Favourable Christmas Stays in London
In recent years, the UK has formed an increasingly strong Christmas market scene. Below we have highlighted one of the biggest Christmas markets, Wowcher.
Pricing
Wowcher is giving a £99 overnight London hotel stay for Christmas for two people at the four-star Crown Hotel near Notting Hill. Visitors can also upgrade their stay: a two-night break for two with breakfast starts from £205, and a three-night stay for two with a two-course dinner starts from £295. Every extra bed costs 20% of the total.
Available activities
Visitors can obtain a fantastic trip in the dynamic West End and feel the festive atmosphere in world-famous shopping destinations such as Oxford Street. While London is famous for upscale department stores like Harrods and Selfridges, during the festive season, seasonal stands arise at prosperous Christmas markets selling local conventional goods for truly unique Christmas gifts. You can also catch the Christmas lights show in Regent Street or listen to the carol (圣诞颂歌) singers at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Booking
Choose your dates and fill in your private information, like driving licences, passports and so forth for your later hotel registration.
One £99 voucher (优惠券) is valid for only two people. Purchase your voucher and complete the deal.
Wait to reccive a code to your email account which you need to input online later to confirm your booking.
This incredible deal can be used on selected dates between December 24 and 30, 2023, although it only is available to purchase on the Wowcher website until December
15. Besides, the dinner option is available on the first night only.
Five years ago, a couple found a baby owl, near-death, on their lawn. They consulted with me because of my experience with owls and hawks. Eventually my wife and I undertook the task of treating the owl, Alfie, waiting out a developmental delay (most of her flight feathers came especially late that first summer) , and then we taught her to fly and hunt. Alfie disappeared for a week. Then she chose to return, centering her territory (地盘) on our backyard. I put a nest box on my writing studio.
Alfie's first free-living year— mating, raising her first baby— coincided with the COVID-19 that limited us to our yard. Friends said the birds were singing aloud and happily. From Alfie's performance, I saw humans' unrest and worry when facing the unexpected virus. When Alfie and her mate, Plus-One, played in the shade, the daily rhythms and quietness of the owls' world contrasted with our life.
Many cultures view owls as messengers of God. However, Alfie is flesh and feathers: her heart pumps blood red as ours. She has her comforts and fears. She is a very real little being overall. Yet, throughout the isolation to prevent the spread of disease, Alfie loosed herself, living comfortably with her mate in the yard, which certainly inspired me and my family with hope. She is, in reality, a messenger, one conveying the real meaning of life.
To be fully present in life and love, so natural for Alfie, remains a work in progress for me. Alfie is the perfect little philosophical master. She enjoys a freedom unpolluted by criticism or doubt, and a liberty as the air flows beneath her wings. Resisting nothing, she is pure presence, here now. Perhaps I'd long labored toward the place where Alfie was effortlessly taking me, a sense of openness, showing what's possible when we mess up our accustomed boundaries.
Alfie remains our magical light of the nighttime backyard. By day she usually stays in a couple of favorite shaded spots. The choice is always hers. Free within limits; that's the universe for her. It can inspire a life's work.
Digital reading appears to be destroying habits of "deep reading". Astonishing numbers of people with years of schooling are in effect illiterate. This month's Ljubljana Manifesto (宣言) explains: "The digital field may promote more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many temptations to read in a superficial and scattered (零散的) manner — or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading."
That's frightening, because "higher-level reading" has been essential to civilization. It enabled the enlightenment and an international increase in empathy. Without it, we would suffer a lot. As the Ljubljana Manifesto notes, "as much as one-third of Europeans struggle even with lower-level reading skills." More than one-fifth of adults in the US "fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category". Separately, post-pandemic reading scores for American 13-year-olds are the lowest in decades. And the Washington-based Center for Global Development recently estimated that literacy in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa among those with five years of schooling has decreased by 10% this past half century.
Experts in the Ljubljana Manifesto record the demerits of digital reading: "Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of critical and conscious reading, slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading." When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorb hundreds of pages of details thoroughly and begin to capture the world's complexity. Online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are "skimming, scanning, scrolling". The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from Wikipedia. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation and seldom absorb fine perspectives.
In short, as professors from Northwestern University foresaw in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英) "reading class" consumes long texts, which is worrying.
Tortoise and turtle shells can be used to study nuclear pollution. scientists have found. Just as tree rings can provide snapshots (简要说明) of the Earth's climate, and ice cores can give us information on past temperature, researchers found that the layers of shells can be used as a time stamp of periods with nuclear fallout.
The researchers focused on turtles and tortoises from areas that have seen nuclear pollution. and measured the uranium (铀) that was present in the bony outer shell that is usually made of keratin (角蛋白) . Each layer of shell equals to one year of the tortoise's life, and so can reveal what happened in its surrounding environment.
Five different turtles and tortoises from natural history collections were studied. One of these came from Enewetak Atoll, and was collected in 1978. Enewetak Atoll and its neighbour, Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific, were the sites of 67 nuclear tests, with Enewetak the site of 43 of these. Though the sea turtle was probably not alive during the time of the testing, researchers still found uranium pollution in the turtle 20 years after testing ended.
Researchers also looked at an eastern box turtle from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the US. Oak Ridge is the site of a nuclear facility that has produced and processed uranium since 1943. The turtle that was studied from there was collected in 1962 and may have bioaccumulated radionuclides, or radioactive materials, from uranium waste products in the area.
The research supports the idea that these animals can bioaccumulate human-made radionuclides, or from the environment. It also supports the idea that these animals. Which often live a long time, can record information about human activity with nuclear landscapes over a long period. We anticipate that combining analyses of historically collected and modern samples will significantly expand our environmental monitoring abilities as they relate to ongoing nuclear pollution questions.
Living in the moment
How often do you find yourself worrying about the future and reflecting on the past? Whether it's during a busy work day, before bed or at that weird time when we wake up in the middle of the night. there's always something to plan for, overthink or worry about. It can occupy our minds. cloud our judgement, and take up valuable time and energy in our lives.
Wild swimming or watersports are a great way of living in the moment. You have to pay attention to the weather, wind and waves as they could change at any moment. According to the Wild Swimming Community, immersion in cold water can help with depression and muscle aches, and even boost the immune system.
Whether it's a plot or a window box, tending to them enables us to get into the "flow". It also reminds us that, despite our best efforts, some things just don't go to plan— and that's okay. Seeds might not germinate (发芽) , creatures could eat our crops, or we might experience unfavourable weather. But what matters is that we are engaged with nature's seasons and cycles, not caught in a cloud of future or past thoughts.
The benefits of making things from scratch are well-documented. From pottery to crochet (钩针编织) , sewing and knitting, there's something for everyone. Attending a class or group opens up the possibility of face-to-face conversation, skill-sharing and connection with like-minded people. If you're short of time, why not try taking something with you on your commute, such as a small cross-stitch project, or freestyle with a crochet hook and ball of yarn? Readymade kits can also be great if you're a bit overwhelmed with ideas.
A. They have health benefits, too.
B. Then what can we do to forget all of them?
C. These things happen and they're out of our control.
D. But, luckily for us, there is a solution: by being present.
E. These unexpected things can be avoided ahead of schedule.
F. Growing your own plants can also help you to focus on the here and now.
G. You're giving yourself time to relax, experiment and get your hands dirty.
I stopped at the top of the hill, my right foot pressed back against the coaster brake (脚刹) on my bicycle. All I needed to do was to1 my foot, and I would be swept down the hill. But I 2 . To my 12-year-old eyes, the hill was a mountain and the slope was 3 steep, which prevented me taking up the challenge.
When I returned to my hometown more than three decades later with my friends Dave and Scott, we 4 to the base of the hill and walked our bikes 5 . We stood once more at the top of that hill, looking down from the edge, but this time with a 6 set of eyes. To our surprise, now the 7 seemed more obvious, even larger than we'd imagined as kids. We knew that once we started down, there was no stopping or 8 . And right at the bottom of the hill, we would have to turn left to 9 dumping into the stream.
Dave went first. Then I was next. My heart was pounding. I 10 on the bike for a moment. Then I released the brake and yielded myself to 11 . I skidded to a stop next to Dave. Scott followed. The three of us spent several minutes laughing, draining off the adrenaline (肾上腺素) . We had 12 the childhood challenge of riding our bikes down the steep hill.
We didn't know it then, but we'd face many similar 13 over the years — leaving home, getting married, moving to a different town, starting a new job, and many others — that would cause us to pause at the 14 and collect our courage 15 we launched ourselves down the trails of our lives.
Delicate strokes, carved onto wood, with ultimate precision-this is woodblock printing, ancient printing technique that advanced human civilization.
As Buddhism prospered in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) , there was a strong need (produce) a large amount of Buddhist scriptures. Meanwhile, (copy) by hand could not meet the rising demand. Ancient Chinese craftsmen thus came up with a novel way to mass produce printed works. Hence came the earliest form of woodblock printing.
(tradition) woodblock printing comprises four major steps: writing, engraving, printing, and binding. With each step then further (divide) into several procedures, it takes roughly 30 steps to produce a woodblock print. Carving is at the center of woodblock printing as this painstaking step can make break the final print. Characters and images (carve) to produce raised areas or lines that will eventually apply ink to paper. It calls for a pair of skilled hands.
A five-meter-scroll of the Buddhist scripture Diamond Sutra, printed in 868, is the "earliest dated printed book" in the words of the British Library it is stored. It is just one example of ancient works of art that not only tell the wisdom of our ancestors, but also are an evidence of the (pursue) of beauty by Chinese craftsmen throughout centuries.
The invention of writing gave life great thoughts, but it is the invention of printing that made knowledge a shareable fruit for all humankind.
To act with integrity was a habit with Susan who always follows the Golden Rule: "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you." But when she thought over her past conduct, a blush of shame crept to her cheeks, as many little acts of selfishness and unkindness came back to her memory. She resolved that for the future, both in great things and small, she would remember and follow the Golden Rule.
It was not long after this that an opportunity occurred, which tried Susan's principles. One Saturday evening when she went, as usual, to Mr. Thompson's inn, to receive the money of her mother's washing for him, which amounted to five dollars, she found Mr. Thompson apparently in a terrible rage with some horse dealers with whom he had been bargaining. He held in his hand an open pocketbook (钱袋子) , full of bills and scarcely noticing Susan as she made her request, except to swear at her for troubling him when he was busy, he handed her a banknote.
Glad to escape so easily, Susan hurried out of the gate. Pausing to put the money safely in her purse, she discovered that he had given her two bills instead of one. She looked around; nobody was near and her first impulse was joy at the unexpected prize.
"It is all mine," said she to herself. "I will buy my mother a new coat with it, and she can give her old one to my sister Mary, and then Mary can go to the Sunday school with me next winter. I wonder if I can buy a pair of shoes for my brother Tom, too."
At that moment she remembered that he must have given it to her by mistake. But again the voice of the tempter whispered, "He gave it, and how do you know that he did not intend to make you a present of it? Keep it! He will never know it, for he had too many such bills in that great pocketbook."
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。
This conflict was going on in her mind between good and evil.
"Sir, you paid me two bills instead of one," she handed him the extra note.
