty strong link. ”

6 .

7 . The ancient village of Machu Picchu is one of the most popular tourist destinations in South America. It’s in Peru, high in the Andes Mountains, 8, 000 feet above sea level.

The village contains 200 buildings. Houses are in groups, and each house has a large courtyard inside its walls. The Incas(印加人) used the areas outside the groups of houses to grow corn and potatoes and to raise animals. The Incas were very good at building strong walls. Visitors to Machu Picchu still cannot fit a knife between the stones of a village home.

Machu Picchu seemed to be a healthy, busy village. So why was it lost? That is a mystery, but experts have some ideas. Machu Picchu was hard to reach. Few people outside the village knew about it. Experts think that many residents died of disease. Others fought a war. The survivors left the village.

The tourists are good for Peru’s economy, but they are not good for Machu Picchu. The village is old and fragile. Tourists damage the ruins. Thousands of footsteps from visitors wear down the walkways in the village. Salt and oil from people’s hands damage the walls. Air pollution from buses hurts the stones. Tourists do not want to damage the village, but they want to see this beautiful, ancient place.

The Peruvian government and conservation groups are trying to solve the problem. A group from the United Nations wants to limit the number of tourists each year. They also want cars and buses to use cleaner fuel.

8 . Some families choose to take extravagant(奢侈的) vacations, such as to the Grand Canyon. However, my favorite family "vacation"was different. Nine years ago, my parents made a plan to build the home of their dreams in the neighborhood.

Home Number I gradually turned into the management office for building Home Number 2. As Home Number 2 began to take shape, it drew our attention and our primary home became the place where we slept only. The three of us children worked and became soon-to-be-skilled workers. I quickly learned that personalities are readily displayed when we painted a wall. Some repeated his demand, refusing others to enter the area. Others systematically painted the wall, working from top to bottom in an organized fashion. And one might lose interest quickly and drew smiley faces and signed his name on the wall.

Of course, the journey doesn't come without a few lessons learned. I came to understand that paint would never be removed from my clothes no matter how many times I washed it. We learned other important lessons when my dad wanted to shingle(用瓦片覆盖) a roof in the air: Safety is indeed important, and sometimes money is well spent in the employment(雇用) of professional.

And a Mother's Day dinner served on a table could actually taste far better at the end of a long day's work than the everyday meals we remembered back at Home Number 1. Most importantly, I learned that my family can understand each other's' barks. When we finally“arrived after28 months,the“place of interest" we now call home was better than any other places, and our family grew closer because of it.

9 . When I was in college, a man named Henry worked as a custodian (看门人) in our student union building. White-haired, with a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, Henry could usually be seen in a baseball cap, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

He was the custodian, and he was the most respected and most well-known person in the building. Everyone loved Henry, and it was because of all the implicit ways he expressed his love for everyone around him. Henry didn’t have to say, “I love you.” He lived his love.

Henry was always excited when he met someone new, and he wanted to know everything about them. He felt it was important to do things for people he valued. And Henry seemed to value everyone he met. He brought in articles or cartoons for certain people, went out of his way to introduce people to each other, kept dozens of names and birthdays in his wallet so he could send cards, and helped students keep in touch with graduates who had written to him. He even assisted students who didn’t have enough money to buy their books.

Henry taught me --- and many others he supported --- how to live life to the fullest. Not by skydiving or exploring some foreign countries, but by appreciating where you are in life and valuing those around you.

The funny thing is that despite all he did and taught us, Henry truly believed that he was the lucky one --- that he was the one who was gaining so much by getting to know us. But all of us who remember Henry know that we were the ones who were truly blessed.

We will never forget the man who taught us that best way to say “I love you” often has little to do with the words.

10 . A first-year undergraduate student in Chengdu, recently complained online that her mother refused to raise her monthly allowance to 4, 500 yuan （ $ 633） even when she said her current allowance 2,000 yuan was not enough to cover her expenses, sparking a debate on how much money a college student needs per month. One expert shares his views on the issue with China Daily: Students should pursue education, not comfort.

Even for a college student studying in a first -tier city in China, 2, 000 yuan is enough to cover all his or her monthly expenses. In fact, for a college student in Chengdu a monthly allowance of 2, 000 yuan is more than enough. According to a survey conducted by a bookkeeping platform, the average monthly expense for an undergraduate in cities other than Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou was less than 2, 000 yuan in 2019; for Chengdu, it was 1, 900 yuan.

Claiming that she can hardly afford new clothing and cosmetics with her 2, 000 yuan monthly allowance, the undergraduate student in Chengdu criticized her mother for refusing to raise her pocket money. Her “meager” allowance, she said, prevented her from buying branded goods that her hostel-mates enjoyed.

By the time a person enters a college, she or he should have developed a healthy consumption habit. And a youth should adjust her or his consumption according to her or his family income. On a deeper level, the money they spend in college should depend on how much they value their parents’ hard work. Besides, some college students could take up part-time jobs to meet their monetary needs if they feel their parents don't or can’t send them enough money. In this way they can also learn to meet the requirements of life in the future and develop healthy consumption ion habits. More importantly, they should always bear in mind that education is their top priority in college.