People who live in the countryside generally live longer than those who live in the city. A number of reasons may also help explain this point.
To start with, farmers are in close contact with nature. They breathe fresh air. They make friends with trees and stones, cows and dogs. They listen to the songs of birds. They fight with strong winds. This contact with nature is good for the health of both body and spirits.
Next, hard physical work keeps farmers fit and healthy. It is widely believed that farmers suffer from far less diseases than people in the city. They are many diseases that are common in the city, but not in the countryside. For example, near-sightedness is almost unknown to farmers. Besides, being free from urban pressure does good to the health of farmers.
Moreover, because there are less cars, motorcars and other kinds of vehicles in the countryside,one can walk more freely without being afraid of accidents. The environment is better in the countryside, which makes the farmers live a quiet and peaceful life.
The farmers can also get fresh grain, vegetables, fruits and milk easily. They enjoy these advantages that people living in the city cannot.
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With travel and the environment in the news so much lately, you’ve probably heard the word ecotourism. As travelers become more aware of their effect on the planet and want to do their part to make a difference, ecotourism has really taken off.
What is ecotourism? The definition isn’t as hard to determine as you might think. According to the International Ecotourism Society, it is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that protects the environment and sustains the well-being of the local people”. To be simple, it’s travel that has a positive effect on a destination’s ecology and economy.
Ecotourism lets travelers participate in activities that benefit the environment. For example, travelers can act as citizen scientists in places around the world, including national parks and dive sites, to help do research and collect data. Meanwhile, ecotourism helps local communities to do well and become successful and strong. That can happen in a number of ways, involving some type of financial aspect, from providing jobs to supporting local businesses.
Being a responsible traveler, you’ll have a much more satisfying and rewarding experience. Instead of simply visiting tourist attractions and eating at chain restaurants, you can get completely involved in a local culture and really get to know the people who live there. It enriches your own life and opens your mind to new ideas.
Ecotourism is an amazing way to discover the world. Nature is full of wonders everywhere. Being able to get out in a natural area that is protected and largely undeveloped offers a chance to connect with plants and animals you may never see anywhere else. Just be sure to leave it as you found it for future explorers to discover. Get your sneakers ready, pack your bags and head for nature. A big and beautiful world is waiting for you out there.
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As we all know, humor exists everywhere and at all ages. Humor and laughter are essential to reduce stress, lack of motivation, or simply turn a bad day into a great one! So let’s take a deeper look into the importance of humor in various areas of life.
Humor is known to be a great mood booster (助推器). Some researchers even say that people with a good sense of humor tend to be generally happier in life, which is fantastic news for the well-being of our society! In other words, humor can improve humanity (人类) as a whole by improving the lives of each individual person.
But how exactly is it beneficial for each of us individually? First of all, humor is proved to improve concentration and productivity, energize individuals, increase their motivation, and boost confidence when needed. Thus, a good sense of humor and frequent laughter can significantly improve one’s mental health. Of course, humor has just as many physical benefits as mental ones. Namely, it can reduce the risk of heart diseases and contribute to the overall health of an individual if it’s frequently present in their lives.
The biggest strengths of humor are present in interpersonal communication. You can use humor to deal with some difficult situations. However, it is the way we use humor that is vital to understand. For example, you should never use humor to harm others or discourage (使灰心) them. Instead, humor should be used properly to be a powerful tool that allows us to look at any issue from a different view.
Overall, humor is an essential skill and an incredibly powerful tool that can free us from tensions and stress and help us bond with people and feel better about the world.
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The Book That Keeps On Growing
It is one of the most famous books in the world; yet it has no story and no interesting characters, no exciting beginning and no satisfying ending. And yet this book keeps being printed and it keeps growing. This book is the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the most famous dictionaries in the English-speaking world.
The Oxford English Dictionary or OED for short, began in 1857 as just an idea of a group of people who thought the world needed an English-language dictionary to show the history of English words from 1150 CE to the present. It wasn’t until the late 1870s, however, when James Murray joined the project that it began to grow. Murray planned for a dictionary of about 6,400 pages in four volumes (册), completed in 10 years.
Murray and his assistants worked in a small metal building. They collected millions of pieces of paper, each one with a word and an example sentence or phrase written on it. Murray and his assistants worked hard, but after five years they had only reached the word ant!
It was not until 1928 that the dictionary was completed and published: 10 volumes with over 400, 000 words and phrases. James Murray did not live to see the completion of his life’s work, he passed away in 1915, over a decade before OED came out.
As soon as the dictionary was published, however, the editors started to update it! In 1933, the Oxford English dictionary was reprinted in 12 volumes. Between 1972 and 1986, four more volumes were added with new technical and scientific vocabulary and words from other English-speaking countries, such as Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In 1989, the entire dictionary was reprinted in 20 volumes! Three years later, all 20 volumes were put onto CD-ROM, and the entire dictionary is available online today.
With about 600,000 words and three million quotations (引语) from over 1,000 years of English, the OED not only is a record of where the English language has come from but has also become an important part of the history of English-speaking cultures around the world.
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Club Activities
Club activities after class hours are an important part of our school life. There are a number of sports and cultural study clubs that students may join. Students are free to choose the clubs they are particularly interested in. Some students do not join any clubs at all and some join two or more. But only a few do not take part at all. Our school has the following sports clubs: football, volleyball basketball, handball, hockey(曲棍球), tennis, badminton, gymnastics, judo(柔道), and kendo(剑术), they take place in the school gym or the school playing fields. There are also cultural activities such as the school orchestra, the school choir, and dance clubs. The students organize the clubs themselves without the help of teachers.
The clubs meet two to four times a week after school. Sports coaches and clubs leaders are often school graduates who come back to help.
Many students feel that club activities are the most enjoyable part of senior high school life. When we asked students in our school the question: “what interests you most in daily life?” These were their answers:
Classes: 28%: Teachers: 24%: Club activities: 38% and others 10%.
Young people spend a lot of time together in club activities and they often become true friends. These friendships often last a long time after graduation. Some become lifelong friends. In China, there’s a popular belief that true friends are people who have had similar life experiences, such as they have eaten rice from the same pot or they have lived under the same roof. Many graduates say that their best memories of Senior High school life are the days they spent in the mountains during the summer vacation, practicing and training with other club members.
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Watering is key to growing plants well, so here we look at how to get it just right. This not only means providing the water our gardens need but using it wisely. Water is a precious resource and supplies in the UK are under pressure from the effects of climate change, population increase and the need to protect the environment. Generally, several aspects need to be considered.
When to water
Water in the mornings, if you can, as this is when the sun comes up and plants start to transpire (蒸腾) in sunlight, drawing water from the soil, through their roots, up their stems and to their leaves. Evening watering is also fine, as the cooler conditions mean less water is lost to evaporation (蒸发). Watering in the heat of the day is not a good idea, as much water is lost through evaporation from the surface of the soil. Plants will use water more efficiently if watered in the cooler parts of the day.
How to water
Watering thoroughly matters. It helps get the water down to the deeper root tips where it’s needed. But, equally important, the soil doesn’t have to be really wet all the time because plants roots need air as well as water to grow well. Otherwise, there might be no flower or fruit, and even a worse result might come along.
Other tips
To use water in the most economical way, it’s good to learn different plants’ watering requirements. For example, a container plant in hot sunny weather may need watering daily, whereas a mature shrub might only need a drink in extreme drought. Annual flowers and vegetables produced in the spring are likely to need more watering than self-sown or autumn grown plants as they have new and shallow root systems. So, don’t treat all the plants in the same way.
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Mountaineering
Mountaineering is the sport of climbing mountains — it’s all about challenge and perseverance, putting hands and feet on rocks, ice, and snow, and finally reaching a summit. There, high above the world of cities and civilization, the climber can pause and look out over a world ruled by nature and its raw beauty.
There are three separate phases (阶段) of mountain climbing: hiking, rock climbing, and snow and ice technique. Each phase requires a different set of skills. Hiking is the essential element of all climbing. Mountain climbers must be able to walk long distances without tiring. Some of the most difficult hours of a climb are those spent hiking on the trails of a mountain’s lower slopes. Rock climbers must know how to use equipment to help them move up and down the rocks. Most importantly, rock climbers must know how to use their hands and feet to make a successful climb. Hands are used for balance, and feet are used for support. Good mountaineers must also be familiar with the dangers of ice and snow conditions. They must be able to tell hidden crevasses and also be aware of when and where avalanches might occur.
Mountain climbing is a risky activity where you may encounter various dangers. Don’t take lightly no matter how easy your chosen peak might seem. Looks can be deceiving. The mountains are filled with danger and drama. Thunderstorms quickly form and drench (湿透) you with rain and snow. Rockfall and avalanches sweep down mountain faces. Difficulties can slow you, forcing you to camp in the open. You or your climbing partners can have an accident, causing all kinds of problems.
Yet, despite all this, the mountains draw climbers who love the natural world and possess an adventurous spirit. To reach the top of a mountain peak is not always easy, but climbers do enjoy the joy of the climbing most. It’s at those precious mountain moments that you will remember Helen Keller’s words: “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
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They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, but the briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great words end up being turned into cinematic “turkeys”.
Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the earliest and greatest works in Western storytelling, Homer’s The Odysey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The Great Gatsby never been praised as “great”? Movies of course need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only resulted in movies best described as “interesting”?
One of the key reasons behind this is that while a book usually takes a few days to read, a movie typically lasts under two hours. This means that great books can lose plot details and characters when they move to the big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter movies can’t escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see some of their favourite characters in the movie version.
Movies also disappoint us when things don’t look the way we imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie Troy, which is in part based on Homer’s The Iliad and was met with mixed reviews from the audience. The most questionable issue was the actress chosen to play the part of Helen. Many people thought she didn’t live up to Helen’s title of “the most beautiful” woman in the world, influencing opinions of the movie to some extent.
There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Furthermore, books and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules. With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not against its original source. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to television series such as Sherlock or Mad Men, which can have many characters and gradual plot development. Perhaps, one day, readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most admired work will find themselves glued to their screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.
I guess everyone would like to set off for a journey with someone we can understand and have fun with. Travelling with a companion(同伴) is great!
It’s good to have someone with you who can watch your backpack when you want to use the toilet, find the way back home when you get lost, carry some of your luggage when you’re tired, take some photos of you when you want and help you in all kinds of situations. The feeling of having someone by your side makes you feel less stressful about many things.
With a companion you can together share the beautiful moments during the travels, experience the same things in a different way and support each other. It’s much more interesting and exciting when you have the chance to share something with someone while on your road. Meanwhile, there is always someone whom you can shout at when you are angry, or a shoulder on which you can cry when you miss your home.
A companion can share the costs with you. You can stay in one room, buy a dinner, have it together and share the bill, etc. It’s good to travel with someone who has the same or similar pattern of payment as you so you can support each other without having any arguments.
Having a companion by your side when travelling means less loneliness. You don’t think about it unless you get left in the middle of nowhere, far away from your friends and family. Then you wish to have someone with you.
In short, travelling with someone is the best choice for people who are short of travel experience. We might sometimes feel like being on our own and enjoy the sights with nobody behind our back but at the end of the day you have much more fun when being with someone, especially for a long run.
Finding happiness in life
Every year, more books on happiness are published, and every year, more people feel depressed because they do not see themselves as happy. They don't remember or know what it feels like, and instead, they feel guilty that they aren't as happy as everyone says they should be. This is really a sad state of emotional affairs.
The books, blogs, YouTube videos and advice columns will tell you that if you visualize(想象), exercise, write journals, stay busy, help others, eat healthy, read and increase your intimacy(亲密) every day, then you too can be happy.
The simple truth is that no one can be happy all the time. That doesn't mean you have to be sad, angry or depressed the rest of the time but that you can find a middle ground called contentment. This middle ground is a good place mentally and emotionally, and spending time there is a healthy choice.
Contentment is someplace between satisfied and peaceful. When you are in that place, the stuff of life can be going on around you, but you don't need to allow it to bother you. And that, my friends, is a very nice way to go through life.
I find contentment in walks and in writing, in talking with my partner and reminding each other that our life is good, despite temporary setbacks or scary moments. I can overreact to just normal life stuff, and because I know this about myself, I can soften my reactions and respond differently. Doing this takes away stress and will keep you from losing your state of contentment.
If there is even one thing that puts you in a state of contentment and you do it regularly and early enough each day it will help you through any challenges you may have to face later.
Right at this moment, things around me are still a little out of my control-such is life, but I am feeling pretty good because I am actively living my purpose. I alll now content, and that feeling will last the whole day through. You can do the same.
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