1 . Travelling with friends can be an amazing experience where you could make lifelong memories or it could ruin your friendship.     1     Here are some rules you should follow to make sure your next trip with friends goes as smoothly as possible.

    2     Sure, you and your friends probably have some similar interests, but that’s not always the case. In an effort to keep everyone happy, go over travel plans and expectations ahead of time. Have each person categorize activities or sights into “must-see”, “want to see” and “would go if we have time”. Plan accordingly and make sure everyone can see some of their top attractions.

Communicate and respect each other. Everyone has personal preferences when travelling— from getting the bed closest to the bathroom or sitting in the airplane’s window seat. But sometimes things don’t go as you like. In this case, share your requirements directly with your travel companions.     3     Have a conversation when problems arise, for communication is the key.

Don’t disappear. When travelling with a group — or even just one other person — you may want some alone time. That’s completely fine, but make sure your friends know where you are and have a way of contacting you.     4    

Get off your phone. Of course, your friends will understand if you need to take a call from a family member, or in the event of a work emergency, but other than that, try to stay off your phone.     5     After all, the appeal of this type of trip is to spend time with friends. Just enjoy it!

2 . There are many podcasts (播客) that teach English and you can listen to them anytime. Here is a list of some of the best podcasts that you must see.

Learn English Podcast

This podcast has three levels.The first is for beginners, the second is for intermediates (中级学生) and the third is for upper intermediates. If a person wants to learn Business English,then episodes are also made for him.Every podcast is short but very informative. Worksheets and vocabulary tasks are also included.

Speaking Broadly

This podcast is made for advanced learners. Explained through discussion and interviews, each episode has non-native English speakers and every recording also has expert feedback. You will see some common mistakes made by English learners and you can improve your English by learning from those mistakes.

The English We Speak

This podcast airs one episode daily and every episode is only three to four minutes, which talks about phrases and idioms.There are two people in each episode who communicate with each other. Whatever level you are,you will find it rewarding

Elementary Podcast

This podcast is mainly for beginners and intermediate level learners. The length of a podcast is around 25 minutes but you can pause it anytime and continue whenever you want. The hosts of each episode are different.

3 . Like most people, I was not sure about using virtual reality (VR) (虚拟现实) for travel. However, driven by the chance to experience places and things I could never visit without time, money, and travel, I visited the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) to check out their spacewalk VR Transporter. The visit turned out to be the most unforgettable experience that I’d ever had. After an hour or so, I took off the VR headset (眼罩), feeling as if I had actually been staying in space for months.

As we move through the post-COVID era (后疫情时代), international travel and large events have both been slow to return, so Ceek, an APP for virtual events and experiences, has been developed to allow users to travel through time and space with great joy. Mary Spio, Ceek CEO, explains that the combination of sights and sounds is important. “So our users can listen and see everything at the same time.”

The promise of VR is that it helps us rethink what travel even means. “Traveling can be crossing cultures, crossing memories, and can be done in your mind,” says David Askaryan, CEO of the Museum of Future Experiences. He says MOFE’s VR technology create “an experience where the world around you just completely changes for 70 minutes.”

In the post-COVID era, with our vacation days or travel money running short, virtual reality may be the next best way to visit the destinations that have been lighting up our social timeline, or are on our list. As for me, I’m already planning my next VR trip: an underwater VR experience.

4 . “Farm to table” is the name of a movement that encourages people to eat locally grown food. The farm­to­table idea has become more popular in recent years. But there is also a movement that brings “table to farm”. Its purpose is to connect people to the land and to honor local farmers by creating a sort of restaurant without walls.

Its founder, Jim Denevan, got the idea for this kind of “culinary adventure (美食探险)”, as he called it, ten years ago. He recently prepared tables for more than a hundred people at Briars Farm in Virginia. He and his eight­member team arrived the night before. Chefs (厨师) from a local restaurant prepared the dinner.

Jim Denevan’s brother is a farmer and he himself is a chef. He thought that the idea of a meal served right on the farm made sense, though not everyone agreed.

“But I wanted to make the idea work, so I decided to cross the country,” said Denevan. “I went all the way across the United States and set the table on farms, ranches (大牧场) and beaches, and all the places where food came from.”

“This kind of event connects us with a lot of enthusiastic people, people that we can form relationships with,” said Matt Szechenyi, who operates Briars Farm.

The tour of the farm ends at the dinner table. The meats in the meal come from Matt Szechenyi’s farm. The vegetables come from nearby farms. Guests and local farmers sit together.

Annoica Ingram came with a friend. “The food is wonderful. I appreciate their hard work. I see everything they have to do to take care of the animals and make sure they are well­cared­for. Without them, I think, we’ll have big problems,” she said.

7 . For 20 years, two brothers living in the dirty neighborhood of Wazirabad in India’s capital, Delhi, have been treating wounded black kites (鸢) that fall from the city’s skies.

Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad rescue birds of prey — mostly injured by paper kite strings — and carry them to a basement garage at home. Here, they begin nursing them to health: cleaning and bandaging wounds, fixing wings and broken bones.

Small miracles happen in the basement. Here lives are saved, a living is made and there’s some happiness too. “You don’t care for things because they share the same country, religion or politics,” say the brothers. “Life itself is relationship. That’s why we can’t abandon the birds.”

The brothers talk about how a neighborhood bird hospital refused to treat the first kite they rescued because it was a “non-vegetarian bird”. At that time, they, were teenage bodybuilders and that’s how they “came to know about flesh and muscles”. They figured out ways to bandage the kites. They became passionate about birds. “We’d lie on the ground, watching the elegant flights in the sky,” they say. “The head would spin. Have you ever felt dizzy looking into the sky?”

The street outside the brothers’ home becomes a smelly pool of sewage water which comes into the basement during the rainy season. Pigs wander in a muddy channel. Air quality reaches dangerous peaks. Yet there’s life and hope. Monkeys climb playfully over some electric wires that hang unsteadily over narrow streets. An airplane in the sky is reflected in a pool of quiet water.

When the weather clears, skies are filled with paper kites. And then the birds begin dropping, and the brothers are back at their job. Sometimes the birds fall after bumping against buildings in the smog or getting entangled (缠住) in overhead wires. At one point, there were more than 100 wounded birds in the basement. The brothers once swam across the river to rescue a bird with a broken wing.

8 . Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are now thought as the top source of green-house gases. One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to reconsider how much, and how often, you travel.

Going car free for a year could save about 2. 6 tons of carbon dioxide, according to a study from the University of British Columbia. How can you stop using a car? Try taking a train, bus or better yet, riding a bike.

But let’s be realistic. You will likely need to use a car this year. So, when you do, here are some tips to make your trip more climate-friendly. Driving efficiently can help to reduce emissions. Go easy on the gas and brakes and drive like you have an egg under your foot. Regularly service your car to keep it more efficient. Keeping your tires pumped correctly can re-duce emissions. Low tire pressure will hurt your fuel economy. Air conditioning and frequent city driving can make emissions go up. So cut down on these as often as possible. Use cruise control (定速巡航) on long drives-in most cases, this can help to save gas. Don’t weigh your car down with extra things that you don’t need on your trip.

Fly often? Taking one fewer long round-trip flight could reduce your personal carbon footprint significantly. If you use public transportation often and fly less, your carbon foot-print might still be relatively sustainable, but if you drive and fly a lot, your emissions will be sigher. If you can’t avoid flying, you can offset them by donating money to sustainable proacts, such as supplying efficient stoves to rural homes, or projects which help farmers deal with crop waste environmentally.