2 . Traveling without a map in different countries. I find out about different ways of giving directions every time I ask “How can I get to the post office?”

Foreign tourists are often puzzled in Japan because most streets there don’t have name signs. In Japan, people use landmarks (标志性建筑) to give directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, “Go straight down to the comer. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop.”

People in Los Angeles, the US, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance by time, not miles. “How far away is the post office?” you ask. “Oh,” they answer, “It’s about five minutes from here.” You don’t understand completely. “Yes, but how many miles away is it, please?” To this question you won’t get an answer, because most probably they don’t know it themselves.

People in Greece sometimes do not even try to give directions because tourists seldom understand the Greek language. Instead, a Greek will often say, “Follow me.” Then he’ll lead you through the streets of the city to the post office.

Sometimes a person doesn’t know the answer to your question. What happens in the situation? A New Yorker might say. “Sorry, I have no idea.” But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers “I don’t know.” People there believe that “I don’t” is impolite. They usually give an answer, but often a wrong one. So a tourist can get lost very easily in Yucatan! However, one thing will help you reach your destination everywhere in the world. It’s body language.

It took years     1    (complete) the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The construction workers     2    (overcome) the most difficult engineering challenges，one of which was how to protect the delicate ecosystem.To allow the wild animals to move safely and freely in their     3    (nature) habitat，they built thirty-three passages under the railway. To prevent damage to wetlands and grasslands，675 bridges with a total length of about 160 kilometres     4    (build) between Golmud and Lhasa. They even moved 140，000 square metres of wetland to     5     new area in order to protect its distinct ecosystem.     6    (locate) at over 5，000 metres above sea level，Tanggula Station is the highest railway station in the world. In locations such as this，the thin air，changeable weather and high levels of UV radiation presented perhaps the     7     (great) challenge for railway workers. To make sure they stayed healthy，several oxygen-making stations were constructed. To protect Cuona Lake     8     construction waste，the railway workers used thousands     9     thousands of sandbags to build a twenty-kilometre wall along the lake. In a word，the railway workers built our “impossible” railway with the care that the environment deserves. It     10    (true) is an extraordinary “Sky Railway”.

7 . Getting around in Canada is fairly easy. Most cities have urban transportation systems, including buses, streetcars, and trains, and some of the larger cities also have subways.

You can board these systems at regular stops along their routes. Some let you pay with cash; others require tickets. If you don’t have a ticket for the bus, you must pay with the right amount of money. This is because the driver does not carry any change. Once you get settled, you may want to buy a monthly pass or a package of tickets to save money. You can buy subway tickets at the subway station.

If you have to take several buses or the subway for a single trip, you do not need to pay any money each time. Simply ask the driver for a transfer or pick one up from the machines on the subway platform.

If you are not sure where to board the bus or the streetcar, just ask someone, or follow the crowd. It’s usually at the front of the bus, where you show your pass to the driver. When using public transportation, Canadians line up. First come, first served, is a common approach to many activities in Canada.

Maps of routes and schedules are usually available from the public transit company in your area, and there may also be a telephone information line. You may want to ask someone for the name of the transit company where you live, and then look it up in your telephone book.

8 . Modern life is impossible without traveling. The fastest way of traveling is by plane. With a modern airliner you can travel in one day to places which it may take a month or more to get to a hundred years ago.

Traveling by train is slower than by plane, but it has its advantages. You can see the country you are traveling through. Modern trains have comfortable seats and dining cars. They make even the longest journey enjoyable.

Some people prefer to travel by sea when possible. There are large liners and river boats. You can visit many other countries and different parts of your country on them. Ships are not so fast as trains or planes, but traveling by sea is a very pleasant way to spend a holiday.

Many people like to travel by car. You can make your own timetable. You can travel three or four hundred miles or only fifty or one hundred miles a day, just as you like. You can stop wherever you wish where there is something interesting to see, at a good restaurant where you can enjoy a good meal, or at a hotel

To spend the night. That is why traveling by car is popular for pleasurable trips, while people usually take a train or a plane when they traveling on business.

10 . Self-driving cars have been backed by the hope that they will save lives by getting involved in fewer crashes with fewer injuries and deaths than human-driven cars. But so far, most comparisons between human-driven cars and automated vehicles have been unfair.

Crash statistics for human-driven cars are gathered from all sorts of driving situations, and on all types of roads. However, most of the data on self-driving cars’ safety have been recorded often in good weather and on highways, where the most important tasks are staying in the car’s own lane and not getting too close to the vehicle ahead. Automated cars are good at those tasks, but so are humans.

It is true that self-driving cars don’t get tired, angry, frustrated or drunk. But neither can they yet react to uncertain situations with the same skill or in anticipation of an attentive human driver, nor do they possess the foresight to avoid potential perils. They largely drive from moment to moment, rather than think ahead to possible events literally down the road.

To a self-driving car, a bus full of people might appear quite similar to an uninhabited cornfield. Indeed, deciding what action to take in an emergency is difficult for humans, but drivers will sacrifice themselves for the greater good of others. An automated system’s limited understanding of the world means it will almost never evaluate a situation in the same way as a human would do. And machines can’t be programed in advance to handle every imaginable set of events.

Some people may argue that the promise of simply reducing the number of injuries and deaths is enough to support driverless cars. But experience from aviation(航空) shows that as new automated systems are introduced, there is often an increase in the rate of disasters.

Therefore comparisons between humans and automated vehicles have to be performed carefully. To fairly evaluate how well driverless cars fulfill their promise of improved safety, it’s important to ensure the data presented actually provide a true comparison. After all, choosing to replace humans with automation has more effects than simply one-for-one exchanging.