Animal volunteering abroad is the perfect opportunity for animal lovers who want to do something good while traveling. Here are several programs.
LeatherbackTurtle Ambassador
Our main mission is to protect endangered sea turtles such as the leatherback sea turtle and the green sea turtle. By working with locals and environmental education programs, we will be able to educate people on the importance of protecting the valuable sea ecosystem.
Location: Limon, Costa Rica
Requirements: Age: 18-50; Language skill: basic English
Fee: 266€ per week
Wildlife Shelter Carer
Every year, hundreds of thousands of native animals are injured or become sick, often because of interaction with people or pets. Our wildlife shelters have rescued sick, injured native wildlife and loved them back to health to be returned to the natural environment. Since we receive no funding from governments, the shelters rely on the donations of volunteers and the public.
Location: New South Wales, Australia
Requirements: Age: 18-50; Language skill: fluent English
Fee: 706€ per week
Thai Elephant Sanctuary
Our program helps domesticated elephants rescued from a life of working on the streets or logging and provides care to rescued elephant population. The program has won numerous awards for its ethical contribution to the assistance of Thai Elephants. The team have rescued dozens of elephants and given them shelters in beautiful, open spaces.
Location: Phetchaburi province, Thailand
Requirements: Age: 18-50; Language skill: fluent English
Fee: 647€ per week
Force-free Horse Sanctuary Assistant
Are you passionate about horses and eager to make a positive impact on horse welfare? Join our incredible Force-Free Horse Sanctuary Program, where you'll become part of a devoted team caring for our beautiful horses. Through positive reinforcement and force-free horsemanship skills, you'll help improve the lives of these magnificent animals.
Location: Atajate, Spain
Requirements: Age: 14-50; Language skill: basic English or basic Spanish
Fee: 392€ per week
My plan to learn to play the cello (大提琴) was a health y choice. So I took the next innocent step of going to a shop that sells and rents string instruments, especially violins, violas, and cellos. The place was a hole-in-the-wall, up a steep flight of stairs. Instruments left a narrow path to the counter where a woman with grey hair and warm eyes greeted me. Since I couldn't form a question about what I wanted, I just stood there exploring the scene, which felt immensely pleasurable.
I rented a cello, a bow, and a case to hold them. What attracted me to the cello was its enormous size and its soft, smooth, and memorable sounds. It's an instrument made of beautifully polished wood that I could wrap my arms around and feel its powerful vibrations when the strings were played. That was a good starting point for me. The only problem was that I didn't know how to play it.
There's a popular belief that the cello is a particularly difficult instrument to learn. Another is theadmonition, "Don't bother if you are a beginner over age 10!" Well, I was 70, and what others thought no longer influenced me. And besides, I thought of the words of Dr. Cohen, who suggested that learning causes physical changes in the brain.
So I found a teacher who had respect for older adult beginners and I practiced diligently, daily for years, and sometimes disheartened, but I kept up. I'm happy to report that now, more than a decade later, I can hold my own in a string trio and two quartets （two violins, a viola, and me, the female cello）and even a senior community band. Of course, I'll never sound like Yo-Yo Ma but you could recognize a Mozart piece if you heard me play it. And, more importantly, I don't need to please anyone but myself.
Whether it's a pleasurable pastime or a new career, the starting point is the same: wonder, curiosity, determination, and the desire to keep your brain sharp.
Imagine being able to use energy from the sun all the time, even when it's night. That's the idea that scientists at Caltech（California Institute of Technology）are exploring. They're working on collecting sunlight in space and sending its energy to Earth.
Caltech's scientists have created a special tool for this project. They call it MAPLE. MAPLE and two other devices are part of a project that was sent into space in January,
2023. MAPLE's job is to test the idea of sending energy wirelessly from space to Earth. We're used to using wires to move electrical energy from one place to another. But sending energy without wires is a lot trickier.
The method used by Caltech's scientists depends on the way waves act when they meet. Imagine two waves coming together as they travel in the same direction. If the tops of the waves line up, they combine to make a bigger wave. But if the top of one wave lines up with the low point of the other, the waves cancel each other out. The Caltech team has found a way to control the timing of lots of microwaves so that they can combine their power, and focus the energy in one direction. It's a little like using a magnifying（放大的）glass to focus sunlight into a small, hot point of light.
To prove that the system could work, MAPLE sent energy to two devices just 30 centimeters away in space. This energy was then turned into electricity, which made two small lights light up. Next, MAPLE sent energy all the way down to a lab at Caltech. The scientists were able to detect the energy, proving that it's possible to send solar energy to Earth from space.
Dr. Hajimiri, one of the project's leaders, thinks that one day, the system could be extremely useful, bringing energy to places that need it, all over the world. He believes that in the future, we'll be able to send energy to remote regions and areas destroyed by war or natural disaster.
On the streets of Manhattan and Washington, D．C．, in neighborhoods in Seoul and parks in Paris, ginkgo (银杏) trees are losing their leaves in reaction to the first gust of cold winter air. This leaf drop, gradual at first, and then sudden, carpets streets with golden, fan-shaped leaves. Scientists are documenting evidence of the event happening later and later, a possible indication of climate change. But the story of ginkgos is not the familiar one of human carelessness with nature.
Thanks to fossils found in North Dakota, scientists found a ginkgo has genetically similar ancestors dating back 170 million years to the Jurassic Period. "It almost went extinct. Then humans rescued it and spread it around the world. It's such a great evolutionary (进化) and cultural story," says Peter Crane, a ginkgo expert.
One theory for the decline of the ginkgo species began 130 million years ago, when flowering plants began spreading. They grew faster and attracted more pollinators (传粉者) than ginkgos. "It's possible that ginkgos were elbowed out of the way," says Crane. Already competing to survive, ginkgos began to disappear during a time of global cooling that began around 66 million years ago. By the time the last ice age ended 11,000 years ago, the remaining survivors were found in China.
Ginkgo trees are smelly. "My guess is that they were eaten by animals that liked smelly things. They then passed through their body and grew." Crane says. Those same seeds may have helped ginkgo find favor with humans 1,000 years ago. Once cleaned of their outer layer, ginkgo seeds are safe to eat. It's then, when the trees had long since disappeared elsewhere, that people in China may have begun planting them and eating their seeds. Then gradually ginkgos spread across the world. Now it's seemingly naturally resistant to insects and high levels of air pollution.
Crane isn't worried about its future, though: The popularity of the species will help it survive. "Though its status in the wild may be difficult to access, it's a plant that's unlikely to ever go extinct," he says.
Reading a new story alone is often a great way to relax. However, sometimes you just want to discuss what you've read with another person to bring those ideas off the page and into the world.
First, find members. When you begin searching for your book club members, look in the places in your life that feel most natural to you. Then, maybe it's posting a notice on the bulletin board of your local library or bookstore. If you're looking to "get a range of perspectives" from your club, you may want to consider looking for a diverse range of ages and genders. They can bring their varied world views to discussions.
Will your time together be spent largely focusing on the novel at hand, or will refreshments ultimately be the most important? There's the typical friends gathering at someone's apartment and having cheese and wine approach. But oftentimes, people will be frustrated because they just turn into a social event rather than focusing on the book. In order to make sure your new group is all on the same page, take the time to discuss what you want to get out of regular club gatherings before your first official meeting.
Picking books may seem like the trickiest part. Books that work really well are ones that allow you to reflect on self. They have a lot of entry points for people so they probably have a good setting. The pacing is solid. There's great character development and the language doesn't get in the way of the story.
Before your meetings, list some discussion questions. Remember to come up with questions depending on your book's genre: romance, mystery, thriller and so on. For example, you may ask which scene has stuck with them the most or whether there are any standout sentences.
A．It is necessary to set some group guidelines.
B．Here's a look of four of our favorites below.
C．To start, reach out to your friends who love to read.
D．There are also general questions you can start out with.
E．You can never go wrong with the bestseller list to get the ball rolling.
F．Choose something with that criteria and you can please all kinds of readers.
G．If you've ever had the urge to start a book club, it's easier than you might think.
Don Powell was pulling the envelopes from the mailbox outside his home when he noticed something unusual — a tiny doll couple were inside the mailbox. A small sticky1 was also inside. "We've decided to live here," the message read. It was2 from Mary and Shelley.
Powell, 72, says he3 thought that somebody must have left the wooden dolls inside his mailbox by mistake. "I asked the4 whether anybody had left dolls in their mailboxes, and everyone told me no," he says. "So I thought, this must just be a5 , and whoever left them here will come back to6 them. I moved them to the back of the mailbox to see what would happen."
A few days passed and nobody7 the dolls, Powell says, noting that he and his wife soon discovered that the small couple had8 a table and a pillow. "I also have a sense of9 , so I left a note of my own, saying that what the10 really needed was a refrigerator stocked with food," he says. The fridge never11 . But over the next several months, additional items were strangely12 .
Every month or two, particularly around holidays, the Powells find something13 placed inside the box for Mary and Shelley. "People in the neighborhood are enjoying it and stop by sometimes to ask questions," he said. "Some people ask if I've thought about14 an outdoor camera, but personally, I like it being a15 ."
Dujiangyan is an ancient irrigation system, (locate) in the Min River Valley, Sichuan Province, China. It (build) by a governor named Li Bing and his son, who have been admired by Chinese for over 2,000 years.
The system consists of three main (part): the Yuzui (Fish Mouth) levee (河堤), the Feishayan(Flying Sand Weir) , and the Baopingkou (Bottle-Neck Channel) . The Yuzui redirects water away from the city of Chengdu while allowing sand and mud (flow) through the main channel, preventing flooding. The Feishayan controls the flow of water and helps prevent gradual destruction, while the Baopingkou distributes the water farmland.
Dujiangyan has been able to control the water flow without the use of dams or gates is considered one of the greatest engineering projects in ancient China. It has also played a crucial role in irrigating the surrounding farmland, (make) the region one of the most fertile croplands in China.
In addition to its (practice) uses, Dujiangyan is also a popular tourist attraction, visitors come to admire the ancient architecture and learn about its history. In 2000, it was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its cultural and historical (significant) .
注意：
1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A Survey on Weekly Exercise Time
They called him "Donnie the Dung Beetle". Donald didn't mind the comparison, as he knew that African dung beetles(粪金龟)were known for moving things a thousand times their own body weight. However, his classmates in Mrs. Beecher's third-grade class probably didn't know this fact. Nobody knew insects like Donald did, and he figured that being compared to a dung beetle was not a praise.
One day, Richie made fun of Donald, pointing towards a container under the window where a small brown ball hung from a branch. Donald tried to explain that it was an egg case of a praying mantis(螳螂), and the exciting part would be when the eggs hatched. But Richie didn't understand, and neither did most of the other kids. Donald had brought the egg case from his backyard and was excited when Mrs. Beecher agreed to make it their class project. He thought having an insect as a class pet might finally give him something to talk about with the other kids. But after two months of staring at a lifeless brown ball, Donald began to lose hope.
During science class one day, Mrs. Beecher announced they would start by writing in their journals. As Donald opened his journal, a left over particle from his lunch rolled across the page. When he went to brush it off, he realized it wasn't a particle at all —it was a tiny praying mantis, barely the size of a grain of rice! Donald bounced out of his seat, crying out that the eggs were hatching.
Suddenly, chaos erupted in the classroom as more baby mantises started appearing everywhere. Kids were jumping out of their seats, screaming and waving their arms. Mrs. Beecher quickly took charge, asking why the lid of the container was off. Richie, who was supposed to check on the container that day, had forgotten to put the lid back on.
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。
Donald took charge of the situation, directing Richie to get paintbrushes and white paper.
After the successful rescue, Mrs. Beecher asked the class to write about this special experience.
