Last year I lived in Chile for half a year as an exchange student with the American Field Service. Compared to most visitors, I didn't travel much. I lived with a Chilean family and had the responsibilities of any Chilean teenager. I went to school every day, in uniform. I had good days and bad days and days that I didn't understand.

    Chuquicamata, my host community, is a mining camp in the Atacama Desert. There is no disco, no shopping center, no museum or beach. Driveways must be watered daily to keep the dust down.

    When I arrived here, I was scared. It was so different from the urban middle-class America I was accustomed to. There were lost dogs on the streets, and a constant cloud of brick-colored dust came from the mine. There was no downtown, few smoothly paved(用砖石铺的) streets, and little to do for amusement. The people worked extremely hard. Rain was a rare phenomenon; earthquakes and windstorms were frequent.

    I had studied Spanish for two and a half years and was always one of the best students in my class. But in my first week in Chile I was only able to communicate and needed one person to whom I could explain my shock. I couldn't speak the thoughts in my head—and there were so many.

    Most exchange students experience this like me. Culture shock presents itself in everything from increased aggression towards the people to lack of appetite. I was required to overcome all difficulties. Being an exchange student is not easy.

    As time passed, everything changed. I began to forget words in English and to dream in Spanish and love Chilean food. I got used to not depending on expensive things for fun. Fun in Chuquicamata was being with people. And I took math, physics, chemistry, biology, Spanish, art, and philosophy.

    But the sacrifices were nothing compared to the gain. I learned how to accept as well as to succeed in another culture. I now know the world is my community and have a much deeper understanding of both myself and others.

    A new argument has been put forward as to whether penguins are disturbed by the presence of tourists in Antarctica.

    Previous research by scientists from Keil University in Germany monitored Adelie penguins and noted that the birds' heart rates increased dramatically at the sight of a human as far as 30 meters away. But new research using an artificial egg, which is equipped to measure heart rates, disputes this. Scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge say that a slow moving human who does not approach the nest too closely, is not viewed as a threat by penguins.

    The earlier findings have been used to partly explain the 20 per cent drop in populations of certain types of penguins near tourist sites. However, tour operators have continued to insist that their activities do not adversely（不利地）affect wildlife in Antarctica, saying they encourage non-destructive behavior in tourists, and that the decline in penguin numbers is caused by other factors.

    Amanda Nimon of the Scott Polar Research Institute spent three southern hemisphere summers at Cuverville Island in Antarctica studying penguin behavior towards humans. “A nesting penguin will react very differently to a person rapidly and closely approaching the nest,” says Nimon. “First they exhibit large and prolonged heart rate changes and then they often flee the nest leaving it open for predators（掠夺者）to fly in and remove eggs or chicks.” The artificial egg, specially for the project, monitored both the parent who had been 'disturbed' when the egg was placed in the nest and the other parent as they both took it in turns to guard the nest.

    However, Boris Culik, who monitored the Adelie penguins, believes that Nimon's findings do not prove his own research invalid. He points out that species behave differently – and Nimon's work was with Gentoo penguins. Nimon and her colleagues believe that Culik's research was methodologically（方法论上）defective because the monitoring of penguins' responses needed catching the birds and fitting them with heart-rate transmitters（发射器）. Therefore, argues Nimon, it would not be surprising if they became stressed on seeing a human subsequently.

    Earthquakes happen without warning(前兆). They can happen any time of a day, at any point during the year. But don't worry because most are so weak that they cannot be felt. Only a few big ones hurt people. However, it's important to know what to do when an earthquake is happening.

    Do NOT go outside. You could get injured from falling glass or parts of buildings. If you are outside, stay away from buildings and power lines (输电线).

    Stay under a desk, table, or other strong furniture. Hold on to it. Or stay in a corner of the building. Cover your face and head with your arms and cover your mouth with a towel or clothing. Stay inside until shaking stops and it is safe to go outside.

    Keep away from windows, pictures or advertisements on the wall or the building, and anything else that could fall and hurt you. Most people get injured by falling things during an earthquake, not by the shaking itself.

    Also keep away from a fire. You could fall down and burn yourself on the fire.

    If you are driving when an earthquake happens, stop the car if it's safe. Stay inside your car until the earthquake stops, and don't drive near bridges. Try not to stop by power lines or trees. These could fall and hurt you.

    Who cares if people think wrongly that the Internet has had more important influences than the washing machine? Why does it matter that people are more impressed by the most recent changes?

    It would not matter if these misjudgments were just a matter of people's opinions. However, they have real impacts, as they result in misguided use of scarce resources.

    The fascination with the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) revolution, represented by the Internet, has made some rich countries wrongly conclude that making things is so "yesterday" that they should try to live on ideas. This belief in "post-industrial society" has led those countries to neglect their manufacturing sector (制造业) with negative consequences for their economies.

    Even more worryingly, the fascination with the Internet by people in rich countries has moved the international community to worry about the "digital divide" between the rich countries and the poor countries. This has led companies and individuals to donate money to developing countries to buy computer equipment and Internet facilities. The question, however, is whether this is what the developing countries need the most. Perhaps giving money for those less fashionable things such as digging wells, extending electricity networks and making more affordable washing machines would have improved people's lives more than giving every child a laptop computer or setting up Internet centres in rural villages, I am not saying that those things are necessarily more important, but many donators have rushed into fancy programmes without carefully assessing the relative long-term costs and benefits of alternative uses of their money.

    In yet another example, a fascination with the new has led people to believe that the recent changes in the technologies of communications and transportation are so revolutionary that now we live in a "borderless world". As a result, in the last twenty years or so, many people have come to believe that whatever change is happening today is the result of great technological progress, going against which will be like trying to turn the clock back. Believing in such a world, many governments have put an end to some of the very necessary regulations on cross-border flows of capital, labour and goods, with poor results.

    Understanding technological trends is very important for correctly designing economic policies, both at the national and the international levels, and for making the right career choices at the individual level. However, our fascination with the latest, and our under valuation of what has already become common, can, and has, led us in all sorts of wrong directions.

    In Mexico, girls mark their fifteenth birthday with a celebration called Quinceanera. In the morning, the birthday girl goes to the church with her family and her best friends. She wears a beautiful dress. Later in the day, there is a huge party, with a big cake that matches the girl's dress, and a night filled with music and dancing.

    Becoming an adult is a very important life change, and Japan has a special holiday to celebrate this. The second Sunday in January is Coming-of-Age Day. On that day, everyone who had their twentieth birthday in the last year goes to their Town Hall for a special activity. Everyone dresses up, and many women wear beautiful dresses. The mayor makes a speech and gives presents to all the new adults.

    Some kids are afraid to start school, but six-year-olds in Germany can't wait. For them, Schulanfang is a big holiday. To celebrate a child's first day of school, parents or friends give the child a Zuckertuete, a big color box filled with candy and little presents. People take pictures of the kids holding their Zuckertuete, and there is a school party later for the parents with cake and coffee.