We live in a town, about half a mile from the banks of the Ahr River. It had been raining buckets that week and there were _______ warnings for some of the nearby areas, but not where I was.

As a precaution, I’d _______ sandbags outside my garden door and piled electronics and clothing on tables and the couch just in case water managed to see p through.

As I fell asleep, I was _______ by the sound of rushing water. When I swung my legs off the bed, I was _______ to feel cold water already up to my knees and rising fast. Shivering and in darkness, I grabbed my phone and _______ its flashlight. Water was coming from the garden door, and chairs, bookshelves and pieces of my drum set were floating all over my living room. The Ahr must have _______ burst its banks and breached the sandbags. And now I had to get out — fast!

With the water now up to my waist, in bare feet I started to paddle to my only _______: the door leading to upstairs. Finally I made it to that door and tried to pull it open, but the water’s pressure was high. I managed to make a _______ of about 30 centimeters with all my strength and effort, enough for me to squeeze through. Rushing down outside, I _______ that if I had woken up just a few minutes later, I would have drowned.

The experience made me grateful and determined to live each day to its fullest. I will remember what my mother told me: “Don’t remember the day when you ________ everything. Remember the day you survived.”

Pandas     1     (live) in China for over three million years. A giant panda has a typical bear’s body but is a distinctive black and white color, with black fur around the eyes and on the cars, legs, chest and shoulders, while the rest of the body is white. Giant pandas are the     2     (nation) treasure of China. A panda’s daily diet consists almost     3     (entire) of bamboo. Sometimes, however, they do not just eat bamboo. Only about 1% of their diet consists of other plants and even meat such as small rodents (啮齿动物).

Traveling with family members can not only enhance the parent-child relationship, but also broaden the horizons and share happiness and memories. Take a trip with your family to one of the destinations below!

Yellowstone National Park

Kids will love watching Old Faithful, one of nearly 500 geysers (间歇喷泉) in Yellowstone, erupt, and there’s nothing like a hike for family bonding. Keep an eye out for wild animals, or visit the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center to guarantee some animal interactions. Hotels are expensive, so consider taking advantage of the park’s well-equipped campsites.

Orlando

Appealing, thrilling and fun, Walt Disney World Resort (度假村) is engineered specifically for families. Orlando also has a handful of other theme parks, including Universal Orlando Resort, where you’ll find The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Discovery Cove, an all-inclusive day resort, where you can swim and dive around the park’s coral reef.

Destin

Big Kahuna’s Water & Adventure Park(open seasonally)features waterslides and a lazy river, while the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park is home to animals kids love, including dolphins and penguins. And if you’re looking for an adventure on the water, consider booking a boat tour at Henderson Beach State Park or Crystal Beach Park. Just don’t forget to pack your beach hat.

Anaheim

Anaheim, California has been home to Disneyland Resort since 1955. After catching up with Mickey and friends, visit Anaheim’s Adventure City Amusement Park or Knott’s Berry Farm Theme Park—another top amusement park in the U.S. And if you’ re in town during baseball season, you can catch a game at Angel Stadium.

In many cultures, it is considered unlucky to spill salt. Fortunately, many cultures also have a solution to the problem, which usually involves throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder. It may seem confusing to modern humans, but knowing that salt was once incredibly valuable can change this perspective.

For thousands of years, salt was an extremely rare commodity. It was difficult to obtain so that the price was very high. Many trading routes were set up to carry salt, people were paid in salt, and salt was sometimes worth more than its weight in gold. Therefore, spilling salt was considered wasteful.

Because of its high value, salt was also associated with friendship and good fortune. Offerings of salt were included in many religious ceremonies, and people might bring salt to a new home for good luck. These associations would have suggested that it would be bad luck to spill salt, since it would seem to violate salt’s fortunate properties.

Salt is also an excellent preservative. It prevents food from going bad. As such, it came to be linked with health and longevity. In some cultures, spilling salt was thought to reduce one's well-being. In Britain, for example, each spilled grain was said to represent a tear, while in Germany spilled salt awakened the devil, bringing misfortune.

The fear of spilling salt was also adopted into the Christian faith. It is said that Judas spilled salt at the Last Supper, and since he later turned out to be the betrayer of Christ, spilled salt is considered unlucky by many Christians.

Should you be unfortunate enough to spill salt, you might throw a pinch over your left shoulder to blind the Devil.

Across the world, humans purchase around 1.3 billion single-use plastic water bottles a day. Because only about 9% of plastic is recycled, the vast majority of those bottles wind up in landfills, the ocean, or elsewhere in nature.

When beach-loving Madison noticed those plastic bottles during her family’s trips to California, the 12-year-old “just felt like this needed to change,” she told Smithsonian Magazine.

So as she began thinking about what to do for her school science fair back in 2021, the idea of a project centered on reducing plastic pollution quickly came to her mind: she would design an eatable water bottle called the Eco-Hero.

“One of my biggest ambitions for my project was wanting to help the world,” the confident young inventor said in a video on the website.

To bring her idea to life, Madison built upon the already established method by experimenting with common food materials. She also took inspiration from previous versions of eatable water bottles, though she focused on making hers bigger and more durable. She found that the combination of water, lemon juice, natural gum, and Alginic acid (褐藻酸) resulted in a gel pouch that wouldn’t break, could hold up to 3/4 cup of water, and would last in the fridge for three weeks.

Though she’d like to improve the Eco-Hero by making it able to hold more water, she believes her current version would work well as a replacement for the paper cups used by runners in races. All one needs to do is bite a hole in the water ball, drink the water, and then eat the pouch or throw it away to biodegrade.

Madison hopes the Eco-Hero inspires others to take better care of the planet. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a big way,” she told Smithsonian. “People can still make a difference in the world, even if it’s just in a small way.”

Nowadays, the world is slowly becoming a high-tech society and we are now surrounded by technology. Facebook and Twitter are innovative tools; text messaging is still a somewhat existing phenomenon and even e-mail is only a flashing spot on the screen when compared with our long history of snail mail. Now we adopt these tools to the point of essentialness, and only rarely consider how we are more fundamentally affected by them.

Social media, texting and e-mail all make it much easier to communicate, gather and pass information, but they also present some dangers. By removing any real human engagement, they enable us to develop our abnormal self-love without the risk of disapproval or criticism. To use a theatrical metaphor (隐喻), these new forms of communication provide a stage on which we can each create our own characters, hidden behind a fourth wall of tweets, status updates and texts. This unreal state of unconcern can become addictive as we separate ourselves a safe distance from the cruelty of our fleshly lives, where we are imperfect, powerless and insignificant. In essence, we have been provided not only the means to be more free, but also to become new, to create and project a more perfect self to the world. As we become more reliant on these tools, they become more a part of our daily routine, and so we become more restricted in this fantasy.

So it is that we live in a cold era, where names and faces represent two different levels of closeness, where working relationships occur only through the magic of email and where love can start or end by text message. An environment such as this reduces interpersonal relationships to mere digital exchanges.

Would a celebrity have been so daring to do something dishonorable if he had had to do it in person? Doubtful. It seems he might have been lost in a fantasy world that ultimately convinced himself into believing the digital self could obey different rules and regulations, as if he could continually push the limits of what’s acceptable without facing the consequences of “real life.”

The Failed New Year’s Resolution: Three Tips to Get on Track

January is officially over, and many people are taking stock of their progress towards New Year’s resolutions. The fact is that you probably haven’t kept up with them as much as you hoped. But that’s not your fault.     1     . If you feel like you have already failed, here are three tips before you let go.

Practice self-compassion

Many people talk to themselves in harsh ways when struggling with new habits, believing self-criticism will help them reach their goals. Research shows, however, that the opposite is true. Self-compassion is more effective for personal improvement, especially when facing failure.     2     , try to be kind and gentle with yourself, just as you would with a loved one.

    3    

Resolutions are often phrased as definitive goals. I will exercise daily. I will kick desserts.     4     . But setting all-or-nothing goals can lead to all-or-nothing decisions that one gives up when faced with challenges. In contrast, intentions focus more on your values than specific actions. For example, the resolution “I will exercise daily” may become an intention of “I want to move my body because it feels good.” This approach allows for more flexibility when unexpected stress arises.

Solve problems by overcoming barriers

If you are struggling to maintain your desired habits, there are evidence-based techniques available to help you.     5     . This involves identifying the specific barriers that lead to your quitting something that you want to do. Perhaps you keep forgetting the new habit, or perhaps you don’t understand how to do it. Whatever it is, identify the barrier and cope with it specifically.

Crowd control could soon become an important skill for climbers on Mount Everest, as important as physical strength or watching the weather. In a single day last week, nearly 40 people reached the top of the world — a record. Reports from base camp spoke of queues at dangerous ridges and crowds as people passed each other in the final dash for the 8,848 meters top.

More traditional mountaineers have been concerned about the circus atmosphere surrounding Everest in recent years, and there are warnings that the crowds are making the mountain more dangerous. In 1996, 14 died on the mountain when the members of several groups were trapped at high altitudes by sudden snowstorms. Bad weather in early May led to this year’s jam on the summit ridge, but the loss, luckily, was light. Just four climbers died, including a Nepali Sherpa who had made 11 previous successful climbing.

Traditionalists are also worried about the growing tendency of climbers to set records and achieve “firsts”, rather than simply climb the mountain. This year’s crop of mountaineers included the oldest man, 64-year-old Sherman Bull from Connecticut, and the youngest, 16-year-old Temba Tsheri Sherpa of Nepal. An American with only one arm was on the mountain this year; an Indian with no legs also tried but failed. Erik Weihennieyer, an American, became the first blind person to reach the top of the world. His fellow climbers stayed in front of him on the way up, describing the type of land and ringing bells.

Nepal views Mount Everest as something of a cash cow. The government charges journeys a minimum of $70,000. That is probably why officials in Katmandu are ignoring concerns about overcrowding and talking about even more climbers coming next year. But a celebration of the 48th anniversary of the first conquest of Everest, by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was cancelled after violent strikes. Tumultuous (动乱的) Nepali politics, it seems, could be just the crowd-control measure that Everest needs.