Beautiful Guatemala is a land rich in diversity and cultural heritage. Whether you hope to summit a volcano, hike through the jungle or explore ancient ruins, Guatemala will not disappoint.
Tikal National Park
Tikal National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most famous places in Guatemala. Tikal covers an estimated 46 miles (around 74 km) and is one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in Central America. It is here, centuries ago, that the ancient Mayan civilisation boomed.
Chichicastenango
"Chichi," as it's known by the local Kiche population, hosts the largest market in Central America. The town comes alive on Thursdays and Sundays when vendors (小贩) come from surrounding areas to display their goods. The market bursts with varied colours and a lively atmosphere, stocking everything from vividly-colored cloth to traditional carved wooden masks.
Guatemala City
Brightly graffitied (涂鸦) walls line the busy streets in Guatemala City where you'll find trendy stores, relaxing bars, and diverse art galleries. Make sure to check out La Esquina, an indoor food market with some of the best food stalls in the city. The Museo Popol Vuh is a leading museum in the world of Mayan art. Here you will be able to spend a couple of hours appreciating the incredible and comprehensive collection of Mayan as well as colonial art.
Acatenango Volcano
Volcano Acatenango towers almost 4,000 metres above the surrounding landscape just outside Antigua. The hike to the summit of this volcano is one of the toughest, yet most popular, in Guatemala. Not only will you get to appreciate the breathtaking views, but you will also have a bird's-eye view of the nearby (and extremely active) Volcan Fuego.
Ms. McIntyre, 38, worked as a publisher. She suffered brain cancer and her health got worse despite some medical treatment. But she realized that in a way, she was luckier than some other people. She had insurance to help pay for her medical care. But Ms. McIntyre and her husband, Mr. Gregory, knew that many people with cancer face tough decisions because of the costs of medical care and wind up owing far more than they can pay.
Though her health was failing, Ms. McIntyre decided to help pay off the medical debts of as many people as she possibly could. The couple began donating money to a group called RIP Medical Debt, which is committed to working to pay off the unpaid medical debts of others. The group can pay off medical bills for about 100 times less money than they cost. In other words, for every 100 donated, the group can pay off 10,000 in unpaid medical bills.
Unfortunately, Ms. McIntyre passed away before long. Mr. Gregory posted a message for Ms. McIntyre on her social media accounts. "If you're reading this, I have passed away," the post began. Then the post explained, "To celebrate my life, I've arranged to buy up others' medical debts and then destroy the debts."
The couple had set up a page on a website to raise money for this purpose. They had hoped to raise about $20,000. Nevertheless, Ms. McIntyre's last post attracted a lot of attention. The donations on her web page quickly passed the total goal. In less than a week, the site had raised 10 times more than expected and the donations are still coming in. By November 22, 2023, Ms. McIntyre's web page had raised over $627,000, or enough money to pay off about $60 million in medical debts.
Mr. Gregory planned a special event in December to celebrate Ms. McIntyre's life and to announce how many millions of dollars of medical debts her efforts had paid for.
The goal of this book is to make the case for digital minimalism, including a detailed exploration of what it asks and why it works, and then to teach you how to adopt this philosophy if you decide it's right for you.
To do so, I divided the book into two parts. In part one, I describe the philosophical foundations of digital minimalism, starting with an examination of the forces that are making so many people's digital lives increasingly intolerable, before moving on to a detailed discussion of the digital minimalism philosophy.
Part one concludes by introducing my suggested method for adopting this philosophy: the digital declutter. This process requires you to step away from optional online activities for thirty days. At the end of the thirty days, you will then add back a small number of carefully chosen online activities that you believe will provide massive benefits to the things you value.
In the final chapter of part one, I'll guide you through carrying out your own digital declutter. In doing so, I'll draw on an experiment I ran in 2018 in which over 1,600 people agreed to perform a digital declutter. You'll hear these participants' stories and learn what strategies worked well for them, and what traps they encountered that you should avoid.
The second part of this book takes a closer look at some ideas that will help you cultivate (培养) a sustainable digital minimalism lifestyle. In these chapters, I examine issues such as the importance of solitude (独处) and the necessity of cultivating high-quality leisure to replace the time most now spent on mindless device use. Each chapter concludes with a collection of practices, which are designed to help you act on the big ideas of the chapter. You can view these practices as a toolbox meant to aid your efforts to build a minimalist lifestyle that works for your particular circumstances.
In many languages, the word for "mother/mom" takes an m-sound. Is there any reason for such near-universality?
Linguists(语言学家) generally argue for "the arbitrariness of the sign": no connection exists between the word dog and the furry quadruped. A rare exception is onomatopoeia, where words representing the bark of a dog (bow-wow) and the buzz made by a bee are more or less similar to the sound. Yet most things are not subject to naming this way.
What about mama? It does not sound like a mother, but the fact is that some sounds are more widespread than others around the world. There are many dozens of observed consonants which are rare and hard for non-natives to learn.
In contrast, a few—such as b, m, p, t, d and k—show up far more frequently, in nearly every spoken language in the world. That is almost certainly because they are easy to make. A baby vocalising will, at first, make a vowel-like sound, usually something like "ah", which requires little in the way of control over the mouth. If they briefly close their mouth and continue vocalising, air will come out of their nose, thus making the m-sound that is used in "mother" around the world.
Though the "mamas" bear the most obvious similarity, the "papas" have striking commonalities, too. Babies can easily stop their breath when they close their lips (rather than going on breathing through the nose). This produces a b-or a p-sound. It is surely for this reason that so many names for "father" use these consonants: papa in English, abb in Arabic and baba in Mandarin. T-and d-sounds are similarly basic, involving a simple tap of the tongue against the teeth: hence daddy, tatay (Tagalog) or tayta (Quechua).
Father and mother are, therefore, an oddity. F-is not especially easy to utter(发音); th-sounds are even harder. English, Greek and Spanish are unusual in having them. Even Anglophone children may struggle with th-sounds when they are five, or older still in many cases.
Anyway, it is hard to find linguistic universals amid the world's dazzling variety.
A European street today may smell like coffee, fresh-baked bread and cigarettes. ? Historians and scientists across Europe have now gotten together with perfumers (香水制造者) and museums for a unique project called "Odeuropa"—to capture what Europe smelled like between the 16th and early 20th centuries.
To successfully finish this three-year-long project, the researchers need to find all the old scents of Europe-and even recreate some of this ancient smellscape. To do this, they will first build artificial intelligence that will be trained to scan historical texts, written in seven different languages, for any descriptions of smells. .
The "Encyclopedia (百科全书) of Smell Heritage" will include the meaning of certain scents and will trace the stories behind scents, places and olfactory (嗅觉的) practices. , enabling future generations to access and learn about the scented past.
, such as doctors. In the past, herbs were often used by European doctors to heal the sick. They smell special and their scents should be included in the encyclopedia. But just as history is filled with interesting and pleasant smells, it's also filled with stinky (非常难闻的) ones.
"I find it particularly interesting to make the audience know about a whole range of scents such as a stinky canal," said Caro Verbeek, a scent historian and member of the Odeuropa team. "It will make us more aware of how we relate to smell today and how differently smells were appreciated in the past. With current technology, almost every scent can be produced. . People haven't always talked or written about them."
A. It expressed a longing for the countryside life
B. But what did it smell like hundreds of years ago
C. Why is it filled with interesting and pleasant smells
D. It will become a record for the smell heritage of Europe
E. The more difficult part of the project will be to find descriptions of scents
F. The encyclopedia will also include descriptions of people for whom smell was important
G. The team will then use the information to create an encyclopedia of smells from Europe's past
Have you ever heard of and seen Canadian geese? Do you know that they 1 fresh grass and seeds?
Canadian geese have a good 2 for their politeness. They always bow down to you whenever you walk by. However, I have recently found that they can sometimes be 3 to their peers, especially on occasions when they quarrel for food——yes, these 4 gentlemen do quarrel, just for something to eat
Yesterday I witnessed two Canadian Geese arguing 5 for a clump(草丛) of beautiful fresh grass. The clump was 6 right in the middle of them, while the two were shouting noisily, stretching their necks as long as they could to look aggressively at each other. It's 7 to witness the "impolite" side of Canadian geese. Hence, I couldn't help 8 my morning walk, standing still to watch these "gentlemen" quarreling. Interestingly, after a short while, a truck roared past their feast, disturbing their 9 conversation. The two geese were equally 10 by the massive "monster", thus giving up their conversation.
Would they start quarreling again? I stood still, 11 the ridiculous question and waited. Beyond my expectation, right after the truck's passing by, the two geese immediately lost their 12 for quarreling as if they had forgotten all about what had happened. Even the two turned around and left the 13 in opposite directions as if nothing had happened. They left only me there, imagining what might have happened without the 14 .
They got along harmoniously again. Sometimes it's not that bad to be 15 .
Despite strict laws and heavy fines, traffic in Greece still remains dangerous. This is particularly the case in large cities traffic is greatly affected by many factors. Here is some advice for drivers in Greece.
Road planning is (enormous) complex (复杂的) in large Greek cities. There are many dangerous junctions (交叉路口). Athens is known the most difficult city for drivers. It is hard to find the right way, so new drivers may easily get (confuse) there.
In many large cities, drivers can feel the lack of usual road signs. Such signs as "winding road" are quite rare. When (approach) a crossroads, drivers should always slow down.
Crossroads (equip) with traffic lights are another dangerous place. Do not start moving immediately after the green light appears.
Parking space should be selected with (careful). Drivers should also consider that parking (prevent) in the central part of some large cities.
Roads in the country are the most terrible roads for foreign drivers. In spite of the speed limit of 80 km/h, local drivers rarely move at speed below 120 km/h.
While moving, drivers are not allowed (speak) on the phone as they need to monitor traffic and other drivers.
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。
Dear David,
Yours,
Li Hua
I met Gunter on a cold, wet and unforgettable evening in September. I had planned to fly to Vienna and take a bus to Prague for a conference. Due to a big storm, my flight had been delayed by an hour and a half. I touched down in Vienna just 30 minutes before the departure of the last bus to Prague. The moment I got off the plane, I ran like crazy through the airport building and jumped into the first taxi on the rank without a second thought.
That was when I met Gunter. I told him where I was going, but he said he hadn't heard of the bus station. I thought my pronunciation was the problem, so I explained again more slowly, but he still looked confused. When I was about to give up, Gunter fished out his little phone and rang up a friend. After a heated discussion that lasted for what seemed like a century, Gunter put his phone down and started the car.
Finally, with just two minutes to spare we rolled into the bus station. Thankfully, there was a long queue (队列) still waiting to board the bus. Gunter parked the taxi behind the bus, turned around, and looked at me with a big smile on his face. "We made it," he said.
Just then I realised that I had zero cash in my wallet. I flashed him an apologetic smile as I pulled out my Portuguese bankcard. He tried it several times, but the card machine just did not play along. A feeling of helplessness washed over me as I saw the bus queue thinning out.
At this moment, Gunter pointed towards the waiting hall of the bus station. There, at the entrance, was a cash machine. I jumped out of the car, made a mad run for the machine, and popped my card in, only to read the message: "Out of order. Sorry."
注意：
1）续写词数应为150个左右；
2）请按如下格式在答题纸的相应位置作答。
I ran back to Gunter and told him the bad news.
Four days later, when I was back in Vienna, I called Gunter as promised.
