Touring Cenotes

    My parents and I traveled to Mexico to visit my grandparents last summer, and we visited the cenotes (say-NO-tays), the natural swimming holes located on the Yucatán Peninsula. The term "swimming hole" might make you think that cenotes are just average, but cenotes are truly {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. I had the most exciting experience of my life exploring these wonders of nature.

    Thousands of years old, the cenotes formed and created sinkholes underneath. Though the ancient Mayans (玛雅人) used the cenotes as water {#blank#}2{#/blank#}, people can now swim, dive, take photographs, and admire local trees and {#blank#}3{#/blank#} life, all through water as clear as liquid diamond.

    In Cenote Azul, my parents, my grandparents, and I swam through water that seemed too blue to be real. I {#blank#}4{#/blank#} countless younger kids diving into the water from a small cliff, but I dared not to jump at first. I finally worked up the courage, and my {#blank#}5{#/blank#} try instantly put all my worries to rest.

    A few days later, we went to Cenote Ponderosa. We stayed in the sun-covered pond, where we {#blank#}6{#/blank#} floated while others did diving and took underwater photographs. Being surrounded by a valley of trees made everything else in the world seem to disappear.

    Grutas de Loltún were definitely the most magnificent of all the cenotes, even though there was no swimming involved. Grutas are caves, and the Grutas de Loltún are among the biggest caves on the entire Peninsula. Our guide, Carolina, walked us through several caves, where we saw many drawings thousands of years old on the cave walls! Just one brief look at those drawings made me feel like I had stepped back in time to a(n) {#blank#}7{#/blank#} era of history. Our group thought Carolina was joking when she claimed she could make the stalagmites(石笋) sing for us, but when she {#blank#}8{#/blank#} them, we heard what sounded like the words "Lol" and "Tun"—the name of the caves! I cannot imagine that a(n) {#blank#}9{#/blank#} played at a concert at Carnegie Hall would have been any better.

    Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula is filled with beauty, but the cenotes are a one-of-a-kind opportunity to commune with nature in a way that is impossible anywhere else on Earth, and I would not {#blank#}10{#/blank#} to do it all again.

    The United Nations' series of "language days" are designed to promote the use of the six official languages of the UN as well as to celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity (语言多样性). Chinese Language Day is the 20th April. It's a time chosen to fit in with the Chinese{#blank#}1{#/blank#} of Guyu (古语), which honours Cangjie—the four-eyed {#blank#}2{#/blank#} figure who is traditionally understood to have created Chinese characters in the time of the Yellow Emperor, 5000 years ago.

    Mandarin (普通话) is the most-spoken language in the world, with over 1.5 billion speakers. When most people think of "Chinese", it is Mandarin that they are {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. But Mandarin Chinese is far from the only variant of the Chinese language—or the only language spoken in China. In fact, there are a great number of Chinese languages. Remember—this is a country which is both very large and very, very old. Different regions are within the {#blank#}4{#/blank#} expanse of territory, that is, China can be {#blank#}5{#/blank#} not only by great distances but also by broadly geographical features such as mountain ranges.

    It is hard to guess how many dialects actually exist. In general, dialects can be {#blank#}6{#/blank#} classified into one of the seven large groups: Putonghua (Mandarin), Gan, Kejia (Hakka), Min, Wu, Xiang, and Yue (Cantonese). Each language group contains a large number of dialects.

    Understanding the situation is {#blank#}7{#/blank#} by the fact that, while many Chinese people in different geographical areas of the country may not understand each other when they speak their regional dialect, they may share the same written language even if their pronunciation of different characters within that language may{#blank#}8{#/blank#}.

A {#blank#}9{#/blank#} feature across all Chinese languages is tone. For instance, Mandarin has four tones and Cantonese has six tones. Tone, in terms of language, is the pitch (音高) in which syllables (音节) in words are spoken. In Chinese, different words {#blank#}10{#/blank#} different keys. Some words even have pitch variations in one single syllable.