Want to say "hello" from Disneyland? Send a post card!
   Beautiful scenes of paradise (乐园), wild animals, silly pictures — you can find them all in one place. Where? On a post card! Have people always sent post cards? No. Before post cards, people liked sealed letters.
   The idea for the first decorated (装饰) post card came to John P. Charlton in 1861. He thought a simple card with decorations would be a great way to send a note. Then in the late 1800s, post cards with pictures appeared. By law, people had to write their note on the front ——on the picture! The back was only for the address. Several years later, England allowed a divided-back post card. Then people could write their note on the back left side and put the address on the right. During the early 1900s, the golden age of post cards, picture post cards became a craze of the world. In 1908, Americans alone mailed over 677 million post cards. Today, post cards are the third most popular collection in the world after stamps and coins.

    If you are a nature lover, you will discover plenty to enjoy in Finland .You will also find that the people of Finland are easy-going, This might be because they spend a lot of time having a sauna（桑拿） to relax themselves together .Finland even has a competition that is about spending time in one sauna. In the Sauna World Championships, People try to stay as long as they  can in sauna .This is really a hot competition! Finland is always considered as one of the best places in the world to live, from its capital ,Helsinki .,to its great number of lakes and forests.
Finland is truly one of the world's greatest treasures.

    Now the game Angry Birds has become more and more popular with the young and the old. I'm sure you also enjoy it a lot. But is it too small to play the game on your mobile phone or on your computer? Do you want to visit a park where you can find some bigger birds and pigs? As this picture shows, Angry Birds has now become much bigger. Copying the action of the real computer game, players pull a real catapult(弹弓) and shoot Angry Birds toys at green piggy balloons. I think that must be very exciting to touch such big birds.

    Angry Birds Land recently opened inside Sarkanniemi Amusement Park in Tampere, Finland(芬兰). It is the first Angry Birds theme park in the world. Finland is a country in northern Europe. And then other countries will copy Finland's example. The UK government says that they plan to build Angry Birds theme parks in the UK. What's more, you can see such theme parks not only in the UK, but also in other countries. The game, Angry Birds, is created by the Finnish company Rovio. It agrees to help build the theme parks all over the world.

    In summer, it's common on the street to see many Chinese women holding parasols¹ to protect themselves from the sun.  But when Amy, an exchange student in Beijing from the US, first saw this, she found it strange, even impossible to understand.  She wrote on her blog, "Unlike Chinese women, American women like to put on their tank tops and sunglasses during summer. If you walk around an American college campus², you will probably see girls out on the grassy fields reading, but they really hope to get a head start on their summer tan³."

    This may be caused by the different standards of beauty between the US and China. Many Americans don't want white skin. They would rather be tanned³. Amy also wrote, "Having darker skin is so popular that many women and men will pay for fake⁴ tans so that they can keep their sun-kissed appearance during the winter months, too."

    Why do they like tanned skin? Michelle Louis reported in her research, "The process of tanning can help make people's skin smooth and hide marks." She further explained, "Tans make people's skin appear healthier and make them appear thinner than when they have pale skin."

    Perhaps there is no real ideal standard of beauty. In different cultures and at different times of history, the standards change. On Amy's blog, she also gave two examples: Some women carried parasols around trying to keep their white skin in the US 150 years ago; During the Tang Dynasty in China, heavy women were thought attractive. But now, Chinese women prefer to be slim.

    In a word, different standards of beauty should be respected. People may grow up with only one idea of what beauty is, but it doesn't mean that it's necessarily the correct or the best idea.

New words:

①parasol n. umbrella used to protect people from the sun 阳伞

②campus n. grounds of school, college or university校园

③tan n. the brown colour of sun-kissed skin 晒成的棕褐

④become brown by the sun 晒成棕褐色，晒黑

⑤fake adj. not real 假的