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    University of South Carolina （USC) is famous for its warm southern hospitality（好客）. Schedule a visit and feel it in person. Our walking tours are led by current students, called University Ambassadors, who are looking forward to telling you what it's like to live and study in USC. Our walking tours run Monday through Friday and most are around 2 hours. The university will be closed on Tuesday, July 4, 2017 in observance of the holiday. We welcome your visit year round and will be ready for you, rain or shine. Please refer to the list below to determine which tour is best for you and remember to book at least two weeks in advance.

    If you thought pilots dimmed（调暗）the lights before takeoff to give you some shuteye, think again. Believe it or not, the dim lighting could actually help save your life in case of a plane emergency.

    The dimmed lights before taking off the runway and landing are a flight precaution used to help passengers' eyes adjust quicker during an emergency escape. “Going from a brightly lit environment to one that's completely dark would require some time for our eyes to focus and see the escape slide,” Alice Theriault, service director for Air Canada wrote in a press statement. “Since we need to have all the seconds on our side in the event of an emergency, dimming the lights is one of many steps we take to ensure the safety of our customers.”

    The phenomenon that your eyes see those strange speckles (小斑点) as your sight adjusts to a dark place after being in a light place is called dark adaptation. It normally takes our eyes about 20 to 30 minutes to see best in a dark room. The brighter the lights, the longer it takes for our eyes to adjust, which is why dimming the plane lights could shorten your “dark adaptation” time since you haven't been sitting under fluorescent bulbs (荧光灯) all flight.

    Not only does dimming lights add valuable time to the escape process, it reduces the tension on your eyes if you need to look outside, or see the emergency lighting along the passage. “It helps keep you in the right direction.” Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and author of Cockpit Confidential told The Telegraph. “It also makes it easier for flight attendants to assess any outside risks, such as fire or debris, that might affect an escape.” So next time a pilot dims the lights, just know it's for your safety, even though it creates a gentle atmosphere for your takeoff into the sky.

    Many people believe that you lose the ability to learn new languages as you get older. Language experts, however, will tell you that you're never too old to learn a new language. As you get older, it can be more difficult to learn a new language, though.

    Children and adults learn new languages in different ways. For children, language is their life. They study for thousands of hours every year, because they need to learn languages to become part of their communities. Adults, on the other hand, are already part of a language community. Learning a new language means becoming part of another language community, and adults rarely get the chance to practice as much as young children do.

    Moreover, children learning a new language are expected to make mistakes. This gives them freedom when learning to be daring and confident. Adults, however, often feel pressured to be perfect when learning a new language. This can discourage many people and make it even harder to learn a new language.

    When young children learn a new language, they come to see various languages as a “normal” part of society. This mindset(思维模式) helps them embrace learning a new language without feeling like they're doing something unusual or “too hard”.

    So if you want to learn a new language, go for it! It's never too late to learn a new language. If you're older, it may take more work, but it can be done. If you're a young child, though, now is the time to step out and learn a new language!

Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there's an assumption by many non-Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what's known as a Received Pronunciation (RP, 标准发音) accent, also called "the Queen's English". However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents.

    Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country – from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands – are just three of the countless non-RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.

    In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowest-rated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.

    However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in an RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.

Kong Seong-jae, 25, is an internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He's now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he's learned. "British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent," he said.

    So if you're working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.

    Something very strange and mysterious was going on in Sesemann's house. Every morning, when the servants went downstairs, they found the front door wide open. During the first few days that this happened, every room and corner was searched in great alarm to see if anything had been stolen, but not a thing in the house had been touched. The door was doubly locked at night, and for further security the wooden bar was fastened across it; but it was no good – next morning the door again stood open. One servant even claimed he had seen a white figure standing at the top of the steps and then all in a minute it disappeared.

    Mr. Sesemann told his old friend, a doctor, what had happened in his house. That evening they decided to wait for the ghost. One o'clock struck. There was not a sound. Suddenly the doctor lifted his finger. "Hush! Don't you hear something?" They both listened, and they distinctly heard the bar softly pushed aside and then the key turned in the lock and the door opened. They stepped into the hall.

    "Who is there?" thundered the doctor in a voice that echoed through the hall, as the two men advanced with lights and weapons towards the figure. It turned and gave a low cry. There stood Heidi, with bare feet, staring with wild eyes and trembling from head to foot. The two men looked at one another in surprise. "Child, why did you come down here?" said Sesemann. White with terror, and hardly able to make her voice heard, Heidi answered, "I don't know." The doctor gently took the child by the hand upstairs.

    Then the doctor sat down besides her and asked her some questions in a kind voice. Later he went downstairs. "Sesemann," he said, "let me first tell you that the child is a sleep-walker; secondly, the child is consumed with homesickness. Something must be done at once."

    Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you'll have no trouble answering these questions.

    Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child's day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.

    The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they'd felt cold water at first.

    Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.

    The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what's around them. I asked them what they'd seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.

    Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.