Europeans are being dug out from heavy snow after a week of very cold weather. The snowstorm is the harshest to hit Europe. Airports were shut down. And schools have been closed for a week.
Until Wednesday, at least 400 people across Europe had died because of the cold temperature. Several countries have said a state of emergency. In Ukraine, temperatures dropped as low as -33℉.
Although the situation is bad, at least one country is hoping the weather will last a little longer. In the Netherlands, the government is preparing for the country's “11 Cities Tour”. The 125-mile ice-skating marathon will be held along a network which joins 11 towns and cities together in Friesland Province.
The ice along the way must be inches thick for the event. Up to 2 million people are thought to cheer on the race's 16,000 competitors.
On Wednesday, Dutch soldiers joined in the preparations. They cleaned snow along the way. This will be the 16^th time that the event has taken place since the first race in 1909. Dutch General Hans said his soldiers were happy to lend a hand. “We want to do our bit for this national party.” he said.

    Long long ago，the youngest daughter of Emperor Yan went boating on the Eastern Sea. At first she had a good time，but later on she was too tired to swim when a strong wind rose on the sea and turned her boat upside down. She was thus drowned, but her spirit turned into a beautiful bird crying sadly in the sound “Jingwei, Jingwei”.

    Because she wanted to see her beloved father again and hated the sea so much，she put some stones into the sea day after day, without a rest, in order to change the sea into the land. From this story comes the saying “The bird Jingwei trying to fill the sea”. The story was a little sad. But it tells us something important. When we do anything, we have to work hard. Learning English is difficult but if you study hard, you can learn it well.

    China and Western countries may have different cultural beliefs about certain animals, but when it comes to pigs, we have somehow reached an agreement—that pigs are ugly, lazy, stupid and shameless.

    Just look at the idioms and phrases in our languages. In Chinese, we have the likes of "Boiling a dead pig" and "A pig looking in the mirror is still a pig". And in English, there are expressions such as "eating like a pig" and "sweating like a pig". None of them are exactly praise.

    But truth is that pigs do have some fine qualities. And maybe there's no better time to clear their names than now, with the arrival of Year of the Pig on Chinese Spring Festival.

    For starters, science had proved that pigs aren't stupid at all. According to a paper published last year in the International Journal of Comparative Psychology, pigs are "mentally and socially similar to dogs and chimpanzees(黑猩猩)". By training, pigs can learn some skills, such as dancing and swimming. They like to play. They have good long-term memories. And they can tell between who treat them well and those who don't.

    There are popular pig characters in cartoons too. In the UK cartoon series Peppa Pig, the four members of the cartoon's pig family teach children from all over the world about love, friendship, and the value of family. And in China, the adventures of McDull, a piglet who works hard toward his dreams even though he keeps failing, have been recounted in films since 2001. "People care too much about the immediate results, but McDull is slow and patient, and not afraid of repeating failure," said McDull's creator Brain Tse. "He has a heart of gold."

    Perhaps these are the qualities of pigs to keep in heart when we celebrate the New Year—their wisdom, cuteness, patience and bravery.

    Today, with the development of society, people all over the world almost have the same hobbies That is to say, we are not very different in some way. However, cultures are still quite different. In the East and in the West, social rules are not the same.

    In the East, it takes a long time to become someone's friend. People are very close to their friends. When people from the West meet you, they will call you a friend right away. That doesn't mean they are close to you.

    When people from the East meet you, they want to know about your age, your salary (薪水) and whether you are married or not. For people from the West, these are not polite questions. They think such kind of questions violates their privacy (隐私).

    Family is important for everyone. However, in the East, kids live with their parents for a long time. They still listen to them after they grow up.

    In the West, independence is very important. After their kids grow up, they leave home. They don't have to listen to their parents.

    In the East and in the West, people think differently, too. People in the West think less and act more. In the East, people notice relationships between things, and they often keep their opinions quiet.