Best Travel Guides by Continent

     We've broken down(分类)the best travel guides, by continent, to help you find student discounts and travel like a local on your next adventure.

Europe—Let's Go Europe 2017: The Student Travel Guide

     Let's Go was founded about 55 years ago when a Harvard student had an idea to provide accessible, budget travel lips for young people. Students lave its amusing pages. Let's Go Europe 2017 has everything you need for your trip—from the best beer in Brussels to how to avoid the lines at the Louvre.

Africa—The Rough Guide to Cape Toxin, the Winelands, and the Garden Route

     With its colorful photos and detailed tips on how to make the most of South Africa, The Rough Guide is the book to gel when visiting Africa. You may not have access to Google Maps when you1 re out exploring but that's OK. The Rough Guide also comes with easy use to maps.

     It can be purchased as an eBook, or as a paperback(平装本).

Asia—Lonely Planet: South-East Asia on a Shoestring

     This guide is perfect for those backpacking through the hidden treasures of South-Ea.sl Asia. With detailed recommendations from experts in the area, this guide helps first-timers as well as experienced backpackers. This book can lie purchased as a paperback travel guide. A download for an eBook or separate chapters can be purchased to serve as a guide to specific cities.

North America—Planet USA Travel Guide

     With detailed reviews of the best places to eat, sleep, and explore, Lonely Planet is linked with budget-friendly attractions and that's why it makes our best travel guides list. This travel guide is available in paperback.

    Did you ever notice your shadow at different times of the day? Shadows change as the day goes on.

    In the morning the sun makes long shadows. In the middle of the day, the sun seems to be right over your head and your shadow is very, very small. As the sun goes down in the afternoon, shadows grow very long again. But the long afternoon shadows fall in a different direction from the long morning shadows.

    Long, long ago people told time by the shadows. Put a piece of paper in the sunlight. Stand a pencil in a spool in the middle of the paper. The shadow of the pencil will fall on the paper and move as the day goes on. Use a watch and every hour marks the place where the shadow falls. Now your paper is a sundial（通过太阳辨别时间的日规）and you can tell every sunny day. Just look at your paper sundial and see where the shadow falls.

    US people are overweight, eat lots of fast food and fill their homes with pets. At least that's what 21 European teenagers think.

    The students, 18 from Germany and 3 from France, are exchange students. They are studying in the US for a year. After a few days in the US, they said what they thought about the country.

    Most talked about the amount of fast food US people eat. It's not that the students don't eat fast food. They just don't eat as much.

    Laetitia Villeneuve from France said she eats fast food, usually McDonald's, only once or twice a year.

    "I like it," said Nora Koeberle from Germany. "But I couldn't eat it every day. I'd get fat. "

    Students are surprised at how big US people seem.

    "There are fat people in Germany," said Antonia Greimel from Germany. "But not as many as there are here."

    They also spoke about the animals. Silvana Wolfram from Germany said she had heard about how people had lots of pets in the US.

    Other ways of US high schools interested the students.

    For example, Koeberle said she wouldn't be able to play an instrument or sports as part of her classes in Germany. She can in the US.

    But the best thing about US high schools is something the European kids can't get back home. "I do wish we had parties," Koeberle said.

    Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of efficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLOSONE, makes it known that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.

    Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense(无意义的词语)words to volunteers undergoing fMRI scans. The words differed in only one letter, such as “farm” and “form” or “soat” and “poat”, or were completely different, such as “farm” and “coat” or “poat” and “hime”. The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words.

    Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons(神经元)in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “farm” to “form”, for example, produced as great a change in activity as changing “farm” to” coat”, the team reports in Neuron. The area responded slowly to single-letter changes in made-up words.

    The data suggests that readers grasp real words as whole objects, rather than focusing on letters or letter combinations. And as a reader's exposure to a word increases, the brain comes to recognize the shape of the word. Meaning is passed on after recognition in the brain, Riesenhuber says.

    The researchers don't yet know how longer and less familiar words are recognized, or if the brain can be trained to recognize nonsense words as a unit.

    My wife and I went to this vegan(严格的素食主义的) restaurant to give it a try. As we were eating our pepper and salt tofu, a young lady named Debra walked in. She wasn't aware that the place is vegan and was looking for some meat. My wife and I talked up the place and invited her over to try some of our tofu. Debra tried it, nodded and went out.

    After a few minutes, she and her mother both walked back in. We were having the rest of our meal at that time, so we told her what we had ordered. Debra then asked the waitress to just repeat our order for them. Next, Debra said. "And we want to pay for their meal", pointing to my wife and me. We tried to say no, but Debra wouldn't listen.

    That was not the end of it. Hugs were in order. Debra came over to our table and my wife got up to hug her. Debra hugged my wife and put $ 100 into her hand. My wife firmly said NO, but Debra insisted. Debra kept talking about our kindness, and we did the same about hers and her mother's. With tears in the eyes, the workers were blown away by this whole exchange between four strangers. I left the waiters and waitresses a tip that would cover all of our meals and we were on our way.

    I've been witnessing so much kindness, especially over the last few years, as I began to pay more attention. We now have a new favorite restaurant and every time we go there my plan is to pay for someone else's meal.

    On my first day of high school, I asked an eleventh grader where my class was. And he told me it was "on the fourth floor, next to the pool." I found out five minutes later that we don't even have a fourth floor and there's no pool either! Besides that, I didn't have any trouble with the older kid.

    I think the biggest difference between middle and high school is the homework load (工作量) and size of the school. I went from maybe fifteen minutes of homework a night to several hours, so I had to learn how to make full use of time! Our class size is around 550, but joining in clubs, sports, music, and other activities at school makes it easier to get to know people in every grade.

    The best advice I can give about the years you spend in high school is to learn things for yourself, not just to get a good grade. There have been so many tests that I've prepared for the night before, gotten an A, and not remembered anything later. I've changed that this year, and I enjoy school so much more. Don't take easy classes just to have a simple year. If you have a choice between chemistry and sports, the first will prove to be a lot more useful!

    While drinking and smoking might be present in some middle schools, they're also around in high school. I have a lot of friends who promised they'd never drink or smoke, but are now partying every weekend. If you have "fun" and spend your nights wasted instead of studying, you will regret it when you're applying for (申请) college. The "friends" who say you're a loser for not partying are really not your friends at all. It's hard to see your closest friends grow apart and go in different directions, but don't follow their footsteps. Create your own path in life and make your own decisions.