1 . With the cold weather drawing nearer, few people will choose swimming as a daily or usual activity.     1     Here come the reasons.

Good for your brain.

Swimming is one of the best activities you can do all year round, which benefits your body and your mind. Swimming has been found to increase blood flow to the brain, which leads to more oxygen.     2    

Work your muscles.

Every time you swim, it is like doing a mini-resistance workout. Each kicks and pull works your muscles more than you could imagine, especially your arms, shoulders and gluteus — the muscles that are inactive all day when you’re sitting at your desk.     3     So along with building fitness, it is a wonderful full body exercise.

Lift your spirits.

    4     They can cause a positive feeling into your body which makes you happy. Swimming has been shown to reduce stress and tension. The repetition, movement and the breathing can help you to relax , and that’s why swimming is also regarded as a relaxing exercise.

    5    

While swimming is an individual sport, it is also very social. You can meet people from all walks of life when swimming. Have a chat in the lap pool, join a swimming club or get involved in social water sports to get to know people in your community. Besides, the great thing about swimming is that you can do it — rain or shine. Although your backyard pool, the river or beach cools down over winter, most inside swimming pools run heated pools year round, so you’ve got no excuse to stop swimming.

2 . An old car, a few dollars in the pocket, and a sense of adventure. That’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the _________ of a lifetime. They met on a park bench in Regent’s Park and

_________ a year later. For their honeymoon, they decided to try what few people thought _________—crossing Europe and Asia overland, all the way to Australia. It took them several months and all the money they could earn or borrow, but they _________.

It was too amazing an experience to _________ themselves. _________ by their friends, they stayed up nights writing their very first travel guide “Across Asia on the Cheap”. Within a week they’d _________ 1,500 copies and Lonely Planet was born. The name _________ a misheard line in the song “Space Captain”. The _________ words are “lovely planet”, but Tony Wheeler heard “lonely planet” and liked it.

Lonely Planet has gone on to __________ the world’s largest and most successful travel publisher, __________ over 100 million books. Lonely Planet enables curious __________ to experience the world and get to the heart of a place through guidebooks and almost every place on the planet.

“There’s a whole world of amazing sights, hotels and travel companies out there—and we want to tell you which ones we __________ are best. But we never use our opinions for money. If you __________ something written by a Lonely Planet author, you can be __________ they’ve been there, had a look themselves and are __________ you what they really think. It’s trusted advice from a __________ source,” says Tony.

Tony and Maureen are continuing to travel and devote much of their spare time to __________ projects, providing support for people in need. And the __________ is still driven by the idea in “Across Asia on the Cheap”: “What you’ve got to __________ is decide to go and the hardest part is over. So go!”

6 . Travel Peru

Peru is a perfect touring destination: Everything from the ancient Inca culture and centuries-old Spanish villages to deep rainforests, high mountains, and a beautiful coastline.

Amazon Rainforest Tour

Arriving at Amazon rainforest, you’ll spend one day traveling by boat to your hotel in the middle of the forest. You can then spend three days exploring the rainforest with a local guide and enjoying the plants and animals unique to the rainforest.

Machu Picchu Tour

This four-day walking tour will take you to the city of MachuPicchu. There you will have a day to explore and be amazed by this ancient city. Especially amazing is the Inca’s dry stone method of building. Inca builders cut stones to exact sizes so that nothing was needed to hold walls together, other than the perfect fit of the stones.

Cusco Tour

Spend four days enjoying the unique Spanish and local Indian culture high in the Andes at Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire from the 13th until the 16th century. Stay in a local hotel, visit the museums, admire the architecture, enjoy the excellent local food, and go shopping at the local markets,

Lake Titicaca Tour

Enjoy the beautiful countryside as you spend a day driving along the new highway connecting Cusco to Lake Titicaca. There, a boat will take you to stay with a local Uros family on an island for three days. Both the island and Uroshomes are made of water plants from the lake.

For more information about other package tours around Peru, contact us at turinfo @travelperu. org.

A writer who won the Nobel Prize leads a very tough life at the age of 15. In order to look after his sicker mother, he had to earn his living by write articles for a newspaper. Therefore, his boss was very strict with him, that resulted in a fact that he was experienced in writing. For his delight, one of his books were given the title of The Best Seller in 2010, and got the world attention. As result, many people could not to help learning his positive spirit, and his success set a good example to them.

My topic today is about the power of a smile. There are a number of     1     (saying) about the power of a smile. “Peace begins with the smile.” “A smile means welcome everywhere.” “Life is short, but a smile only     2     (take) a second.” All good advice, but it may not be as simple as that. According to new research, if you want     3     (make) a good impression when you meet people, it’s not just that you smile; it’s     4     you smile. The study     5    (carry) out by the Go Group, a business support organization in Scotland, in the UK. They looked at people’s responses     6     different smiles. They found that the responses differ     7     (great). Through this study they say people should avoid three types of smile. The first is “The Top Fan”— very wide, all teeth showing, possible evidence that you can have too much of a good thing. Then there is “The Big Freeze”— a     8    (fix) smile that looks practised and insincere. Finally comes “The Robot”— a small, thin smile lacking in     9    (warm).

The group also warns against smiling too quickly,     10    (believe) it can make you look false. The best smile, they say, is slower and flows naturally across the whole face.

9 . My name is Michelle. I'm 27 years old, and I've been writing letters to my pen pal in England for 14 years.

Yes, a pen pal. Rachel and I have been writing letters to each other since the 8th grade. My reading teacher at the time helped our class find pen pals through a company called International Youth Service (unfortunately closed in 2008).

On February 28, 2006, I received a letter back from the girl from England. Our letters started to turn into novellas(中篇小说) pretty quickly. We began spilling our guts to each other about all sorts of teenage stuff—boys, namely.

We continued writing letters throughout college, but they started to slow down with the age of the Internet and Facebook. It was both a blessing and a curse, because if I needed to share something with her right away, I didn't have to wait two weeks for a response. But there was still no better feeling than opening up my mailbox and seeing past the advertisements and campus happenings and finding a letter with her handwriting on the envelope waiting for me.

One would think that we are more connected than ever in a world of text messaging and social media—but honestly, I don't think this could be further from the truth. We are losing the personal touch, the quality of the time it takes to put into a friendship. Think about letter writing—it's not expensive. An international stamp costs $1.15.

It's not the expense. It's the time. The time it takes to go to the store and pick out a card or stationary. The time it takes to actually hand-write a letter. The time it takes to address the envelope, go to the post office, pay, and mail the letter out. And I believe this is what makes letter writing so personal and special.

10 . Mary Nafula learned she had cancer a year ago. She survived the cancer treatment, but her hair fell out. The hair loss made the mother of three feel unprotected and weak. Nafula found help at a beauty salon in Nairobi. Women go to salons for haircuts and beauty treatments. But this business in Kenya's capital offers other products. It gave Nafula a wig to cover her head. The wig replaces the natural hair she lost during the treatment.

Nafula describes her new feelings of confidence in herself. "We can take all the challenges that accompany us, knowing that we are going to heal," she says. Cancer deaths are rising from 37,000 reported cases in 2012 to almost 48,000 currently. Doctor Gladwell Kiarie is a cancer specialist at The Nairobi Hospital. She says the rise in cancer deaths is probably a result of lifestyle changes and more testing for cancer. "We are smoking more. We are taking alcohol more," Kiarie said. "Our traditional diets have changed. We have more fatty foods. We have less water and greens in our foods."

Nafula says she is happy to have a wig and to be free from criticism on the streets and in the public transport vehicles called "matatus." Nafula described being very sick and trying to ride in a matatu. She was told "You should not enter the matatu because cancer can infect us." Diana Akech is the owner of the beauty salon where Nafula got her wig. Akech started doing beauty makeovers （翻新）five years ago after a friend got cancer. The friend lost her hair, but Akech gave her a wig. "Let me say my friend gave me the willpower to keep doing this... She's in heaven right now and I am sure she's very proud of what I'm doing." Recovering from cancer can be long and painful. A wig can reduce the pain and show patients that they are not alone.