Amsterdam is one of the most popular travel destinations in the world, famous for its beautiful canals, top art museums, cycling culture and so on. It is the capital city of the Netherlands and often referred to as the "Venice of the North" because of its expansive system of bridges and canals. Here are some of the key points to remember as you plan your trip to Amsterdam.
Must-See Attractions
Most visitors begin their Amsterdam adventure in the Old Centre, which is full of traditional architecture, shopping centers, and coffee shops. You'll also want to check out Amsterdam's Museum Quarter in the South District, which is great for shopping at the Albert Cuyp Market and having a picnic in the Vondelpark. The top museums to visit there are the Rijksmusuem, the Ann Frank House, and the Van Gogh Museum.
If You Have Time
There are several other unique districts in Amsterdam, and you should try to explore as many of them as time allows. The Canal Ring is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was originally built to attract wealthy home owners and is a center for celebrity spotting and nightlife today. The Plantage area has most of the city's museums and the botanical gardens.
Money Saving Tips
●Unless you really want to see the tulips（郁金香） blooming, avoid booking between mid-March and mid-May. This is when hotel and flight prices rise.
●Look for accommodations in Amsterdam's South District, where rates are generally cheaper than in the city center.
●Buy train tickets at the machine instead of the counter to save a bit of money.
●Instead of hiring a tour guide, hop on a canal boat. They're inexpensive and will give you a unique point of view of the city.
Check out our homepage to view price comparisons for flights, hotels, and rental cars before you book.
A group of volunteers joined forces to form a human chain to free four dolphins which had been stranded（搁浅）in a canal for four days. The four dolphins were seen in the water near the Fossil Park neighborhood in St Petersburg, Florida, US, on Sunday. Experts from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission （FWC） had monitored the dolphins' activities in the past few days and hoped that they would swim out with the tide.
But when the dolphins struggled to leave the canal, the brave volunteers joined members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Clearwater Marine Aquarium to form a rescue team to free them. Dozens of people gathered to take videos and pictures of the kind act. A team of 14 volunteers held hands to act as a block to guide the dolphins out of the narrow channel. They shouted and patted the water with their hands to direct the dolphins to vast expanses of Riviera Bay. Dolphins find their way in the water through echolocation（回声定位）. That means that, by making high-frequency sounds, they can recognize the echoes of sound waves that bounce off objects to find their way around.
Andy Garrett, a biologist of the FWC said, "We were able to keep that chain together. The dolphins were interested. They actually came over right away. " He added that when the team reached a bridge, the dolphins appeared a bit nervous and started doing some spins. "They made one real hard pass at our team and then went under the bridge and took off, " Garrett said. The operation lasted about 45 minutes and the rescue team did not use nets or any items that could stress the dolphins.
Collingwood Children's Farm is an inner-city oasis （绿洲）. For 40 years, this farm with pigs, chickens and vegetable gardens has provided a taste of the countryside in Melbourne. The four-hectare farm is no throwback to the past. It is providing a brief look at our future. In a time when a changing climate and population growth are causing concerns about food safety, the farm is becoming a model for how we might change our approach to inner-city food production.
The farm's primary purpose has always been to support those in the community experiencing disadvantage. However, the not-for-profit has also spent the past year becoming a model of best-practice inner-city agriculture.
Since mid-2020, an unused field has slowly been transformed into a vegetable garden. On top of that, new horticulturalists （园艺专家） have been employed to help build vegetable gardens that will help the soil.
Horticulturist Rachel Freeman is head of the farm's vegetable gardens. Freeman says she is a big believer in the importance of"linking people to food systems and showing people what you can do". When it comes to showing how to educate and engage the community, this farm is hard to beat.
In 2019, Collingwood Children's Farm had an average of 15, 000 visitors each month. In April 2020, 17, 000 people came through. At that time, Ash and Shacklock were harvesting fast-growing turnips （萝卜） they had sown between cabbages to make the most of the growing space.
Freeman says that the farm has been"in this amazing state of"change with many new projects under way. However, they are happening at a snail's pace due to the farm's focus on involving volunteers, especially people with disadvantage. "We do the work slowly with volunteers, "Freeman says. "This is an active space not a botanical one. "
Kindness is seen as a true strength, and the success of civilizations relies on kindness. As parents and teachers, we also teach children from a young age to "be kind to one another" and "treat others the way you want to be treated. "
In addition to being helpful to our interpersonal relationships, research has shown that kindness can even contribute to our well-being. According to the Mayo Clinic, when we perform acts of kindness, the pleasure center in our brain is activated, releasung the stress-reducing hormone（激素） Individuals who volunteer on a regular basis report greater life satisfaction. And what is even greater is that kindness rarely stops with just one person. There can be a positive contagion（扩散） effect, where other people are motivated to be nice if they receive a random act of kindness. The question then arises：
Could kindness be harmful to us when it has such clear benefits？Let's think about this in the workplace or in an organization.
You are the new person on the team and you want to be well-liked and respected by your colleagues. You are a kind person and tell your team, "Let me know how I can help you；I'm always available to help. " Though you may truly mean this, there are unfortunately people in this world who can see your kindness as a weakness. This can lead to you being taken advantage of by others.
Let's fast forward a year. You have been in your position now for one year, and you are working with the same team. You are noticing that your colleagues continue asking for your help over and over again. In fact, the only time they communicate with you is when they need something. You have been so helpful to your colleagues and there has rarely been any return from them.
In a very broad sense, it is advantageous to be kind to others, and your kind acts will be appreciated and, perhaps, paid forward. However, you need to be willing to say "no". Recognize when your plate is already too full. When people ask you a favor, assess if you have the time, energy, and attention to give to them. To truly be kind, sometimes you need to be more comfortable saying "no"to others and saying "yes" to yourself.
Sustainability for kids can start with a seed. We put together some ways to involve the whole family in protecting the environment.
Go on a hike. Parental involvement in early childhood education looks different in various settings from preschool to home and to the grocery store. Going on a hike together can be an ideal thing to investigate a local ecosystem, look for signs of the changing season, and gain an overall appreciation of the world outdoors. Plus, by bringing an extra garbage bag and gloves to pick up trash along the way, parents can show kids some educational activities.
Go green for holidays. Make holidays fun while also supporting a green environment for kids. Use LED lights for decorative lighting. Decrease your carbon footprint and purchase holiday gifts from local shops.
Parents don't need an acre of land to teach their children that food doesn't grow at the grocery store. All they need is sunlight, water and dirt. A windowsill is the perfect spot to grow herbs. A back deck can grow beautiful tomatoes. Plant peach seeds in a small container.
Recycle together. Recycling activities for kids can be fun and support family involvement in education at the same time. Then work with them to make something new out of the recycled items, such as making boxes out of recycled cardboard and storage tins out of re-cycled cans.
A. Plant a "garden".
B. Don't buy food from the grocery.
C. Protecting the environment for kids is important.
D. Parents should tell children what they can recycle.
E. And the children can watch a little peach tree grow.
F. Recycle Christmas trees instead of throwing them away.
G. To a child, every setting and every moment can be a teachable one.
My 9-year-old niece Lily is a bit fat and she doesn't do well at school. Because of these, she is often made fun of at home, thus developing some1in adults, who in turn usually don't put high2on her.
Yesterday Lily and I went to an art exhibition, where paintings from kids with disabilities were being on3. Lily has sharp eyes, for the paintings she liked most were also the best of the exhibition. She also4to help arrange the chairs and tables for a sharing meeting, and cheerfully helped me fetch my bag from another room, something that5happened at home.
Then we went to a bookshop, where I bought a book written by a mom describing her journey with her autistic （孤独症的） son. On the bus back home, I briefly6the book to Lily. It7that she was truly interested. She kept asking me to tell more stories about the friend in the book who8with small things in life. Even when I was9the topic, she made requests for more about this boy. This is the first time I've seen her so10a single topic. I'm touched that the life of an unknown11has found its way into this little girl's12.
I'm thankful for the13of the book, for the beauty that my niece14to me, and for the time we had together. I hope that I can keep seeing clearly the fantastic things in her, so that whenever the not-so-kind world puts her down, I can 15her how truly wonderful she has always been.
Chinese Medicine Food
Medicine food is unique cooking style in Chinese cuisine. It is a perfect combination of Chinese cooking and traditional Chinese medicine to get the effects of health keeping. It is also a skillful application of the yin and yang （阴阳） theory （strengthen） the function of food and herbs.
The Chinese sort each type of vegetable and meat in terms of yin and yang, and combine vegetables with meat, will make each cooked dish （balance）.
During the 5th century BC, cooks created cuisines with medical values and developed Chinese art of cooking, （ use） the nature of food to balance the diet.
In the Song Dynasty, was recorded that many diseases could be cured through proper diets. Different foods were sorted according to their （origin）nature. Cold foods （believe）to remove fever while warm foods reduce running noses.
Knowing the nature of individual foods （ enable） the Chinese to eat right food and balance the yin and yang of the body. For example, sour food eases some disorders, （slight） sweet food relieves illness related to the veins and bitter food helps to cure an overheated body.
Amy and I had been best friends since primary school and spent almost every day with each other. Sometimes, other children said we were no fun because we were both very academic（学术的） and liked to study, but we liked it that way. Both of us were very hard-working and always got good grades at school.
I thought we would be like this forever, however, our friendship was on the rocks recently.
One Monday, we had a surprise math quiz. I thought it was quite easy and was not worried about the results.
I must have sounded very proud of myself after the quiz, saying how easy it was and how I was sure to get a good grade. And many classmates looked at me with admiration.
The next day after class, my math teacher told me that I had the lowest grade in the class!I felt so ashamed and couldn't believe it；I must be really stupid to fail a simple math quiz!
Afterwards, I pretended to be cheerful and greeted others with a smile as usual, but Amy sensed something was wrong.
We went to wash our hands in the girls' washroom before lunch. She patted me on the shoulder and asked me what happened. Seeing her concerned look, I had to admit how badly I had done in the math quiz. I begged her not to tell anyone else, and couldn't help sobbing （啜泣）. She held me tightly, saying she would keep my secret, and cheered me up.
However, the next day, I noticed that my classmates were staring at me as I came into math class, when I went to sit down, I was shocked to find a piece of paper on my desk that said, ". . . Stupid Sarah got a D!" I was so upset that I felt like crying.
注意： （1）续写词数应为150左右； （2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Then I began to cry, wondering who let out my secret—was it Amy?
When hearing the truth from Alice, I was shocked and couldn't wait to find Amy to apologize.
