1 . Rome can be pricey for travelers, which is why many choose to stay in a hostel (旅社). The hostels in Rome offer a bed in a dorm room for around $25 a night, and for that, you’ll often get to stay in a central location (位置) with security and comfort.

If I had to make just one recommendation for where to stay in Rome, it would be Yellow Hostel. It’s one of the best-rated hostels in the city, and for good reason. It’s affordable, and it’s got a fun atmosphere without being too noisy. As an added bonus, it’s close to the main train station.

If you love social hostels, this is the best hostel for you in Rome. Hostel Alessandro Palace is fun. Staff members hold plenty of bar events for guests like free shots, bar crawls and karaoke. There’s also an area on the rooftop for hanging out with other travelers during the summer.

If you’re looking for cleanliness and a modern hostel, look no further than Youth Station. It offers beautiful furnishings and beds. There are plenty of other benefits, too; it doesn’t charge city tax; it has both air conditioning and a heater for the rooms; it also has free Wi-Fi in every room.

Hotel and Hostel Des Artistes is located just a 10-minute walk from the central city station and it’s close to all of the city’s main attractions. The staff is friendly and helpful, providing you with a map of the city when you arrive, and offering advice if you require some. However, you need to pay 2 euros a day for Wi-Fi.

2 . According to Jessica Hagy, author of How to Be Interesting, it’s not difficult to make yourself interesting at a dinner party.

    1    , if you’re out of your comfort zone or if you’re wandering into somebody’s house for the first time. So the main thing is just to show up and be adventurous, trying different foods and talking to strangers.

People love to talk about themselves. If you can start the conversation with a question other than “What do you do for a living?”, you’ll be able to get a lot more interesting conversation out of whomever it is you’re talking to.     2    , it can bring in “I have this old, broken-down vehicle” or “I rode the bus with these crazy people who were laughing at silly jokes in the back.” It just opens up conversation.

    3    ? If you can’t take their wine away, you should certainly try to take away their soapbox (讲台). If you’re the host, you can ask them to help you in the kitchen with something and just remove them from the situation.    4    .

And what about that other dinner-party killer: awkward silence? If you’re faced with an awkward silence at a dinner party, the only thing that always gets everyone talking again is to give the host a compliment (赞扬).     5    . Just quickly turn around and say, “This cake is extremely delicious and you have to tell me all about it.”

So being interesting at a dinner party isn’t that hard.

It doesn’t impress like George Washington’s plantation on the Potomac, but Lincoln’s home in downtown Springfield, Illinois,     1     （prove）irresistible to visitors since it opened to the public. Beautifully restored（修复）to its 1860 appearance, the house was Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s home for 17 years. In 1844 they bought it     2     $1,200 and some land from Charles Dresser, who performed their     3     （marry）ceremony in 1842.

When the house was built, it was much     4     （small）than it is today. Mary’s niece wrote, “The little home     5     （paint）white.” It was sweet and fresh. Mary loved it. She was extremely pretty, and her house was a reflection of     6     （she）, everything in good taste and in perfect order.

Although Mary loved flowers,     7     she nor her husband was known as a gardener. A long- time neighbor said they never planted trees and only kept a garden for one year. Mary’s sister, Frances Todd Wallace, often came over     8     （plant）flowers in the front yard.

    9     Lincolns enlarged the house to a full two-story in 1856 to meet the needs of their growing family. Three of the four Lincoln sons were born here. After Lincoln was elected President of the US in 1861, they rented the house and     10     （sell）most of their furniture.

7 . The train had been long delayed. Running out of _________, Andy put down his book and looked out. He found the_________at once: it was raining hard.

He lay down and fell asleep but was soon woken up by a woman. She handed him his bag and _________ that it had slipped to the floor. He gratefully took it back and opened it,_________ to see his mother’s scarf and some sandwiches inside.

Andy’s thoughts drifted(飘)to when he was _________. His mother had insisted on putting her scarf in. “If it rains, it may get cold.” He remembered feeling_________and had taken it out. But it was still here.

_________ Andy realized he was burning with fever. Feeling helpless, he called his mum. “Take a _________I have put in medicine, just_________,” she suggested. Touched by his mother’s__________he took the medicine and soon fell deep asleep in the__________of the scarf.

Andy woke up later feeling much better. Then he noticed the woman,who’d__________him earlier, __________ holding a baby in her arms, both shaking. Their clothes did little against the cold wind.

Without thinking twice, Andy wrapped his mother’s scarf around the baby. To his __________, the child soon fell asleep in the love of not one, but two__________.

8 . Are you frequently depressed by the feeling that life is leaving you behind particularly when you look over social media sites and are faced with all the exciting things your friends are up to?     1    

FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out refers to the perception that other people’s lives are superior to our own. It appears as a deep sense of envy, and constant exposure to it can have a weakening effect on our self-esteem(自尊).

While feelings of envy and lack of confidence seem to be human nature, social media seems to have added fuel to the fire.    2    Social media, with its built-in appeal, allows us to share only the best presentations of our life, while leaving out the more boring aspects. Although this could be characterized as dishonest, it is the atmosphere social media seems to demand. So how do we avoid being trapped into our own insecurities by social media?

Consider your own social media posts.    3    Well, so have others. And what they’ve left hidden is the fact that boredom, loneliness and unpleasant chores are an unavoidable part of everyone’s life, and you’re not the only one feeling left out.

    4    You may not be a regular at fancy parties or a climber of dizzying peaks, but you have your health, a place to live and real friends who appreciate your presence in their lives.

Learn to shake it off. We are all flooded daily with photos of other people’s perfections, but really, what does it matter?    5    And even if you are more easily affected than others by social media envy, all you need to do is to look around you and acknowledge that you are doing pretty well after all.

9 . Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Art provides a way to communicate experiences when people lack verbal skills.     1    Art therapy is founded on the assumption that everyone is creative and capable of self-expression.

    2     As a restorative practice, it allows people to express themselves in non-verbal ways, such as drawing and painting. Even a 45-minute creative activity can change a person's mental state. Working with an art therapist does even more:     3    

Young children typically draw and sing and dance without worrying about their abilities. Adults, however, often have complex feelings about art and art making. They begin to evaluate the quality of their art instead of focusing on self-expression itself.     4     However, art therapists can guide people in expressing themselves without concerning whether their artwork is technically brilliant, so that they can connect or reconnect with the artworks that help them deal with life challenges.

What are art therapists’ superpower? They can channel dangerous thoughts into imaginative artworks. For instance, people with violent tendencies might let out their anger by hitting another human being.     5     These artistic choices satisfy the brain's desire for novelty without compromising personal safety.

10 . Several years ago, Jason Box, a scientist from Ohio, flew 31 giant rolls of white plastic to a glacier (冰川) in Greenland. He and his team spread them across 10,000 feet of ice, then left. His idea was that the white blanket would reflect back the rays of the sun, keeping the ice cool below. When he came back to check the results, he found it worked. Exposed ice had melted faster than covered ice. He had not only saved two feet of glacier in a short time. No coal plants were shut down, no jobs were lost, and nobody was taxed or fired. Just the sort of fix we’re looking for.

“Thank you, but no thank you.” says Ralph King, a climate scientist. He told Grey Childs. author and commentator, that people think technology can save the planet, “but there are other things we need to deal with, like consumption. They burned $50,000 just for the helicopter” to bring the plastic to the glacier. This experiment, quote-unquote, gives people false hope that climate change can be fixed without changing human behavior. It can’t. Technology won’t give us a free ride.

Individuals respond to climate change differently. Climatologist Kelly Smith is hardly alone in her prediction that someday soon we won’t be climate victims, we will be climate Choosers. More scientists agree with her that if the human race survives. The engineers will get smarter, the tools will get better, and one day we will control the climate. but that then? “Just the mention of us controlling the climate sent a small shiver down my back, Grey writes.” “Something sounded wrong about stopping ice by our own will,” he says.

Me? I like it better when the earth takes care of itself, I guess one day we will have to run the place, but for the moment, sitting at my desk, looking out at the trees bending wildly and the wind howling, I’m happy not to be in charge.