Guided Walking Week April 2016

          Dates: April 30th-May 7th 2016

          Location: Abdet, Costa Blanca

         A week of guided walking in the mountains around Abdet. Highlights include the climbing of Valencia's highest summit (Sierra de Aitana), traveling completely around the impressive Puig Campana, and several explorations in the Sierra de Aitana. Ancient trails lead through spectacular canyons(峡谷) to abandoned settlements situated high in the mountains. You will discover the snow trader routes which lead from the incredible snow holes high in the mountains down to the villages and towns on the coast. These years, golden eagles have made a return to this area, and you may also see other animals—wild goats, foxes, wild pigs and red squirrels.

         As part of the week you are invited to help clear some local walking paths. This involves clearing collapsed walls and rocks, cutting back fallen trees. This is of course optional and is just for half a day, it's actually great fun!

Price:$499

Includes:

  Accommodation in the beautiful mountain village of Abdet

  All food-good home cooking

  Beer, wine, soft drinks

  Snacks and post walk treats

  Packed lunches & drinks(except café/bar visits)

  Expert guiding

  Photos/Videos of your days in the mountains

  Airport pick-up/return $25 each way(fly to Alicante)

  Single room supplement $75

  To book or get further information, please contact info@abdet. com.

    Honey from the African forest is not only a kind of natural sugar, it is also delicious. Most people, and many animals, like eating it. However, the only way for them to get that honey is to find a wild bees' nest and take the honey from it. Often, these nests are high up in trees, and it is difficult to find them. In parts of Africa, though, people and animals looking for honey have a strange and unexpected helper—a little bird called a honey guide.

    The honey guide does not actually like honey, but it does like the wax(蜂蜡) in the beehives(蜂房). The little bird cannot reach this wax, which is deep inside the bees' nest. So, when it finds a suitable nest, it looks for someone to help it. The honey guide gives a loud cry that attracts the attention of both passing animals and people. Once it has their attention, it flies through the forest, waiting from time to time for the curious animal or person as it leads them to the nest. When they finally arrive at the nest, the follower reaches in to get at the delicious honey as the bird patiently waits and watches. Some of the honey, and the wax, always falls to the ground, and this is when the honey guide takes its share.

    Scientists do not know why the honey guide likes eating the wax, but it is very determined in its efforts to get it. The birds seem to be able to smell wax from a long distance away. They will quickly arrive whenever a beekeeper is taking honey from his beehives, and will even enter churches when beeswax candles are being lit.

    I grew up with a group of pets. As a mother, I was determined to provide my daughter with the same joyful experiences. Indeed, by the time my daughter was in elementary school, our house was known as "the neighborhood zoo". Now that she is a teenager, we've reduced the number of animals in our home, but we still live with two dogs. I can't imagine life without them.

    Regardless, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the word "pet". When I came upon the conclusion by the University of Tennessee zoologist Gordon Burghardt that the best we can do for pets is a life of "controlled deprivation (剥夺)", I wished I had never bought Lizzy, our leopard gecko(豹纹守宫). I felt a pit in my stomach when I learned that Lizzy's constant clawing at the glass wall of her tank was most likely a signal of stress. It is perhaps not surprising that she died after only two years, despite our efforts to give proper care.

    The problems with the various small creatures we put into cages and tanks are relatively clear-­cut. More challenging moral questions, in my view, arise in relation to our closest furry friends: dogs and cats. Unlike animals that must spend their entire life in a cage or that must struggle to adapt to a human environment, most cats and dogs have it pretty good. Yet it is likely that our dogs and cats may be suffering in ways we don't readily see, because even the most well meaning owner doesn't always provide what an animal needs.

    It may be hard to recognize the harmful aspects of pet keeping when all we hear is how beloved pets are and how happy they are to be in our company. Advertisements showing golden­-haired children playing with golden-­haired puppies and YouTube videos of cats doing funny things make pet keeping look ever so precious.

    Yet if we really care about animals, we ought to know animals are not toys — they are living, breathing, feeling creatures.

    He met her at a party. She was outstanding; many guys were after her, but nobody paid any attention to him. After the party, he invited her for coffee. She was surprised! In order not to appear rude, she went along.

    As they sat in a nice coffee shop, he was too nervous to say anything and she felt uncomfortable. Suddenly, he asked the waiter, "Could you please give me some salt? I'd like to put it in my coffee."

    They stared at him. He turned red, but when the salt came, he put it in his coffee and drank. Curious, she asked, "Why salt with coffee?" He explained, "When I was a little boy, I lived near the sea. I liked playing on the sea. I could feel it salty, like salty coffee. Now every time I drink it, I think of my childhood and my hometown. I miss it and my parents, who are still there."

    She was deeply moved. A man who can admit that he's homesick must love his home and care about his family. He must be responsible. She talked too, about her far away hometown, her childhood, her family. That was the start to their love story.

They continued to date. She found that he met all her requirements. He was kind, warm and careful. She thought she would have missed the catch if not for the salty coffee! So they married and lived happily together. And every time she made coffee for him, she put in some salt, the way he liked it.

    After 40 years, he passed away and left her a letter which said:

    My dearest, please forgive me my life-long lie. Remember the first time we dated? I was so nervous that I asked for salt instead of sugar. Sweetheart, I don't exactly like salty coffee. But as it means so much to you, I've learned to enjoy it. Having you with me was my greatest happiness. If I could live a second time, I hope we can be together again, even if it means that I have to drink salty coffee for the rest of my life.

    Solar energy systems/power plants do not produce air pollution, water pollution, or greenhouse gases. Using solar energy can have a positive, indirect effect on the environment, when solar energy replaces or reduces the use of other energy sources that have larger effects on the environment.

    However, some poisonous materials and chemicals are used to make the photovoltaic (光电池的) cells that convert sunlight into electricity. Some solar thermal (保热的) systems use potentially hazardous liquids to transfer heat. Leaks of these materials could be harmful to the environment. U. S. environmental laws regulate the use and settlement of these types of materials.

    As with any type of power plant, large solar power plants can affect the environment near their locations. The placement of the power plant may have long-term effects on the habitats of native plants and animals. Some solar power plant-s may require water for cleaning solar collectors and concentrators or for cooling turbine generators. Using large volumes of ground water or surface water in some dry locations may affect the ecosystems that depend on these water resources. In addition, the beam of concentrated sunlight a solar power tower creates can kill birds and insects that fly into the beam.

    The amount of solar energy that the earth receives each day is many times greater than the total amount of all energy that people consume each day. However, on the surface of the earth, solar energy is a variable and irregular energy source. The amount of sunlight and the intensity of sunlight varies by time of day and location. Weather and climate conditions affect the availability of sunlight daily and on a seasonal basis. The type and size of a solar energy collection and conversion system determines how much of the available solar energy we can convert into useful energy.

    I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American, who was regarded as one of the last great modernist architects, has died at the age of 102.

    Although he worked mostly in the United States, Pei will always be remembered for a European project: His redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in Paris in the 1980s. He gave us the glass and metal pyramid in the main courtyard, along with three smaller pyramids and a vast subterranean (地下的) addition to the museum entrance.

    Pei was the first foreign architect to work on the Louvre in its long history, and initially his designs were fiercely opposed. But in the end, the French—and everyone else—were won over. Winning the fifth Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983, he was thought as giving the 20th century "some of its most beautiful inside spaces and outside forms … His talent and skill in the use of materials approach the level of poetry."

    After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Pei set up his own architectural practice in New York in 1955.

    Designing the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in 1964 established him as a name. His East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1978 changed people's ideas of a museum. The site was an odd trapezoid (梯形) shape. Pei's solution was to cut it in two. The resulting building was dramatic, light and elegant—one of the first crowd-pleasing cathedrals of modern art.

    Though known as a modernist, and notable for his forms based on arrangements of simple geometric (几何的) shapes, he once urged Chinese architects to look more to their architectural tradition rather than designing in a western style.

    In person, I.M. Pei was good-humored, charming and unusually modest. His working process was evolutionary, but innovation (创新) was never an intended goal.

    "Stylistic originality is not my purpose," he said. "I want to find the originality in the time, the place and the problem."