1 . Elephant Conservation

Country:Thailand

This is a working vacation at a wildlife centre. Anyone can become a volunteer if he/she agrees to help the elephant keepers with tasks.

Daily tasks

Collect the elephants at 6:30 a.m. Take them to look for food in the forest. Clean the enclosure. Swim with the elephants in the lake in the afternoon. If volunteers want to relax after work, they can watch satellite television.

How this vacation helps

If these elephants hadn’t been rescued, they would still be living on the streets of Bangkok. A rural environment is much better for them than an urban environment where there is lots of pollution.

Gorilla Safari

Countries:Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda

Departures:Aug.—Dec., 2—3 departures per month

Extras:gorilla permit ￡220

If you’re lucky, you’ll see lions, elephants and rhinos on safari. The highlight of the trip is the opportunity to see gorillas in the mountain forests. However, you must be in good health—if a gorilla caught a cold, it would be extremely harmful to its whole family.

How this vacation helps

There are only about 600 mountain gorillas left in the world as human activity has reduced the area where they can live. When you buy a permit, this will pay for the protection of the national park.

Country:Canada

Departures:sixty trips between Oct. 1—Nov. 19

Every October and November, groups of polar bears gather in Hudson Bay. As they are normally lonely creatures, this is unusual. The bears wait for the ocean to freeze so they can hunt seals, so this is the perfect opportunity to see them.

How this vacation helps

If the Arctic ice cap melts due to global warming, polar bears will be in danger. We give a share of our profits to the Polar Bears Alive Charity.

Your comment

These awesome bears get all the liquid they need from their food.

2 . Do you like Chinese traditional painting and dance? They are two important parts of the traditional Chinese art. But what about when they meet each other?

This year, a dance drama titled Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting (《只此青绿》) was staged on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala and became popular.

According to CCTV, this poetic dance program was inspired by the 900-year-old Chinese painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains (《千里江山图》), created by Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng at about 18. The painting is amazing in its sweeping size, rich coloration and the expressive details, reported by CCTV. It shows a Chinese blue-green landscape: mountains and groupings of infinite (无限的) rise and fall between cloudless sky and rippling (涟漪的) water.

When the dancers moved elegantly, audiences seemed to be looking at the moving mountains and rivers. “It brings me a pure experience of beauty. It is not only a drama but also an exhibition. Vast mountains and rivers are coming to life!” Internet user Mo Weisha wrote in a review. “More than a thousand years later, green mountains and rivers still impress people as they did long ago.” Some people even decided to watch the dance again when it was staged in the theaters later. In fact, in recent years, more and more modern shows have featured Chinese traditional culture and received warm welcome. As for the reason, it is due to people’s great love for traditional culture.

“The younger generations have grown up with a more open mind. They accept Chinese culture and are proud of it,” Yao Wei, director of Henan TV Station’s Innovation Center, told China Daily.

Yu Rong, a Chinese artist, thinks of a new way to introduce     1     ancient story of Hua Mulan in her picture book. In the book, I Am Hua Mulan, she tells the story by     2     (combine) Chinese paper-cutting with international artistic styles. She places Shaanxi papercuts over western-style pencil sketches (素描)    3     (create) typical presentation of Chineseelements (要素), which turns out to be a     4     (success) and impressive breakthrough.

Hua Mulan,     5     story has been told by generations in China, was a fighter from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534). As a devoted daughter, she dressed herself as a man to serve in the army     6     place of her father. Mulan’s character, such as courage, kindness and a disinterested attitude towards fame and fortune, made     7     (she) one of the most respected historical Chinese heroines. Mulan’s story has been adapted     8     (frequent) in modern media. For example, in 1998, Disney produced a film named Mulan, which     9     (consider) a great success by critics and the public right after its release.

To better tell the story, Yu Rong takes inspiration from her several     10     (visit) to sites of ancient battles and Henan Province’s Yu Opera. After years of preparation she finally makes this extraordinary work.

4 . Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English rulers tried to conquer (征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result is that today there are two “Irelands”. Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, in the south, is an independent country.

In the 1840s the main crop, potatoes, was affected by disease and about 750,000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage (短缺) of work, forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.

For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people still work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.

The Irish are famous for being warm－hearted and friendly. Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were “the greatest talkers since the Greeks”. Since independence, Ireland has revived (复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish songs which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.

5 . My wife and I moved into our home two years ago. We had a yard with a lot of ________. Very often when we have flowers, Denise or I would plant some between the rocks, just to add some ________ to the area.

Last summer, I found a tiny little plant in the yard that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either.

We decided to let it ________ growing until we could find out what it was.

Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the ________ plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. I decided to ________ the weeds (杂草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something ________.The sunflower had not ________ where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the ________.

That’s when I ________ that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability of doing the same thing. If we ________ ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we ________ to go and get what we need for growth.

We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ________ to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had ________ in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be ________ of who and what we are, and then the environment will begin to ________ us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to reach our goals.

7 . One night, as I was driving down the road, I found something was sitting in the middle of the road. A few seconds later, I realized I was looking at a large turtle (海龟). Afraid of it being crashed by cars, so I pulled over, ran across the road and dragged the turtle to safety. But I’d made one big mistake.

I had heard that the best way to pick up a turtle without hurting it was picking it by the tail in order not to get bitten. So I’d made that big mistake. While the turtle turned out OK generally, I was determined to figure out how to move a turtle properly. I needed to find someone who dealt with turtles. I found the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre. I talked to Dr. Sue, its Executive and Medical Director.

Dr. Sue told me that the organization dealt with a number of aspects of turtle conservation, including rescue, settlement, birth programs, research, and education. Sue explained that southern Ontario is home to a vast majority of turtles in Canada, but is also one of the vastest road networks of the country.

“Ninety percent of injured turtles brought in are caused by cars. These turtles spend a lot of time on land. And they do travel many kilometers on land for a variety of reasons, to find a nesting spot, or to hang out for the summer or winter. Turtles know where they want to go. So, just keep them going in the direction they want to go and you may have saved a turtle’s life,” Dr. Sue said.

Once an injured turtle arrives at the center, there are medical facilities (设备) ready to go, including an X-ray machine. That’s when the team gets to work with healing injuries, and help their patient.

8 . My husband is more a kid at heart. He insists we find gifts for the grandkids while on a trip to Savannah.

I can be a kid at heart, too, but I also can be a mathematician — and even cheap, ugly gifts add up quickly when you have 11 grandkids.

Children like gifts and they want them. So we are digging through piles of cheap key fobs (钥匙链), plastic sun hats, chocolate treats that will melt in the heat, and funny T-shirts, finding nothing.

We go with two hats for the boys but are still empty-handed for the nine girls. Then I spot small bracelets (手链) in a rainbow of colors. He turns one over a couple of times and says, “Nice.”

The bracelets are made of small balls shaped like starfish and turtles. They all look like rock candy, which can be eaten and was popular when we were kids. We buy nine and make a mental note: tell the girls not to eat them.

As the clerk wraps the bracelets, I remember a gift I had as a girl. Once we could choose one thing in a shop to remember our trip. What I selected was a blue plastic soapbox with the lid (盖子) and topped with a pink flamingo (火烈鸟). It was cheap and tacky (俗气的) and I believed it was the loveliest thing a girl could own. It was too beautiful to put soap inside, so it sat in a dresser drawer year after year, slowly aging, yellowing, as a reminder of a family trip long ago.

The girls are married and have families of their own, and those gifts are still in the dresser drawers in their old bedrooms, but I have came to realize that every gift may have its worth and value, saying we are together even though we were apart. That’s always a good deal.

9 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式，并将答案转写到答题卡上。

“Traveling to China seems like traveling to another world. Its many famous scenic attractions impressed me     1     (great),”an American said. The following is     2     he wrote on his website.

My friends and I had a family visit in Xi’an,     3     old city with a long history in China. The hosts were retired or stayed at home without a job, and they were friendly to     4     (visit) from different countries coming their homes.

We     5     (taste) the true home-cooked dishes in the home of the family that we visited. For in-homing dinner, the host would prepare a list of menus in advance (提前). Our tour guide asked     6     (we) for advice about the food, so the host would try to cook what we wanted     7     (eat) at his home. We just enjoyed the locally cooked dishes. It was quite a different and exciting experience.

Many foreigners enjoy     8     (learn) how to make Chinese dumplings. We were also     9     (offer) a general cooking class in the local family. The host taught us to make dumplings step by step with lots of patience. And we didn’t need to pay any money     10     this. Travel China Guide offers this kind of service free of charge.

The family visit in Xi’an was a good chance for us to get to know Chinese people’s daily life.

10 . Four Best Films for You

Dune

Now at last we have a big-screen Dune that may actually do justice to (恰当处理) Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel (科幻小说). Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film runs for 155 minutes and still only covers the first half of the book.

The French Dispatch

It’s the 10th film of Wes Anderson, a writer-director. The French Dispatch tells three short stories set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, and supposedly drawn from the pages of a New Yorker-style magazine in the mid-20th Century.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Now that Marvel’s superheroes have saved the universe (宇宙), their next job is obvious: they have to save the multiverse. In the third of the Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland, the teenager accidentally opens a door to many parallel realities (平行现实世界). “What people will be really surprised about is that it’s not fun, this film,” Holland told Total Film. “It’s dark and sad, and it’s going to be really affecting.”

Ron’s Gone Wrong

The first cartoon from a new British studio, Locksmith Animation, Ron’s Gone Wrong is a family comedy (喜剧). The film’s co-writer and co-director, Sarah Smith, said, “In our movie, Barney ends up with Ron, a robot, who’s completely broken, who doesn’t agree with him and doesn’t know anything about him, they have to build this relationship from that point.”