Zoe Chambers was a successful PR (Public Relations) consultant (顾问) and life was going well—she had a great job, a beautiful flat and a busy social life in London. Then one evening in June last year, she received a text message telling her she was out of work. The first two weeks were the most difficult to live through.” she said. “After everything I'd done for the company, they dismissed me by text!I was So angry and I just didn't feel like looking for another job. I hated everything about the city and my life.”

    Then, Zoe received an invitation from an old school friend, Kathy, to come and stay. Kathy and her husband, Huw, had just bought a farm in north-west Wales. Zoe jumped at the chance to spend a weekend away from London, and now, ten months later, she is still on the farm.

    “The moment I arrived at Kathy's farm, I loved it and I knew I wanted to stay.” said Zoe.“ Everything about

my past life suddenly seemed meaningless.”

    Zoe has been working on the farm since October of last year and says she has no regrets. “It's a hard life, physically very tiring. ”she says. “In London I was stressed and often mentally exhausted. But this is a good, healthy tiredness. Here, all I need to put me in a good mood is a hot bath and one of Kathy's wonderful dinners. ”

    Zoe says she has never felt bored on the farm. Every day brings a new experience. Kathy has been teaching her how to ride a horse and she has learnt to drive a tractor. Since Christmas, she has been helping with the lambing-—watching a lamb being born is unbelievable, she says, “It's one of the most moving experiences I've ever had. I could never go back to city life now. ”

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Pederson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual（虚拟）. The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    How much weight a baby gains during its first month could determine its IQ, new research found. The study found that children who gain more weight, and whose heads grow quickly during the first month of life, tend to have a higher IQ when they start school.

    Researchers at the University of Adelaide, in Australia studied 13, 800 children who were born at full-term. They found that those who put on 40% of their birth weight in the first four weeks had an IQ 1.5 points higher than those who only put on 15% of their birth weight. Those who experienced the biggest growth in head circumference(头围) also had the highest IQs by the age of six.

    "Head circumference is an indicator of brain volume, so a greater increase in head circumference in a newly-born baby suggests more rapid brain growth, "says the author of the study, Dr. Lisa Smithers. She added, "Overall, newly-born children who grew faster in the first four weeks had higher IQ scores later in life. Those children who gained the most weight scored especially high on the verbal IQ at age 6. This may be because neural (神经的) structures for the verbal IQ develop earlier in life, which means the rapid weight gain during the first month could be having a direct cognitive benefit for the children."

    Previous studies have shown the association between early postnatal (产后的) diet and the IQ, but this is the first study of its kind to focus on the IQ benefits of rapid weight gain in the first month of life. Dr. Lisa Smithers says the study further highlights the need for successful feeding of newly-born babies." We know that many mothers have difficulty establishing breastfeeding in the first week of their babies' life,” Dr. Lisa Smithers said.

    "The findings of our study suggest that if babies are having feeding problems, there needs to be early intervention(干预) in the management of that feeding."

    BEIJING (News Agency) — Children in China today spend five times more money than their parents did when they were young.

    So what are all these children buying? The list is long: iPads, cell phones and jeans are typical items that children “have to” buy. And they will do anything to get them. They ask their parents over and over until they buy them.

    But parents also need to take the blame(责备) for spending so much money. They want their children to have the best things. They end up competing with other parents over whether their children have the latest products.

    So it's no wonder children find it hard to learn the importance of saving money rather than spending it all the time.

    And it's hard to save when companies use advertising (打广告)and clever slogans (口号) to encourage young people to buy their products. They even encourage children to keep asking their parents for something until they get it.

    Today, you don't even need to have money in order to buy something. Banks give out credit cards and loans (贷款) all the time, so people are saving less and less. We are used to carrying lots of money around. And if you don't have much, you can always borrow some.

    But this hasn't always been the case. When our grandparents were young, there was very little money and everyone had to save hard for things they bought. They only bought things they needed, not things they just wanted.

    The older generation made the wise expression, “Money doesn't grow on trees.” This is as true now as it was 50 years ago. They give money a great deal of value. And we all have a lot to learn from them.

    Canada is a very large country. It is the second largest country in the world. By contrast it has a very small population. There are only about 29 million people there. Most Canadians are of British or French origin, and French is an official language of Canada as well as English. About 45% of the people are of British origin, that is, they or their parents or grandparents, etc., come from Britain. Nearly 30% are of French origin. Most of the French-Canadians live in the province of Quebec.

    Over the years, people have come to live in Canada from many countries in the world. They are from most European countries and also from China, besides other Asian countries.

    However, Canada was not an empty country when the Europeans began to arrive. Canadian Indians lived along the coast, by the rivers and lakes and in forests. Today there are only about 350, 000 Indians in the whole country, with their own languages. In the far north live the Inuit. There are only 27, 000 Canadian-Inuit. Their life is hard in such a difficult climate.

After a busy morning, lunch can feel like just the pick-me-up you need-but sometimes the meal that you thought would energize you is the very thing that makes you want to nap at your desk.

Feeling tired after lunch, or post-meals in general, is known as postprandial somnolence—or, colloquially, the food coma.

Part of this phenomenon is due to basic physiology (生理学): When humans eat, most of our blood goes to the digestive organs to process the food, said Sandra Arévalo, director of community health and wellness at Montefiore Nyack Hospital in New York state.

The tendency to get tired after eating isn't inherently suggestive of something amiss (出错的). But there can be additional factors that worsen this natural response, making getting through the rest of the workday or any activities feel like a slog. Here's what to watch out for and how to make adjustments.

When it comes to why you feel overly tired after eating, a common cause is consuming meals that are heavy in terms of quantity or quality. Not eating breakfast can lead to overindulging later in the day if excessive (过度的) hunger makes controlling your appetite difficult, Arévalo said.

Sometimes, however, the makeup of certain foods can contribute to tiredness. Fats are the hardest nutrient to digest because their molecules are much larger than those of protein or carbs, said Julie Stefanski, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. If you had a meal high in fat—such as fried foods or pizza—that could make you feel tired. Meals high in added sugar or refined or highly processed carbohydrates can have the same effect.

The fiber in so-called whole foods like corns slows the absorption of sugar into the body, which means they don't cause blood sugar or insulin spikes and instead give you more stable, lasting energy, said Kristin Kirkpatrick, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic.

"A five-minute walk or something helps to improve circulation and alertness (机敏), as well," Arévalo said.